My friend Khav Win in the village (almost sounds like Kevin) is a real inspiration to me. I never used to see him in the village much . Generally when I was pulling into the village I would pass him on the road in the morning most of the time about a kilometre from the village . He would be hand pedaling his wheelchair down the muddy road towards the Buddhist temple. He always stopped pedaling and greeted me with a wave and a big smile everytime I went by.
You see the Buddhist temple is a major training centre and also a huge tourist attraction as Oudong mountain has many temples on it dating back centuries.
Khav Win would park himself in front of the gates and proceed to beg all day each and everyday in order to provide money for his family the only way he feels he can being so far out of any job opportunities after being evicted to this site 38km from Phnom Penh.
Some days I just take my Khmer language books and sit down with a family in the village and try to communicate the best I can . His family consists of his wife Meas Chea and kids Chork,Channy and Vannak they are great kids and always have the same smile their father has and have been very welcoming to me in the community and very helpful around the village. Khav Win shared with me his daily schedule and how tough it was to be able to get enough money for food for his family. I imagined how brutal it must be to beg everyday and the negative impact that must have on you when people walk by or ignore you or even begrudgingly give.
I was really happy when the community chose Khav Win and his family to receive one of the first 8 houses we were building. You see I have taken myself out of all the decision making tasks at the community and the people have selected 10 people from the community to form a board and the decisions are made by these elected community people. In order to have gender equality they chose to have 5 men and 5 women on the committee.
When we started on his home just like all the others the homeowners are diligently working alongside the local workmen hired from the community to build the houses. No one worked harder than Khav Win ,under the hot sun he never faltered and pushed on not with just a desire to complete his home but with complete joy oh his face.
God provided this joy to him by relieving him from his daily grind of begging to joyfully provide for his family in building them a home. I really can't describe how this impacted me as I saw such a pureness to his joy that it could only come from God. Then a dejected look came over him as he was working and it was around lunchtime. I knew something was wrong and I couldn't understand in my still limited Khmer. I had Leakhena ask him what was wrong and he said he needed to go to the Pagoda and beg because if he didn't his family didn't have anything to eat. We always provided meals for the paid workers but not the families helping on their own homes as we were trying to keep to a tight budget. we always had a couple of meals extra for the workers who were extra hungry but this wasn't enough for his whole family for lunch and dinner. Needless to say some of us were quite happy to go without to allow him to continue in his joy providing a new home for his family.
God tells us that we are to store our riches in heaven but sometimes he gives us a taste of them here....and the look of that joy re-ignited as Khav Win proceeded on with his task was rich indeed.
We built a total of 8 houses a few weeks ago and will be building 3 more next week and another 10 or more sept 17th when Dennis the original donater from Australia returns to continue on. There are a total of 100 homes that need built in this eviction community we will have about 20 finished by the end of sept. If you feel led to contribute to this endeavour each home is approx 570 dollars. Every dollar that is raised for this will go directly towards homes in this community. Dennis has also provided all the necessary tools such as pry bars,hammers ,tapes,shovels,picks, compressor and hoses and brad nailers but we still need two air powered framing guns.
Please feel free to contact me if you want anymore information kknight45@hotmail.com and +855 12981960 outside Cambodia or 012981960 inside Cambodia to leave a text message on my cell or the same number to call me direct. Would be happy to share more about the community their situation and how you can help.
Please pray for this community as other missionaries warned me that I am going into a stronghold but I believe that God wants to build a Christian community built on the foundation of Christ here at the bottom of this mountain. Have no fear but fear of the Lord.
