Hello again from Cambo
It has been a blessed month of answered prayer, healing,direction, building,relationship strengthening and an overwhelming presence of our Lord at work. (For photos from this month, click here to see an online album.)
Just a few bullet points before I share a story about this month.
...God has been providing us with whatever we need..He has blessed us with timely answers to our prayers for numerous needs
...Our relationship with the community is growing everyday and we were all brought to tears when I shared about Leakhena and mine's love for the community and I shared about everything I saw in this community and what they have...love for each other, community,bonding from going through the same hardships,the skills,the strengths and God on their side. At the end of the meeting one of the committee members came up to me and said Som Preah En Pro Te An Poh...May God bless You
..We built two more homes for the community this month...one from a short term team from Calvin Presbyterian an ESC partner with Tenth church who were so moved by the testimonies given by the community members that they supplied the funding before they left to build this home and are looking at raising further funding for more homes.
..We have a list for the community in order of greatest need and the woman who moved them was next on the list and God provided through the same team
..We have a commitment for 15 homes with a possible 20 which we will be building starting the 17th of sept for approx 3 weeks
..Tenth church will be supporting Leakhena and I to go for cross cultural and pre marriage counselling in Chiang Mai probably in Oct. such a huge blessing and a great grounding for our forthcoming marriage in January
...the process of starting our own NGO called Manna4Life is almost completed and ready to send to the government..just working on the final board members before sending for approval.
..Just finalizing the MOU with Dove and will be partnering with them as the advisor to their sustainable community development section .This is a great ministry that tenth supports and our ministries will be a great blessing to the Oudong community and the Kingdom of God
..Working on a 4 phase plan for the community and our ministry at the village .
..working on a proposal for this 4 phase plan
..have joined forces with my brother Tony Tom with World Helps Ministries as their Cambodian partner and will be doing projects together in education and building in the community
This is just a short recap of the month....as you can see a lot is happening here and God is really moving forward so pray that I hang on tight to Him.
Now for a story of healing prayer.
The pictures attached are our friend Rhum.
We had been on a medical missions trip with Tenth church and when we got back at the start of the month and visited the village we were informed that Rhum a friend from the community had suffered a stroke the night before. Rhum is a great guy and usually carries water for the village in a big blue drum to all the homes especially the dry season. This is how he supports his family and his son is now doing it in his place. I think he gets 2000riel for every drum which is approx 50 cents and wheels this heavy load around to the homes.
We immediately went to the hospital to see how he was praying for him along the way.
We couldn't find him at the hospital because he had been released already because he had no money. Not exactly a rare situation in Cambodia as most people cannot afford the medical care however inadequate it is.
We called around and it wasn't until the next day that we were able to get his number where he was staying and went to visit him. His whole left side was paralyzed ,his face frozen and his arm and leg numb and useless.He was staying at his daughters place which overseas the old Dey Krahorm eviction site where he used to live.It is a building next in line for eviction and one with a horrible reputation and is a den of prostitution , drugs and gangs.
When we were leaving we asked him if we could pray for him and reminded him that we were Christians and would like to pray to Jesus for Him. He is a Buddhist but both himself and his wife said they would be very grateful if we prayed to God for them. Leakhena and I both prayed out loud in Khmer and English asking for God's healing powers to reach our friend and for him to then be a light for the rest of the community and to share about who healed him.
We then went home and a few days later took Tara Dawn a medical student from Tenth who was on the medical team and visited him again he had improved slightly and his face was now no longer frozen but had to use his other hand to move his arm or leg. Tara gave him advice on not doing that or his movement would never come back. We then asked him again if we could pray for him and he welcomed our prayer again. Leakhena,Tara and I all prayed for him similar prayers as we prayed before telling God of our uselessness in this situation and that we needed Him and Him only to help our friend.
On friday night I said to Leakhena we should go see how Rhum is doing but we were unable to and said we would go after our normal saturday meeting at the village.
When we got to the village there was Rhum walking around the village with the help of a stick and we were prasing God at the amazing healing. He was walking with a stick because the only boots he had were big heavy army boot styke and it was hard for him to walk in those as his healing was continuing. Leakhena wanted to get him some sneakers so we went to the local market and after putting these on he was able to walk around the village without much problem.
Please pray that Rhum recognizes where his healing came from and is a light to the community of the powers of our loving God
God bless you
Kevin and Leakhena
