August 2011 - Our Lord at work

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

Khav Win ( Ka Win) - On earth as in heaven ....

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.