Our church is sending a short-term missions team to Cambodia this summer. Some of our friends are asking, “Why Cambodia?” Here’s the story…
It began last year when my wife and I were praying for Cambodia using Operation World. We read of their dark history during the 70s under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rogue. God broke our heart for that country while praying for them. God just let us feel their pain. And we felt that we have to do something about it. We still don’t know what God was telling us to do at that time. But as months pass by, the vision became clearer.
Last October, twenty of our church members went through the Kairos Course, a nine-week course designed to help the church embrace God’s global mission. Since I started pastoring our church, part of my vision is to see our church mobilized in reaching the unreached. Now, I’m beginning to see it happen.
In celebration of our church’s 26th anniversary, we invited the President of International Graduate School of Leadership Tom Roxas to preach. In his sermon, he showed us a video of what God is doing in a church planting movement in…(guess what country?)…Cambodia! Do you know that feeling when God is speaking to you very clearly?
During one of our sessions in Kairos, a team from the Philippine Sending Council (PSC) of SEND International presented to us several missions opportunities. This year, they are planning to send short-term teams to Thailand, Japan, Taiwan and…(guess what?)…Cambodia!
We hear God speaking to us. We can no longer deny it. So we listened to what he’s saying to us and we responded. That’s why our church is now fully committed to go to Cambodia – eight of us going, the rest sending and supporting.
We want to help the church in Cambodia. We want our church to be an encouragement to them. We want to partner with them in reaching out to their fellow Cambodians for Jesus.
We also want to learn from them. We want to see how God is at work among them. We want to have our eyes opened to the way they live as a church. And then tell others what we saw and how our church can adjust to be more in line with God’s purposes.
But we don’t want this experience to benefit only our church. We long to see many churches in the Philippines to be mobilized and be involved in reaching the unreached. We want to see more cooperation, partnership and unity among many churches to finish the remaining task of the Great Commission.
Most of all, we are going to Cambodia because we are passionate to “declare [God’s] glory among the nations, his marvelous work among all the peoples” (Psalm 96:3). Our heart is grieved when thousands of people groups in the world are still so busy wasting their lives worshiping idols. Our heart is shouting, “Let the nations be glad and sing for joy…Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you” (Psalm 67:4-5)!
If you are also passionate to magnify God’s name among the nations and if you also sense that God is leading you to partner with us, you can join our Facebook group and see various ways you can help.
You’re asking, “Why Cambodia?” Why not?
Treasuring Christ PH 
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