As some of you might know, last August me and 4 TTC friends went to Cambodia to observe the mission work there. The trip was done as part of a requirement for "Mission and Evangelism" course. I have not blogged about it at all because I waited for our group report :p Here we go....
PS: names are made confidential
Introduction
As part of our Mission & Evangelism course, our team of five – Je, Ma, St, EY and Yu– embarked on a mission observation trip to Cambodia from 28 August to 7 September 2010. Cambodia has long been the destination of many missionaries, churches, non-governmental organisations and international agencies and they have brought both financial aid and the gospel of Christ to the Cambodians especially since the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Cambodia is a beautiful country situated in Indochina and shares land borders with Thailand in the north and west, Laos to the northeast and Vietnam to the east and southeast. It has a coastline on the Gulf of Thailand in the southwest. According to the census carried out in 2008, it has a population of 13.4 million. It is estimated that the local Khmer people make up approximately 90% of the population. Our experience in Cambodia has left us with warm memories of a gentle and polite people and culture.
In the 20th century, Cambodia has been through very rough times having been scarred by the Vietnam War and later, the rule of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1978. Under the Khmer Rouge, it lost an entire generation of the educated population. On our first day in Cambodia, we visited the genocide museum in Toul Sleng which tells the story of the horrors suffered by the Cambodians during the Khmer Rouge era. After the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia continued to suffer under Vietnamese rule until the constitutional monarchy was reinstated in 1993.
Today, Cambodia is still stricken by poverty, illiteracy, poor healthcare and the rise of AIDS. Children have lost their parents, people are maimed, and a huge percentage of the population live in extreme poverty. We caught a glimpse of poverty in Phnom Penh but were told it was only a fraction of destitution experienced in unreached areas in Cambodia. Our trip was divided into two phases. Phase 1 was in Phnom Penh and spent interviewing missionaries and mission organisations while phase 2 was in Siem Reap where we spent time with a local Cambodian pastor and ran a few programs for the children there. We have structured the report chronologically to reflect the time we spent on our journey in Cambodia.
Phnom Penh, 28 Sep – 2 Oct
The first place we visited in Phnom Penh was Harvest. Harvest is a tent-making ministry started by a Singaporean missionary, Jac, who is supported and sent to Cambodia by TMChurch. Harvest projects are social enterprises that seek to provide vocational training and education to Cambodian youths and young adults, and to support their livelihood. Harvest operates out of a single building and is run by young Cambodians who are supervised and mentored by Jac earning income through rental of the rooms in the guesthouse, sale of food and beverages at the cafe, catering of Nonya cakes, and transportation services.
Having lived in Cambodia and supported Cambodian missions for a long time, Jac saw the plight of the Cambodians and was convinced that missions could take on a more practical and sustainable approach as compared to the traditional model for missions. A social enterprise was the model that fit the bill. The building where Harvest operates was bought from donations and converted into a guesthouse. Income generated is used to support the livelihood of the Cambodian employees and to maintain the business. Through this ministry, Jac aims to mentor the employees of Harvest (who are all Christians), and equip them with useful skills for life and work so that they can be skilled labourers for Cambodia’s workforce and a testimony in their future workplaces. Eventually, Jac intends to pass this ministry on to a Cambodian Christian allowing it to become fully indigenous.
Following our visit to Harvest, and after pushing our Tuk Tuk through a knee-high flood, we got to spend some time with Rev. Phi, the principal of the Methodist School of Cambodia (MSC). MSC is an initiative of Methodist Missions Society (MMS) in Singapore and provides education from nursery to primary and secondary grades for Cambodian children following Cambodia’s national education syllabus. MSC currently has about 300 students and seeks to “Mould young boys and girls to become thinking, caring and giving people.”
While MSC is a paying school, i.e. students are required to pay school fees, MSC maintains a scholarship for several students through its Student Sponsorship Scheme. Rev. Phi also shared with us the many challenges that he faces with some supported students who are also victims of domestic abuse and sexual exploitation. MSC unashamedly emphasises Christian education and hopes that students will grow to become leaders of Cambodia who are well educated and morally upright. Already, MSC have seen tremendous success with many middle income families sending their children to MSC and holds a reputation for being one of the top schools in Cambodia.
The following morning we joined a local congregation for worship at Toul Kork Church which is located right on the premises of MSC. The church had a fairly large congregation (close to 100) and the Sunday morning worship service was bilingual in both Khmer and English. The church was mostly attended by middle income Cambodians and was comfortably equipped with leaky air condition and a contemporary band setup including a trumpet. It was a most interesting service and began to raise questions of cultural contextualisation in our minds. Over lunch, we got to meet Rev. Dr. Kev and spent some time learning about Tabitha Services, a Cambodian NGO committed to begin the Great Commission Companies and further our understanding of tent making work in Cambodia.
On the third day, we visited Christian Medical Ministry to Cambodia / Jeremiah’s Hope (CMMCJH) which is a nondenominational, international, Christian mission dedicated to providing excellent medical care to the poor and quality medical education to the healthcare community of Cambodia. There we met with Sok, the Country Director, and Nary, the Administrator Coordinator who explained to us that the main work of the clinic is to provide major surgeries for free. CMMCJH would schedule surgeries and organise a group of doctors from abroad to come in for approximately two weeks just to perform those surgeries.
During our conversation, they also revealed that besides AIDS, two major health problems for Cambodian are thyroid and motor accidents. As there are only two local neurologists in Cambodia, there is always a need for neurologists to perform surgeries for patients with head trauma. One of the two neurologists Dr. Sim, is already with the clinic. CMMCJH is in the midst of building their own hospital and surgical facilities and hopes to move their operations to the new hospital next year. From CMMCJH, we headed over to another medical facility, the Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope.
The mission of the Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope is to provide a centre for the further education and clinical training of medical professionals, while delivering 24-hour high-quality, free medical care for the poor and disadvantaged in Cambodia. Grace, a Development Associate at the hospital, explained to us that the hospital was established in 1996 under the collaboration of Japan Relief for Cambodia, World Mate and HOPE worldwide. As of May 2010, the hospital has treated more than 1 million people. Grace explained that the hospital could not meet the huge healthcare demands and as a result, they have to be very selective of their patients to ensure that the recipients of the free healthcare really come from very poor backgrounds.
Going from medical facilities, we went on to what turned out to be one of the most amazing organisations we visited in Cambodia. Care for Cambodia (CfC) endeavours to give people in Cambodia the freedom to live a life with hope, love, joy and peace in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ by providing care for the children and young people, especially the poor orphans. CfC began in 1997 by giving employment opportunities to widows and other poor people by teaching and resourcing them to sell traditional crafts for a living. In January 2001, CfC started taking in orphans and abandoned children, especially children whose parents died of AIDS and provided them with a home and education in local schools.
Managed by Khe Tee(Local Director), Fi Tee(International Consultant Director) and Nor Tee (International Adviser), CfC currently has 44 children aged between 3 and 19 years old. CfC not only sends the children to local schools but also gives them home tuition and instruction in agriculture, sport and creative arts. The children in CfC experience a very close Christian community and are, from our observation, very well loved by the Tees. We spent half day with them hearing their hopes and prayers for the ministry. We also had a great time with the children, interacting with them over song and dance after a warm fellowship meal. Truly, it was a most fantastic experience.
In recent weeks, Nor has also started Eden Cafe providing job opportunities for Cambodian Christians who leave the orphanage. Similar to the model of social enterprise missions, the aim is to provide a source of livelihood for Cambodian Christians and equip them with useful practical skills so that they are able to find work. As the cafe had begun operations for only a short time, future plans for how the business will be operated and sustained were not apparent.
The next day we took a long drive to Community Outreach Services – Immanuel Children Village (COSI) run by MMS. Despite the drive, our visit to COSI was a brief one. Ps. Fran, took us to the farm where he demonstrated their latest community initiative (FAITH – Food Always in the Home) to encourage the neighbouring communities to develop natural and sustainable farms through agricultural technology. Coming from the Tees orphanage the previous evening, we observed stark contrasts between the two orphanages. Where CfC was a small close knit Khmer community, COSI was a behemoth of 120 children with 12 house parents set on a 3.7 hectare compound built astonishingly like a Singaporean school.
From COSI, we dropped by the Emmaus Woman’s Centre (EWC) which train young women in skills that will allow them to learn a livelihood. With roots as a women’s shelter, today, EWC provides a free 12-month residential training program for young women to receive spiritual, vocational and educational training. EWC provides everything that the women require over the 12-months and keeps them in a safe environment where they can be trained in biblical discipleship while learning livelihood skills. Graduates of EWC then head back home to help support their families and also serve as Christian witnesses in their villages. COSI and EWC were very different from the other facilities that we visited and the uniquely Singaporean culture and style was very evident in both these organisations.
Heading back to the city, we visited Transworld Radio (TWR) in Phnom Penh and met the Cambodian team. TWR has a lovely premise in Cambodia and we visited their office and recording and production rooms. TWR is an international Christian radio network which broadcasts Christian programme through radio stations and makes available Christian content in audio form. TWR broadcasts and communicates in as many as 200 languages and has reached people in over 160 countries. In Cambodia, TWR seeks to reach children, youths, women and church leaders through their radio programmes and audio material. TWR’s ministry in Cambodia is of great importance in view of the high illiteracy rate and poverty amongst Cambodians.
The TWR team also engages in fieldwork – they visit provinces throughout Cambodia and run Christian programmes in rural areas. Additionally, TWR corresponds with their listeners. More than a thousand letters arrive at their office in a month. TWR carries out follow up work and builds relationships with listeners who get in touch with them. We spent about an hour in dialogue with the TWR team, understanding what they do and hearing stories of how they bring Christ to Cambodia. They also shared prayer concerns for their ministry and Cambodia. Like all the other organisations that we visit, we ended our time at TWR in prayer for the people of Cambodia and God’s work there.
On our fifth day in Phnom Penh, we visited Place of Rescue which was founded as a Cambodian NGO in 2003 by Mar. The place accommodates families living with AIDS, orphans, grannies and young unmarried pregnant women. Currently the place houses approximately 250 people, in which 190+ are orphans; 27 are HIV positive; and 20 grandmothers. The place is managed by Mar, a Canadian lady with her team of locals. Mar took us on a tour around the compound herself and we got to see how everything was done in the houses for the AIDS patients, orphanage, school and grannies houses. She also hosted us in her little house where we talked about the development of Place of Rescue II which was established in another province of Cambodia.
Place of Rescue also coordinates regular visit to Preah Khet Melea Hospital. Every Wednesday morning, a group of approximately 20 people from different churches in Phnom Penh gather for prayer at the hospital and then go in small groups of 2-3 people to visit the patients, some of which are HIV/AIDS positive. They visit the patients to share the Gospel, pray, and give gifts of food. We had the opportunity to join their team and visited the patients in the hospital with the locals, praying for them and providing support and financial relief to the patients where possible.
On our last day in Phnom Penh, we got to visit the headquarters of OMF International in Cambodia. OMF International is a Christian missionary organisation that serves the church bringing the gospel to some 12 countries in East Asia and has pioneered ministries in other countries by creating opportunities for missionaries to share the love of Christ in East Asia. Under OMF International is the OMF-Cambodia which started in 1975 when their missionaries went to the Thai-Cambodian border and ministered to refugees during the war.
Presently, OMF-Cambodia works in youth centres of 23 provinces all over the country. It desires to plant and develop churches in Cambodia but they do not start new projects. Instead, they only train some pastors and key leaders to support the existing work in the provinces. Missionaries that OMF sends into the field are on terms of 4 years plus 1 year furlough. Even though OMF-Cambodia faces a lot of challenges especially in terms of the locals viewing Christianity as a western religion, they still do their best to support existing work of various churches in the provinces. We spent 2 hours at the headquarters and left praying that this organisation will continue to be a channel of God’s blessing to the people of Cambodia.
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