my khmer journey continued

Last year when I went to Cambodia, it was in August. The land was dry, and it was yet due the rainy season. We walked around sticky with sweat everyday, and the land was covered in wind-eroded dust. Everyday we saw the Khmer people living among ruins left behind from their heavy past and a lack of hope and of a future.


There was a marked difference between Thailand and Cambodia. Passing the Thai and Cambodian border towns of Aranpathet and Poi Pet on the roads, we saw how the Khmer land was covered with rubble, roads never mended, never made, everyone brown and dry with lack of hope hung on their faces.


This year, we went after the rains.


The house ponds were filled to their brim with water. The rains were over, and instead of brown dying grass, we were invited into the country with fresh new-start greenery. Meet the horizon of sky and rice-fields.


"It is harvest time.


Cambodia is more beautiful now than I remembered from the last time."









It is harvest time.


First in the flesh, then in the spirit.


When I came here last year, it pained me that it was already so hard to help just one person in Singapore, let alone so many, who needed so much more, in one entire nation that lived in her past everyday. The first thing we did last year, was to commit ourselves to helping the care-giver - the church, for she also, at that time, hung her head low in tears and held on to nothing but God himself. Just as Ezekiel did, we prophesied over the valley of dry bones, that it rattled together into a mighty army once again in its awe and splendour at victory.


Have you ever seen Jesus feed the five thousand? Can you feel what it is like to have the Lord add daily to the numbers? It may be a small thing in Singapore with elaborate amphitheatres, seats and logistics management, but in a village, a transposition of any of those scenes would equate to a miracle taking place.


It was truly, a harvest of people. Jesus wasn't kidding when he said we would be fishers of men.


I haven't yet taught sixty children art at a go before, but now I have. These children might never have held crayons or glue before, but they make their art with more faith and confidence than their Singaporean equivalents do.


By the third night, we had close to two hundred children in a church that has usually only ten kids.


We protected the abused, collected the kids from the streets, fed and entertained them with movies and songs, gave them clothes,toys and stationery. And most of all, left them in the hands of the Youvawai church, who would bring these children into the safe haven as often as possible, because in Cambodia, the most fertile ground of self-worth, are the children and teenagers.


The teenagers speak of ambitions. To learn English, hence they enjoyed speaking to us. To go to Bible school and return to help their village. To believe that God will change their abusive fathers, and that He did and we witnessed so while we were there. To listen to the word of God and gain faith and wisdom, to believe they will indeed rise to be someone greater than themselves.


The more we protect, the less are turned towards vices. There are so many street kids we cannot protect now, but if we touch a handful, they will impact their generation.


to be continued...