Cambodian pastor returns with the gospel to land he fled 30 years ago

Cambodian pastor Rindo Nong describes his flight from the Khmer Rouge in 1979, his conversion to Christ in a Thai refugee camp and a journey to the Philippines and then to Fort Worth, Texas.

Cambodian pastor Rindo Nong gives his testimony in the Khmer language.

November 05, 2009
By George Henson,Staff Writer
Baptist Standard

FORT WORTH — Rindo Nong had no idea three decades ago God was leading him out of the killing fields of Cambodia so that years later, he could return, bringing the gospel to his homeland.

In fact, Nong didn’t even know God when his family fled to a refugee camp in Thailand to escape the Khmer Rouge in 1979.

“I grew up a Buddhist,” said Nong, now pastor of a Cambodian mission church in Fort Worth sponsored by Travis Avenue Baptist Church.

“In the refugee camp, they had a missionary who would go in and come out to spread the gospel. They had built one church for Christians and one church for Buddhists right across from one another.”

Nong’s mother and stepfather were curious and began attending the Christian church to find out more about Jesus. Ultimately, they made professions of faith in Christ, and they began to share their faith with other family members.

Nong began his own spiritual search, but it took him some time to leave his Buddhist roots.

One day, his mother and brother brought him a gospel tract to read.

“The tract talked about life, and it had a nice picture on it, and I liked that red flower. When I read through the whole tract, my spirit started to sing about life, what’s going on in life, and what happens when we die,” he said. “A new spirit came upon me. I didn’t know it was the Holy Spirit at that time, but I felt different.”

The next Sunday, when his mother went to church, Nong was by her side.

“When I accepted Christ, it changed my life. ... It changed the singing in my soul. Now there was joy,” he said.

That was 1980, and Nong began to spend a great deal of time with the Christian missionaries in the refugee camps, learning more about his newfound faith. He spent almost three years in refugee camps—two in Thailand and another in the Philippines—before he and his wife moved to Fort Worth, where his parents already were living.

In 1990, Nong began to feel a stirring to minister. Eventually, that sense of calling led him back to a place where he thought he never would return.

“I wanted to serve the Lord among Cambodians, but not go back to Cambodia. But one day, God called me back, and I had to go to Cambodia,” Nong recalled.

In 1994, with the help of Travis Avenue Baptist Church, he started his ministry to the Cambodians of Fort Worth. Three years later, Nong and his wife went back to Cam-bodia for the first time since his escape from the Com-munists years before.

“God told me I had to go back and start a church in my own village,” Nong said. Among his extended family, he found a readymade congregation who were eager to hear about Christ. In 2001, he led the construction of a church there.

He has made a trip back to Cambodia every year since, starting churches and constructing church buildings. Since 2003, a group from University Baptist Church, where he has worked as a custodian 25 years, has accompanied him to Cambodia.

“Now I’m involved with the whole country training pastors and leaders. The church there is really growing,” Nong said.

With help from his partners in Fort Worth, a Baptist center has been built in his home village of Batongbang to train church leaders.

While the people of Cambodia are closely tied to their family traditions and Buddhism, Nong said, they are very curious about Christianity. They have a thirst for more and are welcoming of Christians, he added.

“This is a good time,” Nong said. “We can’t wait too long.”

Keeping the faith

Children from Garth Elementary bow goodbye to Rin Yame, a visitor from Cambodia. When Rin Yame talks about Jesus Christ, he smiles. (News-Graphic/Jessica J. Rouse)

10/28/07
By JESSICA J. ROUSE
Georgetown News-Graphic (Georgetown, Kentucky, USA)

And there was a time in his life, growing up in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, when Yame didn't have much to smile about.

"My father left me when I was born," Yame said. "When I was about 6 years old, I began to really understand life."

Yame came to Georgetown to visit First United Methodist Church Pastor Greg Gallaher this past week, after meeting him while Gallaher was working as a pastor in a church in Cambodia. Yame came on a three-month-long trip to America to try to recruit teachers to come teach orphans in Cambodia, pastors to come train pastors, and sell some of his artwork - mostly drawings of the orphans he teaches - to benefit the children in his country.

Yame works with orphans, he said, because he was one.

After his father left him, Yame said his sister began to habitually run away. His mother began to drink and smoke while searching for her daughter, and eventually committed suicide by overdose in front of Rin, he said.

"I said, 'Mom! Wake up! Mom!'" he said.

They took her to the hospital, where she died.

"I kept thinking, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I want my Mom back," he said.

His aunts took him in, but her children and children-in-law used him as a slave and beat him severely, he said.

"They used to hit me, hard, across the face until blood came from my face. One time, (his aunt's) son-in-law hit me so hard on my head, I don't know how to explain it to you, it was like my brain (swelled)," he said. There, I never had peace in my heart."

Yame did grow up, and after living in a garbage dump, sleeping on the streets, gambling and doing other, in his words, "bad" things, he met an American man from Ohio named Darrell Caldwell at a soccer and football stadium where many of the poor and homeless in Cambodia congregate, he said.

"I went to beg to him,'Pplease sir, may I stay with you? I am so hungry, I do not have much money to eat,'" he said.

Yame had never asked to stay with any stranger before in fear of them being a bad person, he said.

"The power inside my heart, I don't know, the Lord sent me to him."

The man had been fooled by another child from Cambodia, and did not want to believe Yame at first, until he heard a name.

"I asked him, do you know Clydette Powell? And he said, 'That is my friend,'" Yame said.

Powell, a physician from America, took trips to Cambodia and met Yame when he was a young child, he said.

Caldwell took Yame to the Cambodian Christian Arts Ministry, a school for orphans in Cambodia.

"I heard the dancing, and it made me happy," he said. The school teaches the orphans about Christ through classical Cambodian arts, drawing, drama, singing, dancing and playing instruments, Yame said.

"Rin," said Gallaher, "has an incredible gift of music. He has an amazing singing voice. He is so talented."

After starting at the Christian school, Yame said he found what he felt he had been longing for all along - the Lord.

"In my life I had fallen so many times," he said. "The Lord just lifted me up again and again," he exclaimed.

The Lord lifted him once again, he said, when his father came to the school to see him.

"I had a lot of bitterness toward him when he came to the school. I was surprised, I thought he had died. But the Lord Jesus taught me to forgive him. I said, 'The reason I can call you father is because of Jesus Christ,'" he said.

His father, at that time, was stubborn about Yame's religious beliefs, he said.

He later got a call from his brother telling him his father was sick, and prayed very hard about making the decision to go. After the Lord led him to go to his father, he said, he told him once again of his devotion to Jesus.

"I said 'Father, Jesus loves you. And I love you, too. Even though you threw me away, all the kids had papas and I don't have anything. But if you believe and confess your sins to God ...' Well, I just never gave up with him."

His father got better, and came to Yame with news.

"He said, 'I have come to bring you the good news, I want to become a Christian, too. Praise the Lord!'" Yame said.

And the Lord, he added, healed his father.

"It made me so happy in my heart," he said.

There was also a time when Yame was lying in bed ready to give up when he was out of a job.

"I was just lying there, and two voices came in my head. One told me, 'Give up from following Jesus Christ,' and the other said, 'Don't give up.' I thought, no, I don't want to give up. And I prayed for the Lord to help me get a job. The next morning, I re_ceived a message from an Amer_ican family asking me to do an exhibition with my artwork in Cambodia," he said.

Yame has found motivation from his past to help the future of orphans in Cambodia. Now a teacher at the Christian school and also teaching orphans at other schools, Yame tries to bring happiness through drawing and music lessons to the children who have gone through so much, he said.

"I understand how hard it is when someone has nothing," he said. "I encourage them. I tell them, 'I love you. Jesus loves you.'"

The children change after being at the school for a while, Yame said.

"I tell them, those who do not have a papa, 'Jesus is our papa,'" he said.

Yame came on his second trip to America in hopes of selling artwork of the orphans to benefit the children in Cambodia and to raise aware_ness of the struggles the people are going through, he said.

Yame has spoken at various locations, including Garth Elementary, where he played the piano and sang for the children and told them about the orphans in his country.

Right before he left, the children that he had been teaching all played the instruments they have been taught to play together in a concert-type setting.

"They played like angels in heaven play," he said.

Although Yame said he was enjoying his visit to America, he said he couldn't wait to get back to his Cambodian angels.

"I miss them. I miss teaching them. I miss the children," he said.