Cambodia on church radar

Veronica Oum, left and Jean Paul, local ambassador for the Adventist Development Relief Agency, examine a globe Saturday. Veronica is preparing for a trip Feb. 13-March 1 to Cambodia and Thailand as part of Canadian delegation with ADRA offering relief in parts of those countries. Saturday, her church hosted a dinner to raise money for her trip. (PATRICK BRENNAN Times-Journal)

20-year-old St. Thomas woman volunteers for journey back to her homeland

31 Jan 2012
By Patrick Brennan
St. Thomas Times-Journal (St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada)

Veronica Oum is preparing to make a difference.

The 20-year-old St. Thomas woman who works as a lab technician at Zellers Pharmacy, is making plans to leave Feb. 13 on trip to Cambodia and Thailand. She will be there until March 1.

She will be travelling as part of an Adventist Development Relief Agency (ADRA) mission sponsored by the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Saturday, members of her church sat down at a fundraising dinner for her as she prepares to the final phase of her preparation.

Answering the Call to work with Dying Prisoners in Cambodia

Answering the Call

Lisa Cescon left a high-level position with a top entertainment company in London to work with dying prisoners in Cambodia.

PFI.org

As a young child, Lisa Cescon hated the inequity she saw around her. “You're lucky if you are someone who has the ability to succeed in life, and you're just jolly unlucky if you don‘t” she reflected. But Ms. Cescon was blessed with the ability to succeed, and she eventually became a top executive at Warner Brothers in London, England.

Despite being a committed volunteer all her life, her desire to help those less fortunate deepened. At the age of 35, she made the decision give up her successful career to go to Cambodia. Shortly after arriving in Phnom Penh, she and her friend Nicola received the call to work with prisoners. They were earnestly praying that God would use them in some direct way, when they were interrupted by a phone call from a local woman they had recently met. She asked if they would be willing to conduct weekly prison visits. “That was God,” Ms. Cescon recalled. “I am a real cynic - but I know that was God. We had both worked in prisons before.”

And thus began Lisa Cescon‘s ministry to dying prisoners in Cambodia. In a country wrought with corruption, poverty and the after effects of the Pol Pot genocide, prisoners in Cambodia face dire conditions. A lack of food and water lead to the rampant spread of disease, including tuberculosis, AIDS and Hepatitis C. When they become severely ill, the prisoners are moved to a decrepit wing of a military hospital, but without access to medicine most die a slow and painful death.

Radios help people get clean water

47 % of people in Cambodia can't afford filters for clean water. (FEBC Photo)

24 September, 2008

Cambodia (MNN) ― In Cambodia, 47 percent of the population doesn't drink clean water simply because they can't afford filters. Others simply don't know the importance of clean water, and a large number suffer from diarrhea and waterborne illnesses.

In many countries, the ease of buying clean water or having it available in your home is taken for granted.

Far East Broadcasting Company is helping people learn more about hygiene, irrigation, the science of wells, and providing clean water for livestock in two new radio programs. One is called The Well of Life--a drama that runs five days a week for 5 minutes. The other is a 30-minute spot that is simply informative.

Listeners also hear how water and wells are a symbol of rebirth and life for Christians. FEBCambodia staff travel around giving out radios so more people can hear the message. They get feedback on their programs, and most importantly, they give families water filters. It is a small thing that can change lives.

If you'd like to donate to families who need water filters, go here.

Widow Rescues Cambodian Orphans

Marie Ens

At 73 years of age, a former pastor’s wife wants her life to continue to count. She launched a mission in Phnom Penh to help widows and orphans.

By Emily Wierenga

Many of us dream of retirement as a time when we’ll no longer need to lift a finger. Not Saskatchewan native Marie Ens. When asked to retire from The Christian and Missionary Alliance in 2000, the widow decided to start an organization in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, called Rescue, which would allow her to keep on working.

“I didn’t want my life to consist of just sitting there, waiting to die,” says the 73-year-old author who spoke at MissionFest 2008 in Toronto. “I still wanted my life to count. Even after my husband passed away in ’91, I felt God say my missionary career wasn’t over.”

The former pastor’s wife and mother of four joined the Alliance in 1961. Along with her husband and children, she worked in Cambodia on and off until the country’s collapse in 1975, when they returned to Canada for a short while to plant a church, then headed to France where they worked with Cambodian refugees.

Whereas before she trained pastors and started churches, Rescue allows Ens to work with hundreds of orphans and AIDS victims at an orphanage called Place of Rescue.

“The work I’m doing now is more natural,” she says. “Now that I’m an older woman I want to be a grandmother.” With 12 grandbabies of her own and 140 at Place of Rescue, her desire has been more than realized.

When asked about her vision for the children, Ens replies: “That they soar like a kite. We [she works with a Cambodian director and houseparents] want them to reach their full potential. Whatever God has in mind for them we want to see fulfilled.”

Only four years old, the organization already consists of an orphanage, two large homes called “granny houses” for elderly women, another building for young pregnant factory workers and a transition house that assists the orphans with obtaining life skills and a job.

Following MissionFest Toronto, where Ens taught seminars on Third World countries and AIDS, she is returning to the land and people she has fallen in love with. “I hope to keep doing this for the rest of my life,” she says.

Emily Wierenga is a writer and artist based in Blyth, Ontario.
Originally published in Faith Today, April/May 2008.

Missionary radio hosts family conference in Cambodia

FEBC marriage and parenting conference in Cambodia. (FEBC photo)

14 March, 2008

Cambodia (MNN) ― A missionary radio outreach is celebrating a milestone. On March 22, 2008, Far East Broadcasting Company Cambodia will be hosting its third marriage and parenting seminar to celebrate six years of Family FM, FEBCambodia's local Christian station.

Previous marriage seminars were offered in Phnom Penh, but this year's celebration unfolds in Takeo Province, a two-hour drive from the capital, to help couples who rarely have access to such teaching. About 200 Khmer people are expected.

Both Christians and non-Christians are invited to attend. In addition to marriage and family counseling, an inspirational message will be offered to point people to the Christian faith. Following the seminar, radios will be distributed, to encourage those in attendance to tune into Family FM's 14 hours of programming a day.

Major strides have been made in recent years to rebuild Cambodia, a nation decimated by Pol Pot's 1975-1979 bloody regime that destroyed more than 25-percent of the population. Those who fled before his takeover were fortunate, including Samoeun Intal, who escaped to the Philippines. Later, she joined FEBC in Manila, where she helped produce culturally-relevant, evangelistic shortwave programs for the Cambodian people.

In 1993, the Cambodian government allowed national programmers to establish an FEBC office and studio in the capital of Phnom Penh, and Samoeun and her family returned to her native country.

"The family unit was so badly damaged [by Pol Pot's regime]," Samoeun explains, "that we're still working to rebuild lives 30 years later. The emotional and physical needs of Cambodians are still very great. We minister to people through our broadcasts, seminars, prayer crusades, medical outreach, and radio distribution."

In March 2002, FEBCambodia introduced its first local station, Family-FM. Daytime programming on Family-FM is pre-evangelistic with light Christian content. The radio programs serve the community by providing news updates and educational programs for various audiences. Evening broadcasts aid the growth of believers through Bible studies and other programs.

Radio has recently been cited as Cambodia's most effective means of communication, and the staff of FEBCambodia labor to offer many hours of programming to share the love and hope found in Christ.

As one listener recently wrote, "Before I accepted Christ as my Savior, my life was terrible. As a soldier I wasn't afraid of anyone. I treated others badly. But when I believed in God, I became a new person...gentle, humble, and obedient, especially to my parents. In turn, they treated me with respect and compassion. Listening to FEBC's Family FM broadcasts is so good for me, as well as others in my village. My family has become more peaceful and grateful to be servants of God. Thank you, FEBC, for helping change my heart."

Please pray that many hearts will be open to the marriage and family counseling, as well as the Good News of Christ shared during this outreach.

On a mission to Cambodia

July 4, 2007
By Bettina Adragna
badragna@selmaenterprise.com
The Kingsburg Recorder (Kingsburg, California, USA)

The Cambodian children didn't know how to use crayons. The kids from Kingsburg had never heard of, let alone eaten, rambutan fruit.

Both cultures came together when a group of seven youth and four leaders from Kingsburg Community Church went to Cambodia from June 8-20 to minister to kids in Cambodia. The group ministered to Cambodian children with fun, games and a retelling of the Christian creation story. The trip was as much a learning experience for them as for the kids.

"It was a big cultural shock, just to see the poverty and how they lived," said junior Ben Ezaki.

Youth minister Kerry Pickrell said this was one purpose for the trip.

"We're taking kids to kind of see what it's like to be a missionary in a third world country, and sort of open their eyes to what God is doing outside of Kingsburg," he said. "It was kind of a cultural awakening, and a broadening of a world view."

Junior Rena Bissett said, "It was like nothing I expected. It was so different than how it is here."

The group remembered going to a restaurant where it was normal to throw napkins down on the floor when they were done. At one place, the servers took food from other customers to feed the church group.

"They treated us like royalty there," said Ezaki.

Many restaurants had Western-style food, but it didn't taste the same to them. When they stuck to the more regional cuisine, they ate coconut curry, white rice, chicken, and lots of fruit and vegetables, such as mango, pineapple and rambutan.

Religion was paramount to the trip, both theirs and the Cambodians'. The group visited three Buddhist temples, including the Angkor Wat. Despite being an old and famous temple, it was also known as one of worst preserved wonders of the world. Ezaki observed that the rules were different there.

"In America, if we had something like that, it would be all sealed up and roped off," he said. There, children played and people worshipped with incense and statues.

The city, while more modern than other parts of the country, still surprised them with its traffic rules and the knowledge of its inhabitants. When they told merchant children where they were from, the merchant children then spouted off the capital and population of California. Most of the children who could afford school were at least bilingual.

The village held even greater surprises for the Kingsburg natives.

"It's really something right out of National Geographic," said Ezaki.

Senior Miriam Mahfoud remembered when they asked the Cambodian children if they had ever heard of Jesus, and no one raised their hand.

"That was really, really big for me," said Mahfoud. "That just really broke my heart."

Bissett also was shocked, coming from a place where there are Christian churches everywhere.

"Here [in Kingsburg], it seems like everyone has a chance to be a follower of Jesus," she said. "It was a really good feeling to be able to share that with them."

They also saw a large Cambodian church started by another missionary group. It was run by Cambodian people, who had three services, three choirs and 800 congregants. They were building a new facility to accommodate a thousand people.

"It was really good to see what God is doing in Cambodia," said Mahfoud.

She wants to go on more trips like this one, even if she's not sure about being a full-time missionary like the Brad and Kristy Johnson, who hosted the group for part of the trip.

"You can see how something so small can impact someone," said Mahfoud.

The experience changed her point of view about people in need close to home, she said.

"We can share here daily with people," Mahfoud said. "It makes you think about who you minister to. You don't have to go far away to spread the word of Jesus."

The excursion cost $2,000 per person, and was paid for by fundraisers and support letters. Some people gave $500 for hard labor like scraping paint, which was split among the group.

Pickrell said he was impressed by the group's ability to adapt.

"It wasn't an easy trip, but they did a great job," he said.