We’re aware of three organizations working in prisons in Cambodia. Two of the three – Peace Bridges and Khmer Vulnerability Aid Organization – are already current MCC partners, Prison Fellowship Cambodia is the other. I’ve been wanting to connect with Prison Fellowship to see if we could work towards a partnership with them too but…
Tag: Church
Visiting Bokor Mountain during Rainy Season
Last month we were in Kampot for a teambuilding retreat and, afterwards, our family decided to drive up into Preah Monivong Bokor National Park to see how things had changed since I was last there (in 2007, I think?). Bokor is a mountain near the coast and marks the southeastern end of the Cardamom mountain…
Reblog: Finding My Seat at the Table
I wanted to share a blog post by Kiron Mateti that was posted by Mennonite Church USA. Kiron is a member of Plains Mennonite Church and his wife, Rachel, actually went to the same Christian school as my youngest brother Tim for awhile. I love how he writes about going from multicultural to intercultural. It’s…
How many Christians are in Cambodia?
As part of their horrific year zero policies the Khmer Rouge regime banned all religious practice in Cambodia and persecuted the local Christian Church almost to extinction. Buddhist institutions were allowed to reform soon after the regime was driven from power but Christianity remained illegal throughout the 1980s and the few Cambodian Christian believers who…
Home Leave 2022
Next month we will finally be on our long delayed first home leave. We will be spending June in Pennsylvania/New Jersey, United States and July in Saskatchewan, Canada. Home leave is not purely a time of respite and reconnection, we will still have some meetings and work to do, but we are looking forward to…
Passover at International Christian Fellowship
As the COVID-19 situation in Cambodia has improved we’ve been able to start attending in-person church again and have started attending the English language International Christian Fellowship. Before COVID-19 broke out we were attending Khmer language churches and we plan to get back to that as well, fortunately ICF meets in the afternoons so that…
Myanmar: Give the LORD no rest
The situation in Myanmar is getting worse. Now the power cuts are extreme and people are surviving without electricity most of the time, setting alarms for when the electricity comes on so they can quickly cook their food and charge their phones. Food and basic commodities are more expensive. And Omicron is blazing through the…
Book Review: Cry of the Gecko
Our SALT participant, Andy, who left for home last month left me a copy of Brian Maher’s 2012 book Cry of the Gecko. It’s an accounting of Christian Mission in Cambodia and documents a lot of precious history that would easily be lost otherwise. MCC is mentioned more than a few times (including a recounting…
Sundays during COVID-19
It’s 7:15 on Sunday. We’ve been up for a few hours already, though we had a lazy snuggle with the girls in the pre-dawn light. The plants are watered, laundry put away, compost turned, breakfast cooked and eaten and girls dressed. I’m preparing to wash the floors before our isolation pod arrives for coffee cake…
Kampuchea Testimony to the Power of Life
In December 2019, Fred Kauffman suddenly passed away from a heart attack. We wanted to do something to commemorate Fred and, as I went through his writings, I thought that Testimony to the Power of Life held a powerful message for Easter 2020 – which is the 30th Anniversary of Christianity being legalized in Cambodia….