It’s pretty tough to get on the internet for long periods of time here in Pnomh Penh. Morning have been early and schedule has been pretty full. But here I am updating once again on the home stretch of my trip.
Cambodia is a dark place right now. Although there has been economic improvement since the country joined the World Trade Organization, the counntry is still feeling the effects from the genocide committed by the Pol Pot Regime in the mid 70′s.
Spiritually, there is a lot of confusion here. Bhuddism is the primary religion here, but the people are Bhuddist that believe in many gods! Many of gods they believe in cross over into Hindu gods and other traditional Gods. Getting people to say they believe in Jesus is fairly easy actually. What’s difficult is to have them believe that Jesus is the only One, True, Living God.
Much of the country is still in great poverty with only 4 major cities having reliable electricity, road systems, water systems, and other basic utilities. Even in Phnom Penh there are electricity shortages and imcomplete sewer systems. People are hungry. A vast majority of the time, people associate with Christians because of what they can get from them. As many missionaries and short term teams bring in resources like food and medicine, people are simply drawn to meet their basic needs.
I’ll be honest here and say that I haven’t seen the sufficiency of God’s grace in people who claim to be Christians. It does lead me to wonder how much darkenss there has to be and how infertal the soil has to be here for the Gospel of Christ not to be completely received with joy. At what point are missionaries trying to “sell Jesus” by handing out food and medicine?
Hope isn’t all lost and I’ll blog about that tomorrow. I saw hope in a place where people say that there’s little hope. It was at an orphanage called the Center of Peace.
We had the opportunity to go and worship with the children at a local village just outside of Phnom Penh. The local missionary we are working with has established three locations where he has service with the children. To get to the village we had to cross two major rivers that come from the north that go through Phnom Penh. We traveled north east of the city for about 30min by van on dirt roads most of the way.
I did have the privilege of preaching to these kids and it was certainly a humbling experience! Preaching to kids always reminds me of how complicated I’ve made the Gospel of Christ and how difficult my own language is. The culture in the US almost seems to prompt us to use great organized and well constructed messages rather than communicating a simple message. Still exploring these thoughts…
Cambodia is among the poorest countries in Asia filled with a devastated history of deception, injustice, abuse of powers, and corruption. But now the country is on a rise. The condition within the city is drastically improving. While economic conditions are improving, the spiritual condition is grim. Much of the country is dominated by Hinduism with a country’s God as a 5-headed Cobra. It’s a country in spiritual bondage.
We started in Atlanta, 13 or so hours to Tokyo, then 6 hours to Bangkok…now waiting here for about 5 hours to get on a plane to Phnom Penh, Cambodia!
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