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CAMBODIA
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Update -- July 2007Dear Friends and Family, The wettest June I remember since coming to Cambodia is behind us. PTL! It made it a great month for baptisms, lousy for construction. http://www.missionreports.com/cambodia%5Fgeneral%5Fjun07 We have little severe weather in Cambodia but did manage to lose a roof to high winds. http://www.missionreports.com/borey%5Fbo%5Fdamage The local pastors took up an offering and had the roof repaired before we even knew about it. Those are the problems I love; solved before they get to me! True or false? “Poverty produces crime and corruption’’. Guess who are some of the biggest “gang bangers” in Cambodia? None other than the sons of the multi-millionaire generals and officials leading the country (The Fat Rats). If poverty is the cause of depravity, these guys should be saints! It’s not that poverty can’t produce a ‘need to steal to survive mentality’; it’s just that I don’t believe it is the sole, or even the primary, cause of moral decay. These, the children of the newly rich, in an era of increasing prosperity, are headed in the wrong direction. Look at the US. The standard of living has never been higher, yet more and more children need medication and psychological help in order to cope with depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, etc. Why? One report I read described the problem as a ‘deficit of connectedness’. TV, video games, and the internet have reduced our physical connection to one another, and modern “political correctness” has down played any need for any religious belief. So, kids are turning to gangs for a sense of community and value and drugs to fill a spiritual void. Why do I bring this up? Well………... “What goes around comes around!” “Institutional orphanages” are back under attack by the United Nations, and in many cases, justifiably so, but what gripes me is; we always seem to get thrown into the mix. The good news is that the U.N. got their agenda for us nixed after a recent inspection visit of our facilities from the Ministry of Social Affairs validated our system. After almost 9 years of operation, the real proof is found in the product produced; solid, well trained, God loving, young adults entering their society in productive roles. What we, F.C.O.P. (Foursquare Children of Promise) have are not the sprawling, dingy, employee run, isolated, and restrictive incarceration centers that people envision upon the mention of “Institution”. F.C.O.P. has 100 locally constructed church/homes, overseen by a called pastor, cared for mostly by widows at a ratio of five orphans per one care giver. www.missionreports.com/cambodia We always start with a church, and when the church votes to do something about the homeless kids in their district, we help with the home. The entire church takes on the responsibility of their care, and the orphans physically live in a specially designed church building. We don’t do foreign adoptions. Why would we want to export our most valuable commodity? We are for adoption, just not our kids! I’ll let Craig Muller explain why in a second. The government reports that there are now 627,000 orphans in Cambodia, a country of 12 million. The new program championed by UNICEF is for “foster homes”, but get this, I quote the current issue of the Phnom Penh Post: “The government’s new policy includes foster care housing projects where no more than 15 children live together under staff care”. Our homes average around 35 kids and they would have seven full time caregivers that actually live, sleep and eat with them, along with a pastor, and a church full of people watching over them. Our model really evolved through an extended period of earnest prayer on my part, I prayed that God would enable the Church to effectively demonstrate the love of Christ to the Cambodian people. Then came an appeal from Prime Minister Hun Sen in 1999 that N.G.O.’s (non-government organizations) do something to help solve the orphan crisis. About the same time I reluctantly accepted the care of some abandoned kids left on the doorstep of one of our churches. That number soon grew to 40, and now we approach 4000. We had no money for staff so, the only people we could afford were the homeless widows that offered to work for free, if we’d feed them. Finally, after we had a couple of operating models, we received a visit form Craig Muller as a board member of one of our supporting partners, Children of Promise, before he went on to found Warm Blankets Orphan Care International. www.warmblankets.org Craig says, “I was part of the non-institutionalization advocates in the beginning with Children of Promise US. Then I took a look at the results on the long term. Most programs always lean toward a foster care model. 80% of the young people coming out of the US foster care system are homeless within the first year of majority mainstreaming. Whoops! I realized that the argument for non-institutionalism is actually headed by the adoption industry. I believe the Holy Spirit has influenced our home model through these arguments, but the answer is not to try to de-institutionalize orphans … The answer is to work toward the institution that God gave us: The institution of the family. The need for revenue has turned fine group homes into “orphanages” over night. Once they do one adoption, the kids left behind begin to believe they will be “sold” too. The trust and bonding of God’s institution of the family are gone forever. The kids left behind are no longer having the assurance that a family gives them. The one adoption makes their home an orphanage. Infant and toddler adoption aside, the Church Orphan Home has been the most effective model we have ever worked with. The long term outcomes are so heartwarming compared to adoption based homes that it must “make the widows heart sing” Not all our kids are orphans, around 30% are abandoned or in the “unknown category” Here is an example: http://www.missionreports.com/children%5Frescued We actually have quite a few rescued kids in our homes only we never mention any that have come out of physical or sexual abuse for their protection, physically and emotionally. We’re well drillers! Only, being from hot Cambodia, our rear ends are not cold. (You’ll probably need to be from the northern latitudes to get that joke.) We have dozens of homes that need deeper wells and received a grant from the Foursquare Foundation to help to drill them. We planned to hire it done, but the well drillers are very independent, and hard to obtain in some locations. Food for the Hungry had one rig that is capable of going over 100 meters deep. (330 feet) They are moving their emphasis to another region of the country and decided to sell the drill. We bought it and are equipping it with a stronger pump for deeper drilling and rebuilding the worn parts. The big truck is now ours for $6000. http://www.missionreports.com/well%5Fdrill In addition to drilling the wells we will also be testing the water for arsenic and bacteria. Thanks to Warm Blankets and Bob and Crystal Hollandsworth for making it possible. Another new development has been our eye clinic. Tabea Schaller, Swiss optician, has found that we really were “the lame (me, I still walk funny after my operation) leading the blind” (many of our pastors). She began in May and is swamped at every location, having to turn away hundreds of people. This is definitely a need that must find some funding. http://www.missionreports.com/orphan%5Feyes We are grateful to Warm Blankets for giving us a great start! Tractors galore! We have about eight ready to sell, twelve more in the water, and a good thirty more in the US waiting for a ride. Paul Mok, one of our Cham Chao church elders, instructs and leads about 25 orphan boys in learning the mechanical skills to make the 40+ year old machines look and run like new. With two seasons behind us Paul Mok is confident he has worked out the “kinks” and is now churning them out at about two per month. The orphans get paid a decent wage, learn a skill, and earn about $3,000 - $4,000 per tractor, to support the orphan ministry, when they are sold. http://www.missionreports.com/tractor%5Frebuilding More than 400 people came to Christ and hundreds more were treated at a medical mission to the remote village of Kumru. The team made up of volunteers from Water of Life Church from Fontana, California included our youngest daughter, Hannah, who actually attends Water of Life while she studies at Life Pacific College. She’s back with us for the summer. http://www.missionreports.com/kumru%5Fmedical%5Fjun07 Hope they don’t mind us stealing their name for our well drilling operation! Many of you don’t know that Pastor Peter, our national church president, is a “two timer”. He is also Major Petros Ounchhayvra in the Cambodian Military Police Reserve. The only non-general rank officer selected from a group representing 16 countries, Peter accompanied the only Cambodian Christian General to South Korea for a special one week training session in how to reach the military for Christ. Since Peter led such a large church group he was asked, “What would you like to see in Korea?” Peter never hesitated, “Prayer Mountain!” So, off he went on a special trip to the heart of the largest church in the world, Full Gospel Church. http://www.missionreports.com/meo%5Fprogram%5Fkorea/ Just arrived yesterday! Josh Ferguson, from the state of Washington, U.S.A. He is the Son of former District Supervisor Tom Ferguson. That’s about all I know because he’s already out in the field with a team.
That’ll do for this month. Be
blessed!
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