AIDS

My first Sunday.
We left the house at 8:15 had a prayer meeting before church! I led the worship with such profuse sweating everyone thought I was crying. It was so bad I did get quite emotional…even with 3 fans pointed straight at me.
Steve preached on the Holy Spirit and touched on some gifts. It’s very hard having to stop after every sentence to wait for the translation and I think there are some people who disagreed with what he said even though he backed it up biblically. I thought it was good.

This afternoon we had TLC which I thought stood for tender loving care! It actually stands for ‘taking a look at Christianity’ it is essentially an alpha course. Steve did the lesson on King Saul and discussed about faithfulness. One major problem is the women think it is ok for their husband to be faithful for 364 days of the year then visit a prostitute one day a year. Their whole understanding is immoral. But the girls are really nice and although they are not Christians they come to all the meetings and help Steve translate songs and sermons which is great. Sopiri is one Khmer student; she is 22 and speaks very good English. Midge says she is very clever so she thinks a lot about God. They know if she makes a commitment it is genuine because she has thought everything through and asked a lot of hard questions.

There is a woman from the village who visited the church today. She had a bible and was clinging on to every word. Her husband visited a prostitute and contracted aids then passed it on to her and their child. Steve and midge prayed for her and really want to see her healed. A few months ago they had some people in the village get healed and the church boomed as a result with many people all wanting Steve to pray for their children. Despite this because of a lack of manpower, doing weekly evangelism into the village has become impossible.

There is a lady in the church called Emily who reminds me a lot of my aunt Trisha. Nice lady. She works for YWAM training Khmer to become primary school teachers. They do not work under the name YWAM here, I’m not sure why.

Glynn and Tori a couple in the church have lived here for 18 months they work for SAO another mission organisation in the city. They have two of their own children then they have adopted 4 Khmer children and have recently had Heidi a British girl come over from Leister in the UK to help them for 6 months. Heidi plays the drums apparently…

In total the church is 50% adult 50% children.
Maybe only 1/5 Khmer.

Anyway…food time

FYI… the food here is totally amazing. It’s like being at the fortune inn every night!
God bless Midge!

Peace out.
Ben.