Rural life

These are just some of the views from the church in Chhuk. It is as I have previously mentioned, the start of the rainy season which will last from May to November. The farmers are waiting for enough rain here to plant their rice crop. I noticed however that farmers in the north east of Phnom Penh have begun to plant as the paddy fields are now wet. As you see from today's pictures these ones are dry.

We started the day with feedback about how the church leader teams have got on implementing the plans they made back in November. These plans were to have a focus on sharing the good news about Jesus.

The lady in the picture above shared that she wanted to go to a particular district and had to sell a chicken to be able to buy the petrol needed for her motorbike. She got $2,5 for the bird and off she went. A quick question, how many of us rich westerners would be willing to sell something we needed ourselves to be able to go and share about Jesus with other people?

Not the exact bird but a Cambodian chicken I saw today.

The lady went to the village and did as she had planned. On her way back she was given a gift of exactly ten times the price she got for the bird, $250! It may be a coincidence but I don't think so, I think God honoured her faithfulness and took the opportunity to bless her.

We have heard a number of good stories during the feedback and otherwise. One not so good thing that we hear again and again is the churches and local communities in general loosing their young adults to the cities or to Thailand to work in the factories. It is common to see grandparents raising their grandchildren as the parents are away or working 12-14 hour shifts in the factories. I hope the Christians in Thailand start house churches where they are rather like the Early Church did when forced to flee for fear of persecution.