Killing Fields, Living Fields - Faith in Cambodia

On my birthday, almost a couple months ago, I was given a book - Killing Fields, Living Fields by Don Cormack. I've been meaning to read this book since becoming a Christian and hearing about it, but have never gotten around to getting a copy. So, with this gift, I was encouraged to learn more about 2 parts of me - Christ and Cambodia.

I have just finished Chapter 7, the last chapter of Part I which looks at the history of the Cambodian church between 1923-1975. Which means that I'm up to the years of the Khmer Rouge; in fact the next chapter is entitled 'The 17th April, 1975'; the day that the Khmer Rouge defeated the Cambodian government forces and entered the capital city of Phnom Penh. The new government renamed the country the Democratic Kampuchea, and Pol Pot became its premier. It was also the day that the Khmer Rouge soldiers ordered everybody to leave Phnom Penh and to take nothing with them as they would be returning very soon. But as the days passed, the two million uprooted inhabitants of the capital realized that they wouldn't be returning and for four years, Phnom Penh became a desolate city except for torture centres like S-21 and the few Khmer Rouge elite that lived there.


That's the historical information that I have grown up hearing about. My mother remembers the day that they were asked to leave Phnom Penh, under false promises of an almost immediate return. She was almost  9 years old. When I received the book I was a bit.. scared I guess, about what I might read about. Already there have been tears but also real encouragements and challenges from the character of the people that have been written about. I was going to write about the whole of Part I in this post but I think that I will try and write reflections on each chapter. So I will post this for now and hopefully this will be followed with more posts on the book. 

Last Minty Newsletter!

The last newsletter of the year! You can read it here.
I can't say this enough - it's been an amazing year of growth in God's grace!

My Minty Year

Each Mintern was asked to do a presentation reflecting on how Jesus has stretched us and grown us this year. Here's mine :)

Sorry about the quality (Youtube removed the audio) but you can watch it if you're on facebook here!

Latest News

Sorry for the non-existent updates! For my latest newsletter go here :)

Privileged

It’s about exam time for most of the students around NZ. This gave the Minterns an opportunity to travel to Papamoa (Bay of Plenty) for our second training week – Minty2. Three Minterns (Phil, Greg and Elaine) and a supervisor (Gina) drove about 8 hours from Wellington, Nathan and Mothy flew up to Tauranga from Lincoln and Sarah and I were driven by Andy and Jane from Auckland to 46 Dickson Road.

It was a great 5 days spent with fellow Minterns. I really enjoyed the sessions that we had. Val’s session challenged us to incorporate what we do in our everyday lives with the Gospel, and to think about the bigger questions that could link the Gospel with shopping, cooking, working. It made us think about intentionally living our lives within the Gospel outline – effectively living an undivided life. Ben’s session the following day was a great follow on of this with at least 40 ways that we should communicate the Gospel. We also spent some time prioritising and praying for the semester ahead, and the last half of Minty! The Minterns led Bible study in Nahum and Jonah every morning and on Wednesday we presented our evangelistic talks, which all went quite well. Our resident chef was Andy, who cooked up a feast for us at every meal time! I can’t say that we weren’t amply fed with delicious food and fresh bread rolls...MMMMM....

I really loved spending time with the 5 other Minterns. It was encouraging to hear stories of their work on the different campuses in Wellington and Lincoln, and it was helpful to talk through struggles that we shared. They really are a great bunch and I feel privileged to be journeying with them this year.

Also extremely encouraging is the support that I have been receiving. It’s encouraging to have people pray for me and it’s encouraging to know that God is listening. Psalm 117:2 - “For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever.” The Lord’s love is amazing and my faithfulness in return is a small ask. What a privilege it is to spend this year immersed in ministry training and for me to be doing something of God’s work every day for His glory. Thank you SO MUCH to my supporters (that’s you if you’re reading this!) and a big thank you to “Anonymous” who appeared on my Minty Support Break-down this month.

Minty is based on Psalm 92:12-15:
The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
planted in the house of the LORD, they will flourish in the courts of our God.
They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green,
proclaiming, "The LORD is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him."

This year, for me, is the beginning of a fresh and green life. Halfway through already and I’m praying that I will still bear fruit in old age :)

Long-needed update!

So it's been about an age since I last blogged (actually about 3 weeks but there's been so much going on!). I will try to update without writing another 2000 words (Just emailed through my assignment!).

Let's see...
Last time I wrote was a day before Northern Region Camp. This was a camp which ran from 14-17 April at Willow Park Christian Camp at Eastern Beach. We had an attendance of about 75 students from MIT, AUT, AU, Massey and UNITEC. Nigel Pollock - National Director of TSCF did the key talks. The theme of the camp was "Above the Average Joe" - looking at the life of Joseph. Great talks about God's sovereignty and God using us, living in a different culture and being in the world and not of it. Sarah and I helped Jane with one of the seminars - a body image one for the girls. We've been asked to do this again for Mid-year conference and are currently talking about how we can improve on it. Also we will have 90 minutes at Mid-year as opposed to 60mins at NRC. The other seminar was taken by Jodi - who was visiting from the sister movement in Australia, AFES. Sarah and I were priveleged enough to stay in "staff quarters" which meant that we got to share a cabin with Jodi and Gillian - who had just arrived back in NZ from Scotland a couple days before.

Laura and Elena - the amazing organisers of the camp - with the arrival of the Pollocks and Jodi

Worship time

Crazy 8-person ping pong!

On the Friday night, we had a party for Sarah's 21st birthday! Sarah's mum and I prepared the food and we had the celebration at the 22MA flat. It was so awesome that we could all gather to celebrate Sarah's 21 years. Through the speeches it was so evident that God had been working within her throughout her years and I particularly loved it when she challenged someone in a joking way saying, "Do you have a problem with the Word?!?!"

The flat fridge

We had special visitors - 2 other Minterns from Wellington: Elaine and Greg, as well as Jenny McIvor and Bee Teng Lim and Mark Grace who had all driven up from Wellington to attend the Kiwi-made Preaching Forum which was organised by Langham Partnership. It was held at Carey Baptist College on 18 April from 9-6:30pm. It was almost like a little reunion for the TSCFers as there were many of us there! I found it interesting to see what issues preachers had and what they thought about when they prepared a sermon. I think that it's helped me to be more aware of what is being preached to me.

After that week, Auckland University were back to their usual classes while AUT had another week of holidays. This brought a well needed lull in my time on campus - which I used mostly to recover from Camp and the Preaching forum, as well as fitting in some much needed Grudem reading time.

That Wednesday I was privileged enough to be invited to dinner at 22MA with the Windsors. We had good food, good conversations and an awesome time getting to know the amazing family! I had a particularly great convo with Martin, who is studying at AU doing his BA, so that he can do a Postgrad in Developmental studies. We had a good chat about overseas mission work as well.

Then.. that Friday we had the AGM for EU and elected three new leaders! Hasini is President, Hamish is Treasurer and Kelly is our Secretary. It's been amazing to see EU being resurrected! It was pretty much non-existent at the beginning of the year and now we have about 10 regular members.

That night I had dinner with the family - Mum, Dad, Jon and Lyn. We went to the Langham's all seafood buffet. YUM!!! The dinner was to celebrate the graduation of my brother and I (2 months later!) But it was such good food - LOVE seafood!

On Saturday night we had a social event for AUTCF - just a get-together and relax night at the flat. we had about 18 people there.. and a few non-Christians. We shared good food, good convo and some fun games.

The following week AUT was back to uni so my week was back into full swing! Starting with Milo Monday and then prepping for the Bible study that week in Galatians in the AUT library. In my 3 years at AUT I hadn't actually used the library as a place of study. It was good to be there though.. cos it actually made me study and there weren't any distractions (except for Lee looking up IPL scores when he was meant to be studying also!). Tuesday we had the usual Committee meeting and then I had supervision with Jane. I then met Gillian for lunch and we had a good catch up about what had been happening since she left at the beginning of March. Then the usual Bible studies 4-6pm, Tues, Weds and Thurs. These are continuing to be so ecourarging with some new non-Christians being invited along by friends, as well as regulars who come to be fed by the Word. I'm still learning so much from leading these Bible studies, seeing the students discover Scripture for themselves leaves me questioning where I would be without Scripture and without being introduced to this way of studying the Word.

We had our first EU Exec meeting on Weds also. We spoke about vision, community, re-affiliation and the possibility of an outreach event.

On Friday we had EU bible study outside on the grass, this time without those lethal acorns as most of them had disappeared by this time of the year. You can see the picture here on Sarah's blog. We finished up the book of Jonah and will be starting on James this week. After EU, OCF had their meeting in the Chapel at 5:30. Sarah was speaking on the importance of the Word and she seemed nervous! She got through it really well and there were good interactive points where the students observed the txt themselves to find out why it was important for them to read Scripture.

This brings us to last weekend... Saturday I spent mostly doing my Minty assignment. Then went to the flat in the evening for dinner and met 2 of Elliot's friends from Singapore, Gabriel and April. We had the yummy and usual chicken rice and watched Back To the Future 2. They joined us for church the next morning and then we spent the afternoon up Mt Eden with Pizza and at Mission Bay with gelato.

Monday and today was spent mostly on study:with my duties as Mintern on the AUT campus this morning giving me a good break from study. Here's a pic of my manuscript that I did in prep for this month's assignment (My question involved me preparing a Bible study on the Trinity for a student who had become confused after meeting a Jehovah's Witness):
Oh and somewhere in there, on the Weds at 5:45am Singaporean time, my aunt and uncle had their baby boy - Bryan Ea. He's a cutie!!

Stalkerish much?

This is my desktop wallpaper at the moment:

What do you think...

Stalkerish much? :P

(No... of course not.. it's just my way of seeing Esther everyday!)