One More Day!

Well today was exciting and uplifting to our team. We ate breakfast at 645 and then were off to Fellowship Word of Life Church in Phnom Penh at the orphanage. There were about 60 in attendance there this morning. Leroy gave a personal word of encouragement and did a fantastic job! I led the congregation in a worship song "Lord I Lift Your Name on High". Then I preached a sermon they wanted a 45minute so that's what they got (including the interpreter it was a little longer). I began the sermon with the following statements (only I said them in Khmer - and I don't know if they were being nice but they said that my Khmer was very clear and good so I am happy about that)...

Good morning everyone!
How are you all doing?
May God bless all of you!
You are all my friends!

My name is Pastor Dave
I love Jesus and Jesus loves you!
I love you all!
I love Cambodia and I love Sow Mow (a very yummy fruit here, they all laughed at this)!
Thank you!

After that the sermon was based on the stories in the gospels of the harvest and Paul's instructions on one body and many parts. The service ended with a time of prayer where the whole team prayed for each one by the laying on of hands (for those who wanted to hear God's calling for their lives). Most of the church came forward for prayer.

Then we hung out with the children at the orphanage for a while. After which we ate lunch and went to the Resettlement Area (the area of Phnom Penh called the slums where there is extreme poverty, malnutriti0n and statelessness. Statelessness refers to people with no identity, the government calls these people nonpersons. The church that we ministered at (Freedom Church) in this area was mostly full of stateless persons. Since they are stateless they cannot receive any public funding a.k.a. gov't assistance.

In this service Leroy gave personal word of encouragement, sang Lord I Lift and Jesus Loves Me and I preached the same message as I did earlier with just a few changes to adapt to this crowd. After church service we passed out the rice and oil to 40 families. They picked this up at the church. The really cool thing is this... During the offering the pastor's wife told us (was translated) that last week many people from the church came up for prayer and asked for prayer that God would provide them rice because they ran out of money to purchase rice. Then they find out this week that our team purchased rice and oil (500USD) for them and they thank God that He heard their prayer and sent this rice and oil from heaven above. I also found out in a later conversation that August and September many people do not have much rice because it is the end of the year before the harvest of rice is brought in. WOW! What a blessing to know that a measly 500USD could make such an impact on people's lives. Their faces showed appreciation and for each one we had the chance to greet them, tell them God bless you and put a hand on their shoulder to express our love to them!

During the service most of the team was running the children's program for Sunday school. They did a great job and had a lot of fun!After we left the Resettlement Area we ate dinner with Pastor Sinai, his wife Somalay and their three children (Rebekah, Deborah and Angela) as well as the last dinner with our tour guide and van driver (and new found friend) Arun, Boeurn and Sokholm. We have really grown close with Arun, Sokholm, Boeurn and Sothea this trip and have laughed a lot together!

After dinner was back to the hotel to pack up our bags for tomorrow we check out and tomorrow night we fly out at 11 pm local time. We will land in Pittsburgh at 444pm EST so please be praying for safe travels. We are not looking forward to the flying home part because it will be exhausting. We cannot wait to share some stories, video and photos from our trip on Sunday August 16th so please make every effort to be there!

Thank you for following our blog, we will post again most likely!!