Monday night prayers 6 October 2025

 

Wow what a week this was. Anton came to visit and I had a birthday. Becoming 60 is not for the faint hearted. All I can say is that the Lord gave me grace in abundance to get here. Looking back over these last 31 years, I can just stand in wonder of what the Lord did in our lives. We invited some close friends and had a small party with too much food to eat. I am still paying the prize for all the eating this weekend and the fridge is still over flowing from all the left overs.

I started this morning with packing of some meds for our outreach this coming Friday. Anton will be with us and it is soaking wet so we are looking forward to go in again to the jungle and give people the meds they need. We know now that when its rainy season, there are lots of sicknesses roaming around. Its been a while since we visited but I am sure it will be a good one. Curtis and his crew will join us again. Please pray with us for open minds and open doors as we not just take meds but also the word of God into the jungle. Pray for safe travels and bikes to survive all the mud.

River of Life Fellowship just finished a church camp with their students. Toinette had to keep some kids that was not part of the camp, busy, doing crafts. Anton went with and show the boys how to use a Dremmel (small drill for carving) for the first time. They made some wooden coasters that was drawn out by Anton and then the students could paint them or use the Dremmel to cut it nicely. So nice to have artsy Anton with us. I am sure we will have a better report next time about all the happenings at the camp. These kids are very serious with God.

Please continue to pray for Toinette’s uncle. Oom Jan is still in the ICU after an operation a while ago. According to the reports we get, he is up and down. Please pray that his body will fight whatever is the problem. Pray for Anti Anna, Janine and Arnelle.

Thanks for always praying with us. It is just God’s grace that we can be so fortunate to have so many people praying for us. We really appreciate it.

Love

Rossouw-clan

Monday night prayers 29 September 2025

 

I am busy here at home working with all my leftover wood. I am using old wood that is with me already for 12 years or more. On the outside it looks bad, full of mud and weathered really badly, but when you put it through a saw and sand it down, the true colors come alive. When Anton was here last time, he helped to collect some of the wood that was just lying here in the rain and I started to dry them. Now we can make beautiful little cars from the nice wood and bless children wherever we go or wherever some of my friends go. I make around 100 cars at a time and then call on some friends to give it out, for free off course. The children are sooooo happy to finally get a toy.

Working with wood, that is only use to cook rice in Cambodia, is very strange to the locals. Why would you go through all those trouble to clean the wood and make something like a car from it?? Go and buy new wood or better, just go and buy a Chinese plastic toy. Well, that cost money where my wood is for free. Is that not how God works? He uses us that are weathered really badly, and make us new again. Unfortunately, we cannot do much about our outside appearances, like we do with wood, but God is working on the inside. (lots of people try) He cuts and shave and sometimes need to hammer us down as we can be so stubborn to listen. In the end you can look rough as guts but your inside is washed clean by the blood of Jesus. I met some people, like my dad use to say, that is a Rough Sketch and not an oil painting, but the most beautiful person ever. These days we are so quick to judge people and condemn them for nothing.

Last night in church we had to pray for the turmoil in the world. You do not need a university degree to know that the world is in turmoil. We need to earnestly pray for each other daily as the devil is walking around amongst us these days.

We are waiting for Anton to come this Wednesday as we need to feel like a family again. Already started to plan on some stuff we need to do. Pray for him as he is very busy to finish all his work in these 2 days. Please pray that he will get his passport, tomorrow. Cutting it a bit close.

I leave you with this verse for the week:

Just hold on to what you have until I come. Rev 2:25

Love to you all

Rossouw-clan

Monday night prayers 22 September 2025

 

Good Evening

We are still enjoying rain pretty much every day or night over here. You can reach our home by 2 roads. The one goes through a smelly, very dirty, poopy, muddy slum area. The other way is a cleaner area BUT you now need a 4x4 to get through the ”lake” that used to be the road due to the rainy season. So Twans slip and slide through the slum area every day on her motorbike and I have fun driving through the “Lake”.

Thank you for praying for the Acts Camps. Last week was the Advanced Camp for the High school kids. 24 of them attended each day.  It was a full week with lots of teaching, activities and times to bond with each other. The students and teachers slept over at the center one night. They even roasted corn and marshmallows over a “Bon Fire” – due to rain, a few hot goals on a zink sheet. The next morning everyone was up at 4am –Ready for the day, cooking rice porridge. Clearly not city kids but village kids who get up early to do chores!  Students opened up during the small groups. Quite a few shared how they have a lot of pressure at home as their parents compare them with smarter more successful siblings or neighbors. During the lesson on Emotions and how to regulate our Emotions, many shared how they don’t have someone to talk to about problems at home. On the last day students were challenged to do something practical as part of their Social Impact lesson. Most groups planned to go out and pick up garbage in the neighborhood. One group will plant a tree. Twans came home very tired each day but excited for each student’s growth and progress. Please pray that more of our High School students would join our Sunday program and come to know Jesus. It is so clear to see the difference between those who are walking with Jesus and those who don’t have peace and assurance.

 

Pchum Ben is winding down and my friend Abraham was writing this:

Please do remember our Khmer brothers and sisters during this dark few days. As we reach the final days of the festival we also know last few days are the pinnacle of the festival.  It is specifically the very last day that marks the grand finale of the ceremony and the culmination of ancestral offerings.We witnessed in this week how tough it has been when they are surrounded by families members in the villages to join in this offering of hungry ghost.

 

It is nice to have my wife at home as they got a few days off, finally she gets time to cook for her hubby again, yummy “”kossies””.Nice to eat at the table and not alone and enjoy our time together. We are waiting for Anton to be home in a week and looking forward to be a family again.

Hope that this week is a blessed week for you all.

Love

Rossouw-clan

Monday night prayers 15 September 2025

Good evening dear Family and Friends

I’ve been reading “Grace Notes”by Philip Yancy for morning devotions. This touched my heart this morning: “Ron then mentioned a prisoner in India who had returned to jail scores of times over a 21 year span. The criminal simply could not break the cycle, until he found Christ. Puzzled by his absence in court, the local magistrate visited the man’s home and asked what had happened. “For the 1^st time in my life, someone forgave me,” the ex-prisoner answered.

 Thank you for praying for the The Acts program. We are conducting Camps during the school holidays. Last week it was for the Primary students and early secondary and this week is for the secondary and high school students. The theme of the camp is "Love yourself and others". The students enjoy all the different activities and open up during small groups. Today the lessons focused on Self Awareness. Many students share how they are compared to other better achievers in the family and feel like they are not good enough. They also share that they don't have confidence in school to share their ideas or speak up as others bully them.  The topics for the rest of the week are emotional intelligence, empathy, active listening, social responsibility and impact. Please pray that this will be a time of encouragement and growth for our students.

 

Pchum Ben is a public holiday in Cambodia that follows the period called “Vassa,” a kind of “Buddhist Lent,” and has been kept with great devotion by the Khmer people for longer than anyone can remember.

In essence, Pchum Ben is a time to remember, venerate, and present food offerings to one’s deceased relatives. Ancestors are honoured going back as far as seven generations, and offerings are also brought for those without living descendants or in place of those who could not attend the ceremonies. Celebrants rise early in the morning to cook rice balls and other food items, which they bring to the monks at temples and pagodas. The monks chant suttas (Buddhist scriptures) all night without sleeping, then conduct the colourful and complex food offering ceremonies. Some Khmer give the food to the priests, while others leave it at pagodas for their deceased relatives to eat or cast it into a field for them to find. The first fourteen days see many offerings made, but it is the final, fifteenth day, that is the grand culmination of the whole period.

Pchum Ben is also the time when the “gates of hell” are supposed to open and let out those imprisoned there to travel to the land of the living to receive food from their relatives. Some are let out only temporarily, while others are thought to gain permanent relief. Offerers believe they receive merits by helping the dead and blessings from them but curses if they fail in their familial duty.

Cambodians all over the country will travel to their home provinces for Pchum Ben, and there are services in many towns and villages. Most ceremonies involve processions around temples and crowds that wait outside with lit incense in hand as the monks perform rituals inside. There are also symbolic events where five mounds of sand or rice are formed and decorated in an effort to point to Mount Meru, where various Buddhist gods are thought to reside.

https://publicholidays.asia/cambodia/pchum-ben/

As you can see this is a very significant festival in Cambodia and for Cambodian Christians it can be a very hard time as they need to partake in festivities as this is big tradition. Pray for safety on the roads as so many people will travel this time.

Thank you for praying with us.

Love

Rossouw-clan

Monday night prayers 8 September 2025

 

Good evening all your beautiful people

Writing here from a very wet Siem Reap as it rains almost every day, nice weather for a dry Southern Namibian. We decided to wait out the rain a bit as the roads into the jungle is really sloppy, but that is not an excuse. I never thought I will say this but being older comes the wisdom quite handy. Pchum Ben (Hungry Ghost Festival) is approaching fast and that is not good to be away from home this time. It is still 2 weeks till it starts but people are already gearing up to get to the temples and bring offerings. I will write more about this next week.

It was Anton’s 20^th birthday, yesterday. So sad we could not be with him but thanks to God that he had a wonderful day with his local church in Malaysia. His fellow friends in church had a small party for him with cake and then they went out eating. So glad that God provided a bunch of likeminded people to guard over our little boy/man.

It was a bit of a painful day for us as we contemplating about our boys and was longing for Gideon as well. Sundays always got that feeling here in the far East.

Toinette is very busy now as they have camps for the children as it is school holidays here in Cambodia. This week they have one for the small children and next week for the bigger ones. Please pray for the staff as they need to work a bit harder these days, keeping the children busy.

Pray for my friend Abraham as he is trying to bring a lady with an open Cancer wound to the local hospital. Pray for understanding here at the hospital and that they can be helped here in Siem Reap and no need to go to Phnom Pehn. The people are really poor and cannot go to Phnom Pehn. Sometimes we just need to hold some one’s hand and lead them in the right direction. They just need some encouragement making a big decision like this. Most of the times people opt not to go to the hospital because of lack of money. We see that the local hospital can help them when they are poor and even its not the best it is better than nothing. The hospital got upgraded a while ago and is in great shape.

Not much news but thanks for keeping us in prayer.

Love

Rossouw-clan

 

Monday night prayers 1 September 2025

 

Wow another Monday again, not sure you experience this as well but the year is racing ahead to the end.  

This Friday we all went down to Baray Lake. It was raining heavenly the night before and I was just praying that it will stop for a little while so we can just get the people baptized and then the heaven can open up again. 4 More students and 2 adults were baptized. The whole FGC community link family and River of Life church gathered together to celebrate this very special time. Please pray for these new believers to grow in their faith and love for Jesus. Continue to pray for the Khmer staff who guides and disciples them.

It has been busy with 3 teams visiting from Malaysia and the USA. Yes, it gets busy but they leave us encouraged and built up to continue the work. As believers we truly have a family across borders and continents.

Continue to pray for the problems on the border with Thailand. The newest is that some people brought their Sewerage trucks from the Thailand side in order to come and spray the Cambodians with sewerage. Such petty little things that makes locals unhappy. The Thai soldiers put their wires into Cambodian side and occupy some of the Cambodian houses which leads to confrontation between the local people and the soldiers. Pray that this nonsense will stop and that there will be real peace.

Dim is still visiting the people in Rum Jopon in spite of serious raining this time of the year. Pray that he will not lose heart as he needs to work his land as well as reach out to several churches and help people to learn more about God. Being a farmer as well as pastor can be a hard work.

Pray for Anton as he gets confronted with lots of spiritual differences that he is not use too. Being a Christian in a dominant M-country got its challenges. Pray that he will stand firm in his faith and reach out to some of his Christian friends when things are tuff.

Thanks once again for praying with us.

God Bless

Rossouw-clan

 

Monday night prayers 25 August 2025

 We are living really in die Hands of the Living God. We are blessed beyond measures. Listening to Toinette preaching yesterday, makes me calm down and know that this little church is doing the right thing. Listening to their worship that is truly a beautiful noise for the Lord, hahaha, but done with pure passion, let you know that we cannot have everything perfect and no mistakes, but who cares?? For God, every bit of worship is beautiful, even if it’s just noise in other people’s ears. Like Twans says: ”The worship in ROL seems so much better than anywhere else.””

The church is small in members but it’s filled with the Love of Jesus Christ. Seeing the students enjoying the worship and listening to Toinette preaching, you cannot but feel blessed. Pray for ROL as they are gearing up this Friday to baptize 7 more students. This is a big step for all of them as they will be known by their fruits from now on. Pray in advance for these guys as they need to go out and make a difference.

This is also a very busy time for the NGO as many teams will visit over this time. Lots of people to keep busy but also to learn from others and encourage by others. Pray for these teams that will visit to have teachable spirit and for them to fit in quickly. Pray for the staff as they will be stretch a bit.

 

Continue to pray for peace between Thailand and Cambodia. For now, it’s quite on the border but the potential to flare up is very high. Pray that they can solve this issue for good due to maps being drawn by foreign powers in the past.

This is a short one tonight but keep praying for us as a family.

Love

Rossouw-clan