Whatever Lord April 2012

Talk to my friend the other day and he was just hammering us to be more open towards the new age of technology. Well I am open towards it as I just got an Iphone,given from a dear friend. Yip you read right, me, an Iphone. Well to makes things worse is the fact that I had it only for 1 night and already I had to bring it in as this thing was on Recovery Mode. Stupid machine, should have known. Well the next morning I went to the Mac shop and check things out.

While I was there, I was shocked by the new generation of young men coming in. everyone clutched their precious Iphones, Ipads or Itouch whatever. Earphones are permanently glued into the ears, how they can hear while talking to others, well, that boggles my mind. With new technology comes a real new generation. Young men here are more worried about their hair than the girls……their nails are longer than the girl’s nails……not even to talk about all the styles that sits on their heads…….

 So here I am with all the info in my brain about technology and that is what we get, o no, not for me. The Iphone is wonderful but better for the kids to play games while dad and mum can relax. I basically steal your time with all the downloading you need to do. So my friends stick to the old fashion Nokia…. These things are highly addictive, although they say it is work……..

Recently I got confronted by the fact that a local church was planted by Khmer but the building was sponsored by foreigners and a very small amount set aside for the pastor. Nothing wrong with that! The pastor was slaving it away now for lots of years but the ground is hard and need heavy equipment to tilt. Now it seems to me that the foreigners who sponsored the church are getting upset that there are not a lot of people in the church and want to get someone in that knows the job!.

Pressure on the local Khmer pastor is heavy to get people in church but what to do if people are not responding? I can even see it if I get there. When I show a movie with anything Christian in at they stand up and walk away. Just on the other hand I see a small cell group, under someone’s house, growing as there is no pressure to go to a church building. People can come and just sit down and listen without being forced to be in the church. On the other hand, no-one can claim the building for them and put their name on it and claim they planted the church. So much better.

Seems to me we moved away from planting indigenous churches and rather pour in money and build the building ourselves and let the people move there. But on the ground it does not work this way. Western mentality does not work here in Cambodia. Wonder what happened to encourage people and they build the church building by themselves-indigenous church. The problem is everywhere to see:, Western churches want to see people converted to Christ and fast, and put lots of pressure on missionaries or pastors that receive donations to produce Christians if they fail in a reasonable time, well get someone in that knows how to do it……Pray for the Khmer pastors to get more encouragement.

I had time for only one outreach and a bike ride, Grahame fell down and hurt his knee while I was struggling with Malaria at the same time, on the trip… both of us suffered till in Phnom Penh in a taxi. So the last month I was really struggling again, first to get rid of the Malaria and then to get rid of the parasites in my liver. We decide to get some fresh air and took the kids to Koh Kong at the Thailand border. We had lots of fun in the sun. I had to help my friend Grahame to move up to the North in Stung Treng. Man does I like this place, cool at night and 2 rivers to play in. I miss my friend but know that God have better plans for them right now. Gideon really enjoyed all the fish in the market and the swim in the river later. Good to see my friends so happy. May the Lord bless them in these days to come? 

We are continuing our journey, seeking the Lord for His guidance in our lives. As all of you maybe already know by now- we left Water of Life as we want to be more open for helping out in other areas. That means off course a lot of things. There are some possibilities but for now all I can say is that we will stay here in Phnom Penh till December and then decide if we want to move to the province. We want to give this a fair bit of time to talk over and for the Lord to show us His plans for us. Toinette will close the clinic at end of May, which is a very sad thing but we are not under WOL and we need to fill out another Understanding with the Dept. of Health in order to run another clinic. As for now the local NGO Joy of Cambodia wants to continue the clinic and we will see how that goes. Please pray for us for wisdom in this area.

Thank you very much for always praying and supporting us here in Cambodia. We can only marvel at all the blessings we get.

Love

Rossouw-clan