Sorry for this late Monday report. Its holiday
season here and with Cambodia at number 1 in the world with holidays, we
enjoyed another 3 days off. Totally missed Monday. Praise the Lord, some good
rain has come our way and its much cooler and nice and wet. Farmers already
started to put in their seeds and wait for more rain. For the first time in
months we sleep without sweating under a fan, Praise God. Tickets are bought
and we will leave Cambodia on 15 June and be home on 16 June till 2 August
2019. We are excited to come home to Namibia again and see our family and spend
quality time with them. We realised that we missed out so much with family over
more than 2 decades on the mission field. God is good in providing for us to go
home.
Please pray for the following people:
A dear friend and missionary here in Cambodia, Alex
McAnn is currently in Singapore. This is from Alex's timeline and is his
words - 'for those of you who are not members of my organisation or who do not
receive our newsletter, just a quite post to let you I have been diagnosed with
an auto immune disorder known as lupus. This means my immune system is
attacking my body, mainly my kidneys, my joints and possibly my bone marrow.
The only way to treat this is to quickly supress my immune system and keep it
suppressed using drug for the rest of my life. This means I will be vulnerable
to getting other illnesses so will need to take care not to hug sick people! I
hope that this condition can be managed in Cambodia so that I can continue to
live with and serve the Cambodian people. Your prayers to that end would be
much appreciated! Many thanks - Alex'
Please pray for all of us as we work out
both the short term plan and the longer term plan. Right now Alex is receiving
treatment in Singapore. We had hoped to join him for the weekend, but because
it is a holiday weekend here, there are no direct flights from Friday until
Tuesday, and those that are available with only 1 stop are 10 times the usual
price and would take 9 or more hours door to door.
Manus Olivier
, pastor in Swakopmund, need to go again for treatment for Cancer that started
to grow again in his skull. God is in full control, like he say.
Please pray for Andrea Calitz that needs to
go in for treatment on the 15th May. Pray for peace and encouragement in this
difficult time.
This bit of news is from my friend up North, Gordon
and Bee, working closely with the tribal people in Ratanakiri province. Praise
God for unity in the tribal churches.
Dear prayer supporters,
Thanks for praying for us. The Lord
really blessed at our celebration (over 2 weeks ago now). Below is forwarded a
short report sent to Cambodian national church leaders. Please continue to pray
for the unity and maturity of the body of Christ as we go on from here.
Blessings
Gordon Paterson
Celebration of every language held at
Yiak Lom Lake, Ratanakiri Province, Saturday 20 April 2019
Theme
The theme of the celebration was from
Revelation 5:9-10. "Every people, tribe and language redeemed by the blood
of the Passover Lamb to be a kingdom of priests to serve God and to reign with
Him on the earth".
Participants
We were blessed to have people joining
from every district and every ethnic group in Ratanakiri - Kreung, Tampuen,
Jarai, Kachok, Brao, Kavet, Lun, Khmer and Lao. We were also blessed by the
participation of Kuy from Preah Vihear plus Stieng from Kratie and Kavet from
Siem Pang. Altogether 12 ethnic groups (PTL!). The local police requested a
participants list. What we were able to describe on the list for them as
follows:
Total participants: 560 (or more) coming from at least
48 different churches
Participating churches from
Ratanakiri: 43 churches (43 villages
from 9 Districts and 10 ethnic groups)
Participants from Siem Pang (Stung
Treng) 3 villages (13 people,
all Kavet)
Participants from Preah Vihear 1 church (2p)
Participants from Stieng ethnic
group 4 people
(including 1 from Kratie and 3 from Vietnam)
Logistics
All the participating churches organized
food and travel for their own members. They also made extra food for the
visitors coming from far away. This was a great witness for the body of Christ
helping each other from their local resources instead of depending on funding
from outside. The police wanted to know
"Who is the organizer?" But nobody could answer the question. They
told the police "We are all local churches come together to celebrate the
death and resurrection of our God. We don't have any ringleader". So the
police were satisfied - because we already had permission in advance from the
local authorities and the Yiak Lom Lake management committee. We were blessed
that the Yiak Lom Lake management did not charge any entrance fee for all the
Christians participating. They allowed us to use their facility - a very large
hall - and allowed us to swim at the lake for free. They were surprised and
excited to see so many Christians gathered together. They have hosted Buddhist
retreats and animist gatherings in the past but they said they have never seen
so many people. The Head of the Lake Committee acknowledged the power of God.
Last year when the lake was signed over to a Chinese tourism development
investment company, the Christians prayed and within one month the deal was
reversed and the lake handed back to the local communities to manage. They can
see that this was the intervention of God in response to the prayers of his
people (His priesthood).
Content (agenda)
Each ethnic group presented songs in
their own language. There are many new songs that the Holy Spirit has been
giving to people in the different languages. It was a great encouragement to
the tribal people to see and hear their own music and language and traditional
instruments being used to worship God. They can see that their language and
culture truly have value in God's eyes. Many of them wore costumes in the cloth
representing their tribal group. One member of a human rights organization
commented that it would cost the NGO's $20,000 to organize such an event to
promote the rights and value of the indigenous minority people. But here the
Christians were mobilizing their own resources to celebrate the God who has
redeemed them and given value to them.
Before lunch, church leaders
representing every ethnic group led the whole congregation in prayer for the
nation, prayer for the unity of the body of Christ and declaration over the
land of the tribal people to be the inheritance of the Lamb for the glory of
God. We gave glory to the Lamb who has redeemed us by his blood and who has
reconciled all things in heaven and on earth to the purposes of the Father
(Colossians 1:20, Romans 8:18-23).
One of the highlights was a performance
of music played on the bamboo tubes by the Kreung artists. Everyone joined in
dancing to the sound of the gongs until after 3.00 pm. Even though the weather
was very hot everyone was enjoying themselves so much and worshipping the Lord.
We drank a lot of water and sweated a lot. During the lunch break, most people
went down to cool off in the water at the Yiak Lom Lake
Follow up
Some of the Tampuen participants were
impressed by God to return to the site of the celebration afterwards to declare
the unity and maturity of the Body of Christ in Ratanakiri from Ephesians
4:1-16. A small group of us went on Saturday 27 April to read this scripture.
We took communion together to declare the finished work of Jesus on the cross.
I will be driving to Stung Treng this weekend. Its
Gideon’s 16th birthday on the 18 May. Praise God for this boy’s life
that he have on us as a family. God has plans for this boy. Pray for him as he
will come with me to the province. We will have some special treatment in the
jungle.
Love
Rossouw-clan
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