On our last night in Phnom Penh..

Hallelujah from Cambodia on our last night.

Greetings, brothers and sisters, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for your faithful prayers.

Yes. Indeed there is a sense of unspeakable evil and hopelessness in many parts of Cambodia. On our first day we walked through the killing field. Boeurn, director of New Hope for Orphans, told us some of his personal stories as we stood next to the tree against which the Khmer Rouge soldiers bashed countless infants to their death. Later we walked through the halls of Toul Sleng prison where tens of thousands of people were imprisoned, tortured and torn into pieces. As I found out later, of the 20,000 people imprisoned there during Khmer Rouge era, only 7 survived.

A few days later, we walked through a small town about 11 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh called Sway Pak. This is where children from 5 to 14 years of age are forced into sex work. The majority of the kids have been sold by their own parents.

Why? How?

These words echoed through our hearts the remainder of the trip.

But God’s Grace cannot be held down regardless of the magnitude of this evil. God’s light will shine through any darkness. I say this with conviction that God’s heart is breaking for Cambodia and his work has begun on this land. We witnessed an old child brothel that has been converted to a church and we worshipped the Lord in an orphanage built on an old land mine. His work has begun.

Our hearts break over this land because God’s own heart is breaking. We shed tears because Jesus’ own tears have been shed. We know God walks through the streets of Cambodia because we know he is with us as we walk through them. Praise God!

Tonight was our last night with the kids at the NHO orphanage and we decided to throw a big barbeque bash! What I can say is that these kids have not forgotten that everything is a gift from God. We pray and thank God for our food but we have forgotten that it is truly a gift from God. They have not.

We ate, we danced, we sang, we laughed, and we worshipped. There was pure, unfiltered joy.

After, the kids wanted to pray for us. We kneeled down in a hot, humid room with 30 kids surrounding us, with their tiny hands upon our shoulders… praying for us.

Some of the kids started to cry as some of us started to cry.

It was finally time for us to say goodbye. After saying the most difficult goodbyes I’ve ever had to say, I went back to the hotel.

The biggest realization for me during this trip is that we are all just brothers and sisters in Christ who need to help each other and pray for each other. Whether you’re an American or Cambodian, young or old, we’re all people who are in desperate need of a Savior. We are all broken people and God’s love shines just as bright in Cambodia as it does in America.

So I encourage all of you this one thing. When you pray globally for the people who are hungry, mistreated, and persecuted, pray with them. Not for them. We’re all in this together. Amen.

Jake