Pepper Village
Things are picking up rather fast. I find myself being given more responsibility than I’m comfortable with but it’s good for me (probably).
The expedition last month in Pepper village was amazing. Before there were no believers but now we have 4-10 people regularly meeting every Wednesday with us to learn more about Jesus. There’s the man with insomnia and epilepsy that has begun to pray when he can’t sleep, there’s the man who was a drunkard who now listens to the bible everywhere he goes. There’s the older woman who has used the name of Jesus to scare away night demons. There’s the one legged man battling high blood pressure who has begun to trust Jesus. There’s the young girl that wants a husband. One of the young ladies is not there, so after the meeting we split up to go find her while the other half of our group goes to teach 60 kids who have been waiting at the community center. I don’t know her face, I don’t know her name, I don’t know what she looks like, but Chomrong says she’s at one of the last houses in the village.
I drive past the end of the village and make a turn around on the narrow road and double back to go to a house that has some people camping under it (as is typical). There’s a grandma and her 2 grandsons laying on hammocks, we greet them and we begin to talk. We introduce ourselves and begin to talk about Jesus, my wife takes over. Usually she doesn’t do a whole lot of sharing the gospel since she isn’t very confident.
The grandma says she’s too lazy to believe in Jesus, it’s her responsibility to feed the spirits of her ancestors. After a while her daughter shows up and behold it’s the woman that we were looking for.
“My husband gets drunk and threatens me,” said the daughter, “he says that Jesus is firewood and Jesus is the backside of an axe.” (Meaning he’s threatening to backhand her with an axe).
“If you stop believing in Jesus will your husband stop drinking and being rude?” Asked Lin.
“No, he’s like this regardless.”
“Then if when you believe in Jesus he curses and drinks and when you don’t believe he still curses and drinks it seems to me that it’s most profitable for you to believe in Jesus then. After all, he’s not cursing you, he’s cursing Jesus and Jesus can bear it. But you know what, he will get tired of cursing you. If you persevere you will see God change him. When you plant cucumbers you don’t get cucumbers right away, it takes patience.” Lin replied.
“It’s alright.” Said the grandma, “My kids and grandkids can believe in Jesus, but it’s too late for me, my health is awful. My lungs are burned (from tuberculosis) and…” honestly I don’t remember what the other things were, usually it’s either high blood pressure, low blood pressure, or diabetes, and stomach and digestion problems.
“We want to pray to Jesus for you to be healed.” I said.
“It’s ok. I can’t be bothered to believe in Jesus.”
Lin then began to press her for reasons. I didn’t think we were going to get anywhere, but Lin kept talking, sharing about all the amazing things Jesus has done, his healing, his provision, his love. She shared the gospel from first principles explaining why Jesus created us and the problem of sin and how Jesus defeated it on the cross.
“I used to believe in Jesus actually.” The grandma finally admitted, “We all did, my husband, my children, etc. We lived in Anlong Veng. But that was 10 years ago, since then we moved here and my husband passed away and we’ve been by ourselves and we stopped.”
“Let me ask you.” Said Lin, “Your life before when you believed in Jesus and your life now, how do they compare?”
“Well,” said the Grandma, “Back when I believed in Jesus my health was great and now I have lots of diseases.”
“So,” said Lin, “Let’s say you had a 2011 motorcycle and it and barely ever needed fixing and ran well and you later bought a 2012 motorcycle and it broke down all the time, which motorcycle would you prefer? The newer broken one or the one that’s old but reliable?”
“I would take the old reliable one.”
“Exactly.” Said Lin, “Before you had Jesus and he was your healer and now you’re doing things your own way and it’s not as good. We’ll pray for you and Jesus will heal you.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Said the grandma.
“You don’t need to believe in Jesus for him to heal you.” Replied Lin, “He loves you no matter whether you love him or not. You’ve been lost for 10 years and God sent us here to find you. This wasn’t our plan but God’s plan.”
“In Anlong Veng we had a church, we had other believers.”
“What if we had a church in this village? What if there were other believers would you want to gather together and believe in Jesus?”
“Yes I would.” Said the grandma.
“Well, it just so happens that we shared the gospel here and now we have a regular group that meets together every Wednesday morning at Uncle Sow’s house, you should come.”
So the grandma and the daughter were encouraged and decided to come next week. We prayed for them, for the grandma’s health and for the daughter’s husband.
The next week we did not see them at the meeting so we went to visit them. The grandma was not doing too well and was dizzy and hungry. Lin and I went and bought her some dried fish, a little bit later her daughter came by also with some ingredients for food. The daughter’s husband had stopped cursing. The grandma said that since we talked to her she has decided to commit her life to Jesus. We prayed with her and she felt goosebumps and felt better.
Lin Gabrielle Downs
Gabrielle is technically her middle name because in Khmer the order of the names is surname, middle name, then first name. So because we wanted her Khmer name to be correct we made her name align with her Khmer name, making Lin her first name in English but we’ll call her Gabrielle regardless. She’s 3 months old and she’s rolling over, laughing, ticklish, and likes to coo. She sleeps through the night and she poops a lot during the day. She dwarfs all the Cambodian babies and is about the size of an average 7 month old Cambodian baby, but without the coordination or the teeth.
Pray
- Pray for Charity as she is preparing and translating the curriculum for a Cambodian training school for missionaries. Lin will be attending, and I’ll probably be helping teach and prepare various aspects as well.
- Pray that when I go back to the States for a visit at the end of this year that Lin is able to pass her interview to do that.
- Pray for all the administration stuff, Amy is doing most of it and it’s a lot to handle. I want to take on more responsibility, pray that we’re able to get it worked out.
For the kingdom, Tommy, Lin, and Gabrielle