Historic Ministry Work and Other Random Thoughts

The Christian Leadership Conference in Cambodia, held here in Phnom Penh the last three days, has drawn more than 400 pastors and leaders (both men and women) from across the country. The vast majority of them are younger than age 40, I would say, which is understandable considering the nation’s history. This dynamic shows great promise, we believe, as these young people we’ve spoken to have great energy and passion for the Lord, and for service to Him, and to see their villages and towns come to Christ. They are not tethered to established traditions that may not always allow for the greatest acceleration in reaching their neighbors with the Gospel.

These leaders recognize they can accomplish nothing apart from the power of the Holy Spirit. If they try to move forward based on their human planning and wisdom, and neglect to go to God FIRST, to seek His will and find out where He is working, then they will fail. The conference has enabled them to come together to build one another up, strengthen them in their service to the Lord, and allow them to go forward recognizing that God is at work everywhere in Cambodia.

This was the first ever Christian Leadership Conference in the country. Pastor Vibol Uong and others have prayed for this for over five years, and God brought it all together this week. In attendance to give their blessing were two of the nation’s top officials, including the Minister of Religion and Cults, as well as a three-star general who also happens to be a pastor. Today the minister vowed to watch the provinces and make sure Christians were allowed to worship freely and openly. It marked a huge turning point for Cambodia. Historic.

We received great news last night as well: the church planting manual that we have brought, which has been distributed in more than a dozen languages to mostly hard-to-reach countries in Asia, has been completed for Cambodia. Pastors received copies of it today to bring home with them. Praise the Lord!

Other random thoughts:

• The Khmer (Kampuchean, or Cambodian) people love long worship services and seemingly endless songs. While testing the endurance of foreigners who do not understand much of the words, these fellow believers sing and clap all the way through the music and hang on every word delivered in the sermons:

• It appears that “vibrate” is not a setting option on Cambodian cell phones, and no one seems to mind either.

• The conference is being held between two related hotels across the street from each other – the Lucky Star Hotel and the Phkar Chhouk Tep (yes, two h’s is correct), where several weddings are held every day – as many as seven or eight at one time right next to each other. Both hotels have several ballrooms where receptions are held. Each entrance is decorated with a flora-adorned arch that is brightly illuminated, and colorful, well-dressed family members greet wedding guests. A couple of weddings were held at 7:00 a.m. and began with guests – each carrying a gift or food for the reception – lined up to walk in procession up the street to the ceremony. Pretty cool. Here you can see five entrances to five ballrooms, representing five weddings at a time:

• People on motorbikes are a marvel. We’ve seen families of six on a single bike, and many carrying sizable loads. It’s hard to whip our cameras out fast enough to capture these things because they surprise you – you really have to have it at the ready at all times. Twice I caught four on a bike:

…and a guy riding with these huge blocks (not sure what they really were):

• They have a Bojangles here near the Mekong River. It’s a bar, though.

• Near the hotel the Lucky Burger – upstairs from the Lucky Supermarket – has been my oasis to find Western-style fast food and pizza. The rice gets to be too much after a while. Lucky Burger also has a Lucky’s Playland (like what McDonald’s has as in the West), which lists a bunch of disclaimers, do’s and don’ts as conditions for playing on the equipment, some of which were amusingly translated into English:

1. “Parents must be attended outside at all times”
2. “Do not responsible for injury”
3. “Do not eat inside” and “Do not feed children from outside”
4. “Do not go to restroom inside (Parents are responsible for cleaning)”
5. “Do not responsible for lost items”

There is no restroom “inside” so the prohibition is better explained as “Don’t make the playground your restroom.”

• Another amusing piece of broken Cambodian-speaking English came in an otherwise sad story our friend Luy told us about his daughter, whom he called his “Apple-Eyes.”

• The T&C Café has been the place for coffee nearby. Today they were decorating for Christmas, without Jesus, since they are all likely Buddhists or non-Christians:

• It’s a nice little place, but don’t believe their menu. It has a long list of cakes that sound delicious but they don’t have any cake at all. They have cookies, which are not on the menu. Those don’t look so great. They have ice cream, and the menu says you get three scoops, but you really only get two. If you order vanilla you get an orange-colored ice cream that tastes like Dreamsicle.

• Yes, those women really can balance huge objects or loads on their heads and walk normally.

• I forgot to pack fingernail clippers and the feel on the keyboard was getting repulsive to me, so fortunately my 9-year-old daughter, at my request, had dropped her little scissors in my shaving kit for me. They saved me from continued annoyance. Way to go Hazel — you’re my apple-eyes!

• I am afraid to find out what my bank is going to charge me when I get home after using an ATM over here.

More Khmer Rouge Notes

Spending time here now, it’s hard to imagine that Phnom Penh was ever a “ghost” city, as it has been described during the time of the Pol Pot regime. The Khmer Rouge purged cities and towns of their inhabitants (an estimated 2 million in Phnom Penh) when it came into power in 1975, forcing them into distant villages and provinces to establish their agrarian utopia. Once they were dispersed, families were then further divided so as to foster loyalty only to the nation as a whole and its leaders – the “Angkar” or The Organization.

The numbers I’ve read say Phnom Penh was reduced to only around 40,000 residents by the late 1970s. Today, despite its widespread poverty, crime, and corruption issues (and what city doesn’t have those), it has clearly progressed a long way from that time. The population here is said to be back up to 1.4 million but it seems like more to me. As my friends and I have said many times to each other, “This city is alive.” The streets are filled with people on foot, bikes, tuk-tuks, automobiles of all sizes, and mostly motorbikes. Just look at the traffic — this is trying to turn left at a busy intersection:

The life that this city has gives hope that maybe one day others who live under severe oppression will emerge from their captivity and be able to live free and in prosperity.

Other random notes from Khmer Rouge research:

1. Before I came to Phnom Penh I spent an afternoon at the library of the Bangkok Post, the largest English-language newspaper in the area covering Thailand and Cambodia. In researching the time following the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979 I came across an interview with Ieng Sary, who was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs under Pol Pot, from the New York Times in March 1980. In the story Sary admitted “mistakes” and “abuses” but denied mass extermination. Among his regrets were:

• The regime should have allowed families to stay together rather than separate them into work brigades
• They should have allowed schools to function
• They should not have imposed collectivization
• They should not have abolished private property

He said the decision to empty the cities was made out of fear that Vietnam would kill the Kampuchean (Khmer Rouge) leadership.

“We recognized there were errors in going to far to the left,” Sary said. “We moved too rapidly.

“We did not choose our public servants well and lost some control. Each region constituted a small kingdom. They ran their own affairs.”

A year ago Sary and his wife were taken into custody and awaits trial by the repeatedly delayed, U.N.-sponsored Cambodian tribunal for war crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge. It’s been 30 years since these atrocities and still no justice carried out against the leaders – incredible.

2. A January 1980 report from Agence France-Presse estimated that according to local authorities, Phnom Penh’s population was up to 140,000. “Neutral observers” put the figure at 80,000. It illustrates the impossibility of putting specific numbers to historic events like this. How many really were killed? How many died of starvation? How many found their relatives again and how many did not?

3. In November 1979, 10 months after the Khmer Rouge were driven out of Phnom Penh into the remote areas and jungles, United Press International reported that 3.3 million Cambodians died during the entire 1970s. This included the time before Pol Pot came into power when the Khmer Rouge was fighting Lon Nol’s government. UPI also reported that an estimated 4.7 million survivors at that time were starving to death by the thousands, with most of them too weak to arise from their beds, or even to eat.

4. A grisly testimony from one survivor, who spoke to the Associated Press in September 1979:

Once the Khmer Rouge was overthrown, it was difficult for survivors to recover because the regime denied citizens the right to even own pots and pans, so they could not cook rice. It was a forced famine. Soldiers would get rice, while the laborers forced to work the rice fields would get a watery rice broth.

The atrocities, his own words: “They couldn’t shoot (the people) because it was too expensive, so they clubbed them to death.

“The worst incident was when one man would tie up people’s hands and feet and cut open under the rib cage, exposing their liver, and cut it off and cook it. The (dying) person would witness it cooking and being eaten.”

5. Amazingly, according to a September 1979 Reuters story, the United Nations declined to acknowledged the Vietnam-sponsored Heng Samrin government in Cambodia, and continued to recognized Pol Pot as the country’s official leader.

Redeemed Executioner

We arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Saturday afternoon and early Sunday morning met with our host, Vibol, for breakfast. He will host a conference this week of over 400 pastors and church leaders from all over Cambodia. Many are traveling several hours over often dangerous roads and terrain to come together with Christian brothers and sisters to strategize how to reach their countrymen for Jesus Christ.

After breakfast we were greeted warmly in a worship service at the church where Vibol pastors.

Each of the four of us gave testimonies of God’s work and His faithfulness. As was the case last year, we were delighted by the many children who competed for our attention. They love to have their pictures taken.

After lunch a traveling friend and I visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide museum, site of some of the most horrific crimes ever perpetrated by one set of human beings against another. It was my second visit, and my friend’s first. I don’t know that anything else in my life has impacted me as this place has, giving me a greater understanding of the heights of evil that man is capable of reaching.
The story in brief: As the Vietnam War wound down but spilled over into Cambodia, the government of Prime Minister Lon Nol (supported by the U.S.) became severely weakened and was overthrown by the communist Khmer Rouge. Led by dictator Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge sought to create an agrarian, self-sufficient economy based on rice production in which everyone was lowered to the same level of class: peasantry. Families were broken up, people were uprooted from the homes in villages and cities and forced to relocate, and loyalty to the “Angkar,” or “the organization,” was supreme. Those with education — or were perceived to be educated — as well as alleged enemies of the regime were tortured, forced to “confess” their crimes, and were executed.

The best known of the country-wide torture chambers was called “S-21,” or Tuol Sleng, which had been a school. The Khmer Rouge converted it into the worst murder scene you can imagine.

The museum is “preserved” in a condition in which you can imagine the decrepit, haunting conditions that prisoners existed under. The museum (nothing like your history museums in the States) is best known for the thousands of black and white photos that were taken of each captive as they were admitted to the place.

All ages were there: old, middle-aged, young, children, infants.

Numbers vary but the most common estimate is that between 17,000 and 20,000 came through there and only seven survived.

Prisoners were chained to bed frames (no mattresses) and those were often the pallets of their torment. This victim was beaten beyond recognition.

Many were kept in former classrooms where makeshift brick walls formed small cells that barely fit their crushed bodies.

These converted dormitories were covered in barbed wire so as to make escape impossible.

Demands upon prisoners were the creation of sick minds.

Many victims of Tuol Sleng were later taken to Cheung Ek, site of dozens of mass graves known as part of the “Killing Fields:”

After the Khmer Rouge fell in 1979 an artist who was imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, Vann Nath, depicted in paintings some of the evil practices:
So why was this necessary in the minds of those who perpetrated these acts? To accomplish a “cleansing,” as Nic Dunlop explains in his book “The Lost Executioner:”

The purpose of these interrogations was to identify and eradicate dissent within the new society and the party itself. As in Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the Khmer Rouge believed an obsessive and continuous cleansing of society was essential for producing a pure revolution – enemies were thought to be everywhere.

S-21 was considered the “heart” of the revolution and essential to its success. “The Lost Executioner” is the fascinating story about how Dunlop, over many years, traveled across Cambodia in search of Tuol Sleng’s commandant, Kaing Guek Eav, known as “Comrade Duch” in the Khmer Rouge. He was singly most responsible for the atrocities, but his story does not end there. After Duch’s wife was murdered in a robbery in 1995, he began attending Bible meetings and heard the teachings of a Khmer-American pastor, Christopher Lapel, whom Dunlop interviewed:

Lapel asked (Duch) what had happened and he told him about his wife and the attack. “My life…I’ve never had peace in my life,” he said. He was guarded and withdrawn. “He was careful about saying too much,” said Lapel. Duch then turned to the pastor, and said, “I have sinned, really sinned, a big sin. I don’t think that my brothers and sisters can forgive me.” He wanted to change, he went on, to become a new person.

Lapel went on to share the Gospel with Duch who became a changed man, performing humanitarian work in refugee camps and hungering after the Word. But later Dunlop confronts Duch with his past, and that compelling account is best left for you to read yourself.

Time to Work

There’s no creative way to say this: God is doing amazing things in the hearts of many in Myanmar.

We spent a few days with our host, who helps in a Christian school in the Yangon area, learning about their training and work, and their future plans to reach those in the country who do not know Christ. This leader had already embraced the principles of church planting that we have brought to them via a guidebook, and this week we were able to communicate some of those basic precepts as found in the Book of Acts. The students, roughly from ages 15 through 22, showed quick understanding of the material, and that was exciting.

“This is a book we can’t be lazy with,” said our host. “It takes us right to the Bible.”

The guidebook has been so well received, in fact, that our host has already given away hundreds of copies that had been translated in the Burmese language. During our visit with them another nearby Christian institution came and asked for 30 copies for their students.

The best way for the Gospel to spread rapidly is for indigenous believers, not Westerners, to be the ones bringing the Good News. That has already been shown to be happening here.

Despite obvious challenges, God is proving to be the Overcomer. The communication of the Gospel is through relationship building, since open evangelism, pamphlet passing, and door-knocking is not a good idea here. So friendships are made; homes are visited; trust is built; and the Truth is shared. That’s how it works in and around the city, at least.

But it has not stopped there. Our good friend from the Yangon area (our host) works with missionaries in other parts of the country. In October he brought some students and fellow believers to 11 remote villages in southwestern Myanmar – which took two full days by bus, a day by boat, and two days of walking, to reach.

“When you reach their village and see their honest smiling faces,” our friend said, “the tired is all gone.”

A few of the villages already had an indigenous Christian missionary living there ministering to the peoples – many who were animists or Buddhists – so our friend’s group came to encourage and strengthen, as the Apostle Paul did in Acts. As they arrived in village after village, they also found receptive hearts that were glad to see visitors that showed love for them and cared for their needs. Our host’s group was able to establish friendships and gained enough trust to teach from the Bible and share the Gospel while there.

Myanmar appears poised for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Only recently has the country had enough Bibles in their own language (or audio versions for the illiterate) to even allow the Word of God to work in the peoples’ hearts.

“Ten years ago it was hard to disciple anybody because you didn’t have the Bibles,” said a Western missionary we met during our visit, who until last year worked with the Bible League. “Now the time is right for a flood of church planting.”

That’s the goal of our indigenous host, who already has nine missionaries he works with in villages throughout the country. By next spring he expects that from among his students – all of whom have hearts to reach their own people – he will add another 13. Two of them plan to go to the Irrawaddy Delta, which was the area hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis in May. And in March he plans another short-term mission trip to villages in south Chin State.

“We are young and energetic,” our friend said. “It is the young people God is using here.”

On to Myanmar

When we arrived in Yangon (formerly Rangoon, the largest city in Myanmar (formerly Burma), we had almost another full day before we would begin the Lord’s work, so what did we do? More walking!

As I mentioned in the last post, there were some beautiful bonsai trees in Bangkok. As for Yangon, they are known for their muffler trees:

They also have “beauty saloons,” where you can pull up a barstool and get yerself a stiff drink and a fancy updo, pardner!

But seriously, this is typical of the living standards we saw – unceasingly and ubiquitously – throughout the city (and I’m sure in the rest of the country):

In the afternoon we visited the enormous Schwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, where we removed our shoes and joined thousands of other Burmese as they spent their Sunday engaging in Buddhist fellowship. All manner of activity was going on: resting, relaxing, sleeping, children playing, cooking and picnicking, and of course various forms of worshiping.

The bell rang out for their god:

And they cleansed Buddha:

This was yet another exceedingly ornate place that drew into even sharper contrast the deep poverty of the citizenry.

The dome of the pagoda was under repair as the result of Cyclone Nargis, which had ripped off a lot of the tiles:

The children this day were an absolute delight, marveling at the Westerners in their midst:

As you can see, they came in peace:

And you can see from his shirt that this fellow was especially friendly:

It was simultaneously a refreshing day in that the happy children boosted our spirits, but also one that left us heavyhearted because of the nonsensical wealth invested in idols while a nation of people can barely survive. The blind devotion to this false god spurred us to pray more fervently for Jesus Christ to sweep the country. We would soon learn how that very thing is happening in Myanmar.

Bangkok Arrival

I arrived in Bangkok a week ago, meeting up with my co-servants for Christ for 36 hours of body-clock adjustment (which isn’t enough, but it would have to do – it’s a 12-hour difference between Thailand and U.S. Eastern Standard Time) before we would depart to start God’s work in earnest. We spent the day walking around the city where, as in the states, preparation for Christmas at the malls has already begun. This shimmering tree has been erected but they haven’t turned the lights on yet:

We took a Saturday trip up and down the Chao Phraya River, riding its floating mass transit system with several stops along the waterway. This is what we heard at every stop:

Our only jump-off was for a couple of hours at the Royal Palace. King Bhumibol (don’t call him Bhum for short!) is revered in Thailand – when we visited last year the country had blocked YouTube because someone had posted a video that showed disrespect for him. That’s him on this building:

As we walked around the compound the sidewalks were crowded with food vendors and merchants selling all kinds of clothing and wares. This is the case, by the way, on just about every square inch of sidewalk in Bangkok. There are a few instrumentalists also:

We arrived at the palace entrance just as some dignitaries (we spotted a British flag) were leaving in a long caravan:

The king has some opulent digs:

And some very odd idol characters staked around the place, including Rooster Man:

These guys hold the place up:

The bonsai trees are beautiful:

And no highfalutin’ estate in this part of the world would be complete without worship to the false god Buddha:

Then it was time to go back up the river and call it a day. We departed to our next destination the following day.