Dear Brothers and Sister,

How are you?  After four months of adjustments, I am getting much more accustomed to life in Cambodia.  Praise you, Father God!  Also, thank you for your prayers from afar.

Follow up on a new believer

Recently I started doing some new believer follow up for a local sister.  She uses Khmer and the English which she has studied for less than half a year to laboriously communicate with me.  On my part, I feel like no matter how hard I try, it is still difficult to help her understand some basic concepts.  As I was considering giving this heavy responsibility back to our field supervisor, I instead experienced the wondrous leading of the Holy Spirit!

When the Holy Spirit led me to point out the unsettled feelings in her heart, she suddenly broke into tears.  My acquaintance with her was very limited.  Several times the words that I wrote (she has to translate them from a dictionary before she knows what I said) revealed what was in her heart.  More than once she said with astonishment, "How did you know?"  I just answered her with certainty, "The heavenly Father is truly with us!"  Thank the Father for giving me this experience of the Holy Sprit taking away our language barrier!

Language study

Last year from October to December, I completed the first class, mostly learning the Cambodian alphabet, sounds and spelling.  In the second class I have started learning more new vocabulary, reading and composition of simple sentences and short essays.  Each class time the first item is dictation.  With daily effort, I am now able to recognize some of the commonly used words from our textbook.  (Khmer has no spaces between words, so you have to guess how to divide the new words in the middle of a sentence, which is a difficult process.)  Writing the words is not really so difficult for a Chinese person, but producing the sounds and spelling usually provides a virtual flood of errors and homonyms.  So I have to put more effort into learning and practicing.

Teaching preparations

In May I will teach for one week in the village.  The course content is related to counseling.  The major focus is on dealing with conflict and family abuse.  To be able to use that which I had previously studied and teach the course in which I am most interested is really exciting. However, this is also a huge challenge.  For one thing, this is my first time to teach counseling.  Another thing is that using English to teach is unprecedented for me.  Another big, difficult responsibility is how to choose materials and how to take an outside point of view and meld it into Cambodian culture.  Counseling precepts are mostly Western.  For me, a person who was born into the mixed East-West culture of Hong Kong, I find that there are still several subjects which I have not yet fully integrated.  So, teaching in a Cambodian village where I don't have a great understanding of the culture is just one difficulty piled on another.  I can only ask the Father to grant wisdom in my limited preparations.  I implore you to pray for me too!

Before actually preparing any teaching material, I need to develop some relevant resource material, such as by doing personal interviews to understand this culture.  For a start I have interviewed some young people and discovered that abusive beatings at home when growing up is a very common experience.  Listening to their stories gives me many more opportunities to understand the suffering they experienced in their childhood years.  As I watched someone crying and at the same time describing how the father believed in Jesus and later reconciled with that person, it let me see how God can live among those who suffer. Before ever teaching, I am the one who is benefiting first.

Pray for peace for Cambodia

Two weeks ago, after Phnom Penh experienced a couple days of unrest, things settled down again quite quickly.  At times I saw fires, policemen holding long batons in their hands, and heard the tramping and shouting of students going to street demonstrations, all of which made me feel the tenseness of the situation. I wanted to know more about the latest conditions, but how could I, someone in a foreign city, who can't understand the local news bulletins?  Later I saw a Thai-owned telecommunications company I had walked past previously, which had been destroyed by fire.  I really felt like groaning!

The Thai people who were hurriedly evacuated from the military airport on the day of the riots, are continually coming back by land.  The day before yesterday, I ran into a staff member of the Thai company that shares our building, and only then found out that she had only stayed in Thailand for 5 days.  By last week, her work and life were all back to normal, but her heart feelings are not the same.

I am surprised that the changes here could happen so fast.  On one day, the whole city was engulfed by a storm, and then in one day the city's populace went back to their normal lives.

Please offer up prayer for Cambodia!  Major elections are coming up in July, and civil disturbances could easily reoccur.  From the newspaper I found out that some people heard unsubstantiated e-mail reports stating that Cambodian people had been killed in Thailand, and so they went to the Thai embassy and set it on fire.  Then, later on, it was discovered that these original stories were just rumors with no basis in fact! Please pray for the Cambodian people, for their news broadcasts, and for how to deal with anger and hatred.

The Lord who rules over history is with us!

Miu Ling
13 February 2003
Phnom Penh, Cambodia