Every year CityLife Church sends teams of our members to visit our missions partners all around the world. These teams work together with our local partners to be a blessing to the local communities. For more information about our missions trips, visit this page.
In December 2016, a team made up of members from our Manningham and Knox congregations, led by Youth Pastor U-Wen, left on a missions trip to Cambodia. Here’s the second of their updates from the field.
Well, it’s now been just about a week here in Cambodia, and the team have well and truly started assimilating into Cambodian culture. Aside from rice for breakfast, everyone has started to pick up a few Khmer phrases, and certainly the scarves (krama) are proving to be popular with some.
Last week, we have had the enormous privilege of visiting some of the dorm rooms housing New Life Fellowship (NLF) university students. Each of these students are Christians attending NLF, and many of them are forced to stay in the dorms due to their financial circumstances or otherwise (some are orphans, for example). We were welcomed with home-cooked food, and some heart-to-heart conversations and songs helped us to really connect with our Cambodian counterparts.
Sharing a home cooked meal on the floor of the men’s dorm.
We’ve also been teaching English, and this has revealed some hidden talents among the team. Some team members will have bright futures as teachers – their patience, planning and thoroughness has really come to the fore here.
Michelle teaches one of the lessons with the help of a local English teacher
Last Thursday we had a much needed rest, and most of the team members treated themselves to massages or manicures. Some of us are finally beginning to fall ill, as coughs and colds begin to spread around the team. This is to be expected, and we haven’t had any really bad illnesses yet! Please keep praying that we would successfully get through without any issues.
Last Friday night, we had the privilege of running an outreach Christmas event for the English school, a great event attended by over 100 locals. Here, we were able to pray for many locals, and also connected a great number of them to NLF in order to continue their faith journey. We also helped decorate the church, as our efforts at the other campus had rendered it looking better than the main campus!
Suanne & Rachael running some games
Over the weekend we assisted in the running of a youth camp in Tosu, 2 hours drive away from Phnom Penh. We appreciate all your prayers as we are out into a more rural setting – pray that we would be safe, protected from illness, and most importantly that the young people we interact with will come to know Christ for themselves!
Whilst we’re out at the camp, we will most likely be unable to access any wifi or internet, so there probably won’t be any updates for a few days.
Finally, I had the enormous privilege of visiting the site of NLF’s new building, to be opened in February. This is a wonderful auditorium with many multipurpose rooms, and I truly believe that it will help NLF to become even more of a powerful lighthouse for God in Cambodia. Please join me in praying for every success as they prepare to move into the new building!
Overlooking the upstairs multipurpose rooms in NLF’s new auditorium
Still alive,
The team and U-Wen