– by Harris

“… I know that God has told me to do this, so I stepped out and I’m doing it.”

CityLife Church‘s missions partners, New Life Fellowship in Phnom Penh is one of the largest churches in Cambodia.

Their vision is for the church to have a positive influence in every sector of Cambodian society; to be a model and a resource centre for planting churches in all 24 provinces of Cambodia and to send Cambodians as missionaries to other countries.

In addition, they are passionate about ministering to the poor and disadvantaged. Through the New Life Foundation, a non-profit humanitarian organisation also under their leadership, they engage in relief and development work with a particular emphasis on the education sector. You can find out more on their Facebook page CambodiaOutreach.

Here’s a remarkable story of the impact that NLF is having in Cambodia…

Precious Women

A few years ago my wife and I were invited to a birthday party for someone who’s not in our church. She held it at a beer garden. There are literally hundreds of these beer gardens all around Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, where we live.

My wife and I were shocked to see 70 to 80 scantily dressed young ladies, waiting for customers to pick them up. I’d never been in a place like that and I did not realise what happens there, and when I began to do the math, I realised how many hundreds of these girls there must be. They have now become outcasts of society, marked as dirty, not necessarily trafficked, but are there for one reason or another and feeling trapped with no way out.

The following Sunday I preached about this. I told the church, “We know the way out of this, the way that has been shown to us by Jesus. We have the answer, so we must make sure we bring the answer to these outcast girls.”

A young girl in our congregation, named Solida, came up and spoke to us after the service. She is a girl from the country, from unbelieving parents, a farmer’s child who moved to the big city. She ended up staying in one of our dormitories where she came to the Lord. She said she was moved by God to do something about the situation of these women in the bars, the massage parlours and the karaoke lounges.

We prayed for her, and to cut a long story short, she ended up quitting her job and started an organisation called Precious Women. Through her organisation she reaches out to these young ladies all across the city, telling them there’s a way out, there’s hope and there’s people who love you. She tells them, “The answer is Jesus, he loves you, and we love you”.

She created homes for them to stay. She provides vocational training to give them skills so they can find alternative employment.

So a young girl in the church, who we invested in, and who we brought to the Lord, saw the vision that God has for her life and has now stepped out, making a huge difference in the city.

A while back she was sitting in our living room and she said, “Jesse and Soar, I don’t know what I’m doing, I’ve never run an organisation, and I’m only in my 20s, but I know that God has told me to do this, so I stepped out and I’m doing it.”

We have thousands and thousands of these stories of people who have accepted Jesus into their lives, and now they’re stepping out, doing what the Lord has called them to do, and making a big difference.

To find out more about Precious Women, visit their website or Facebook page.