By Adrienne Worth, Mission Partner in Cambodia

I am part of The Handa Academy (THA) teach­ing team. This is mainly a Khmer team with our Amer­ican manager. I share an office with the Khmer staff which I really enjoy. They are a great bunch, and we get along well. They help me with the Cam­bod­ian lan­guage and culture, and I help them with English classes and preparation.

I’ve offered to pray for several col­leagues when they are unwell. This year I took in Hot Cross Buns at Easter time and explained to the staff the meaning of them and the cross on the top. All the staff speak English of varying degrees, so I could speak in English to all except our cleaner but with the help of a trans­lator, she also got to hear about how Jesus died on the cross for us all.

God is using me here in Bat­tam­bang and I con­tinue to pray for oppor­tun­it­ies to share the Gospel with people that I meet on the street, market or with other ex-pats. I would like to share two stories of times God has worked through me here.

My Aus­tralian neigh­bour, who has lived near me for 2.5 years, passed away unex­pec­tedly. I arranged with our other Amer­ican neigh­bour to go and sort out and pack up his house together. She was very grate­ful for my help as it was quite a hard job emo­tion­ally and phys­ic­ally for her, but we got it sorted in a few hours. My Amer­ican neigh­bour men­tioned to me several times how grate­ful she was that I was able to help and how she couldn’t have done it without me, and I believe it was God’s perfect timing, to love my neigh­bour and help her. It is such a bless­ing to be Christ’s hands and feet in my local com­munity here.

The other story that comes to mind is the time I met a man in the park on my daily walks. Most Khmer people ignore me when I walk in the park, so it was nice when this man would see me and murmur a greet­ing. This happened quite a few times. Maybe six weeks ago, he plucked up the courage to talk to me. Real­ising my Khmer was not at a con­ver­sa­tional level he switched to English. He had seen me wearing my Handa shirts and wanted to know if I was a Dr, what I did and if the Handa Hos­pital was Chris­tian or not.

Incredibly, I had just been asking God to give me a way to share with this man and he was the one who brought up the topic!

He told me about his life and having to have heart surgery in Thai­l­and, how he worked for a Cath­olic organ­isa­tion and that’s how he knew about God. But when I asked him if he had accep­ted Jesus, he said he hadn’t. He told me about his wife and two daugh­ters and that one had applied for a schol­ar­ship to go to Switzer­land for a tourism course. An NGO he had started had to stop due to the lack of funding during Covid and He had now become a chicken farmer. As we depar­ted, I said I would be praying for him.

Since then, I’ve seen him several times and he told me his daugh­ter got the schol­ar­ship which I said was an answer to prayer. I’m praying for another oppor­tun­ity to meet with him and share more about Jesus. I’ve also told my Pastor and assist­ant about him and pointed him out, as they exer­cise in the park too, so I’m hoping they too will meet him as well so we can all share with him. Please con­tinue to pray for me as God opens door­ways for the Gospel to be spread here.