cambodian poverty

Recent Update

Updated January 4, 2012
From Director Jeff Shamburg

In 2011, we started off with a new board of directors that is very dedicated to following God’s lead, stewardship, and love for the children as well as a great new couple leading our orphanage as house parents, along with a plan to open up a new territory in northern Cambodia, called Ratanakiri.

The new house parents, Boret and Kunthea, were with us in 2010 and were an amazing addition for our children and organization. I believe that because of them, God has sent us more children this year than at any other time in the past and we are up to 24 at our facility. In addition to Boret and Kunthea, two new cooks were hired to help out with the extra responsibilities. Also, Iprahim, our computer teacher at the village, has stepped up his involvement with our children to help them in school and also with additional leadership.

Ratanakiri is a beautiful secluded part of Cambodia. The roads that lead in to it are not paved, and very hard on vehicles. The government would just as soon let the Vietnamese take it as their land than pay any attention to it. As a result, the people are neglected as well. Initially, we opened up five English schools there but closed two temporarily because the children were needed to work their farms. The villages in that region are inhabited by indigenous tribes that speak seven different languages but they all appreciate the opportunity to learn English as this gives them a way to communicate with the changing environment and sell goods outside of their communities. In some of these locations, we are the only educational option as they cannot get public school teachers to drive to them.

We now house 24 orphans, run 14 English schools and 5 computer schools. In addition, we have 7 orphanage graduates in college and work with about 2800 kids throughout all our outreach programs. We partner with Goodwill for our school funding and work with the Hong Kong International School that helps our youth after graduation from high school. We are also closely tied in with the Jesus Village church that houses our graduates and helps them stay connected to a body of believers. All of our funding, however, that supports the heart of our organization – the orphanage, comes from loving partners like you!

It is such a privilege for us to work together and share in what God is doing. While visiting the orphanage this past summer, we saw 20 baptisms, 5 salvations, an our computer teacher, a recent convert from Islam, so on fire for God that he is now going to Seminary to become a Christian pastor. We were also able to visit and pray with our house parent’s home churches that they pastor over on Sundays.

We also saw some hardship cases come our way. Four brothers came to us after their father had died earlier in a fishing accident and their mother died of AIDS last February. One of our cooks passed away after struggling with health issues caused by a stroke, leaving her son, David, to us. We picked up 5 more children this summer after their grandma approached us. The grandma’s two daughters and son-in-laws had all died of AIDS. She was taking care of their children while living in the back of a church lot and feeding them sugar water as she had no other food.

All of these hardship cases have given us opportunity to show God’s love to this world.

It was amazing to see our young adults, after graduating high school and then moving to the city to go to college/trade school, be not just involved with the Jesus Village church, but take leadership roles in their new setting: from the worship team, to translating on mission trips, to distributing food to flood victims, to helping with children ministries, all because, as one stated, “I wanted to give back...”

One of our first orphans shared his story to a group and the translator couldn’t tell the story without crying because of the hardships that the orphan had gone through: from scavenging on the street, to the love he received at the orphanage. His striking comment was that God had prepared the hearts of foreigner’s from far away that spoke a different language even – but cared enough to love him.

With all of our satellite locations teaching English, math, and computer skills, our concern was that we were not able to reach these children and their families with the love of Christ. Without Christ, these skills are good, but it would be like re-arranging the chairs on the Titanic – an exercise in futility. What God had placed in our hands were teachers that were not only good at what they teach, but concerned about the lost. One gentleman in Ratanakiri hopes to build a fellowship of 40,000 followers. One computer teacher, working out of a church, saw hundreds from their community coming to find out who this Jesus Christ is that everyone is talking about on Sunday mornings. One man, also a pastor, with his family living under a sheet in a rain forest, checked on about 40 different house churches with about 250 followers. What we saw proved that God is in control and that His plans are far greater than we can imagine.

This year, we want to open up 3 new computer schools and look for opportunities around the locations to serve. We are looking for opportunities for the computer centers to be self-sustaining. Networking with another organization in Cambodia, we want to build libraries at our orphanage and 3 other locations with a facility in Sway Reign. The biggest development on our heart is to develop an Education Center in Ratanakiri.

For our kids at the orphanage, we want to keep up the focus on serving Christ and continue to help educate them. We are praying about a vehicle for our house parents so that they have a better way to bring our kids to the clinic and pick up supplies for the orphanage. Most of all, we want to do whatever it is, or go wherever we need to, and that God would lead us.

Thank you for listening to God’s call and joining in on His work. We can’t thank you enough for being part of our team. Thank you for sharing God’s joy in a land that is far away and to people that speak a different language.

Thank you for all your love,

Jeff

View past newsletters

View September, 2010 Press Release