September/October 2013 Update/Prayer Letter

God’s Work in Individual Lives

Thank God for His leading us to start a Sunday afternoon children’s service. As a result of that, a 14 year old girl named Srey Noich heard the Gospel taught for seven straight weeks, and on the eighth week Pastor Proh’s wife, Chenda, led her to Christ. Srey Noich has expressed the desire to be baptized, and has started attending our Sunday morning adult service. Please pray that Srey Noich will follow through on her desire to be baptized, and that she will grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.

La is continuing to grow, both spiritually and in his schooling. Two nineteen year old young ladies in our church, who happen to be identical twins, are currently teaching La Tuesday through Friday. They are teaching him only two subjects: reading/writing (in Khmer) and math. You may recall that La had not been to school in three years because his teachers didn’t have the patience to deal with his speech impediment. But for these few months that La has been in our church and under our tutelage, he has improved tremendously, and I believe in a few months he will be reading. La is also growing in his relationship with the Lord. He comes faithfully every Sunday, and has started praying for and collecting the offering. When he prays, it is impossible not to notice his stutter. But unlike his public school and even his own village, when he stutters at church, nobody laughs at him or mocks him. I believe La has experienced God’s love first hand by attending Freedom Baptist Church.

We also thank God for another young lady who started attending our church as a result of our Friday morning outreach. Her name is Srey Neat, and she comes from a broken home. She lives with her alcoholic father who has discouraged her from coming to church, but she comes anyway. She is not saved yet, but a faithful lady in our church named Bong Srey has been teaching her through the “Do You Know God?” book. Our prayer is that Srey Neat will soon place her faith in Jesus Christ and receive Him as her Savior.

New Outreach Efforts

In addition to the several hours spent in house to house evangelism every week, the Lord has prepared two other avenues of connecting with new people for the purpose of sharing the Gospel with them. First, there is a small English school three blocks from our house. Pastor Proh is a friend of the director of this school, and the Lord opened the door for me to teach English there 3 evenings a week from 5:30 to 7:30. This is proving to be a great tool for getting to know people that I would otherwise never have a chance to know. Soon we will be printing an information tract for our church that I will be passing out to all of my students (about 35 students in all). Please pray that out of these 35 students there will be a few that will visit our church.

Another opportunity that “fell into our lap” is the soccer field that was just built 100 yards from our house. It is a very nice soccer field with artificial turf, and it only costs $6 per hour to rent it. I feel that it would be extremely foolish not to take advantage of this soccer field, as soccer is the number one sport in this country. So we have started a twice-a-month soccer activity (every other Monday) in which we start at our house (or the church building, whatever you want to call it) with a light snack and a short devotional from God’s Word. The goal is for the men and teenage boys in our church to invite their friends to this activity for the purpose of showing them true, Godly friendship and then inviting them to our church and sharing the Gospel with them. In these first four weeks we have already had several unsaved teen boys and men attend this activity. Please pray that we will see some fruit as a result of these efforts.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter and pray for us. We love you all!

In Christ,

Chad Phillips