These letters have been modified to enable publication in the Lively Hope.

27 October 2017

Dear Elder Michael Lee and Hope BP Church,

Greetings to you all in the precious Name of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Thank you for your loves, cares and prayers always.

1. Nam Soon is now still in Kwang Chu, a bit far from Seoul and will come back to Cambodia on Wednesday next week God willing. She is doing her general check (check for heart, lung and so on). I just received a messenger call from her yesterday. She still has some health matters and we do not know much about the medical terms. Her  thyroid and appendix have some problems. The hospital in her sister's hometown there wants her to do surgery on these matters but my wife thinks she cannot do it because the previous surgery just happened less than a month ago. Anyway, I share with her to just commit all things into the Hands of our loving and caring God. For He can do everything. Other results will be known by Monday next week. In fact, since last year my wife's health is not really good. She loves doing a lot of things. Her desire for the Lord is to teach the whole Bible to the congregations and build them up in the faith. Please continue to pray for her.

2. Church is going on as normal, most of the church members are still weak. Most come to church only on Sunday. There are normally 70-80 members with youths and adults - most are youths. In dawn prayer meetings only dormitory students attend every Tuesday till Saturday. There are 7 dormitory students who are staying with us and I just received a call from church members there that 4 more will want to come and stay with us. I will meet them this coming Sunday. Please pray for this dormitory ministry too because they are very important for the church and for Cambodia. We train them in the Bible and some English.

English Service: Since the Lord has given me the burden to start the English service, we started a year ago but the numbers are not growing much. There are around 15 members and these members mostly attend worship service in the morning already. We also need a speaker with sound doctrine to help us this part as well. Please continue to pray for this ministry.

Sunday School ministry: We are still struggling to deal with children in Phnom Penh as well. When they are children they love to come to church, but when they become youths, most do not want to come to church. They say their parents want them to focus on secular study or looking for a job or sometimes their parents persecute them and in a few cases, some of them say they feel too shy to come to church. Now Sunday School children are decreasing from 70 plus to 50 or 55 every Sunday.

Evangelism: People seem open to the Gospel we share yet they never come to church. They just say and never do. And mostly, many are focusing for the material blessings only.
Outreach ministry: We still have one outreach ministry in Batdeng village. There are around 7-8 mature Christian adults there and around 40 children there. We go there every Saturday afternoon teaching Bible stories, Christian children songs, English,

Bible and a kind of first aids to the villagers. (It is a small village with just 27 families.) One of the mature adults is called to attend the Bible Seminary in Phnom Penh. He will study for 3 years to prepare him as a local leader in the future. One year he studies 4 times and one time is 5 days. We pray and hope that this brother will lead the local church there in the future if God is willing. There are a few villages which are bigger than that village which need us to go over and help do the same thing as we do in the Batdeng. My heart really wants to go and do many things yet we are not able to do many places at the moment. It somehow seems the door is more open in the village ministry than the city we serve. Please do pray for this ministry as well.

There are a few more outreach ministries that are run by our young leaders in our church. They go to teach Bible stories, colouring, songs and English to a few more places not really far from our church. It is like a follow up for Sunday School kids besides Sunday.

Training on Saturday: This coming Saturday our church will have a short Bible training for our key leaders. Please pray for us that all of us will receive great blessings from the seminar. (5 will come from Batdeng village as well.)

We are planning and thinking of Childcare and Kindergarten too. There are many good schools in Phnom Penh and surrounding our church also there are some schools. We still think and plan whether the Lord wants us to do this ministry or not. If we do we need a lot resources, and also salary for teachers and staffs. (Of course, for me I am just praying and helping some ideas if needed; someone in our church will in charge of this part.)

3. Our family: Our two kids Jemima and Daniel just moved to a new school one month ago. We made a lot of mistakes for them as well. They changed many schools already because of our Lord's calling. We try to find a school just nearby the church where we serve. And two years ago we sent them to a Christian Home School. They really enjoyed their school and studies there yet the Home School uses only English so their Khmer language is poor. So we pray and ask the Lord for direction since they are Cambodians and living in Cambodia, the Cambodian language is very useful for them. Therefore by faith we send them to a new school that teaches both languages, English and Cambodian. Jemima studies grade 7 and Daniel studies grade 5. This school is expensive so we are struggling for their studies as well. Your last loving gifts were on time for their payment for testing, enrollment and one month school fees and school materials. Please pray for their studies as well. Jemima is very busy. Even though she is young, she helps a lot in church. She can play piano. Every Sunday she plays piano for Sunday school, and both worship services.

4. Cambodia: Please do keep praying for the Cambodian situation too. The political matter is not going on well. Next year we will have an election. The Hun Sen government is too much worried about losing election and power. Now he is doing whatever he wants to destroy the opposition party. We pray that the Lord will bless and heal this country to experience the goodness and mercies of God.

I wrote very long already. Thank you for your patience to read my broken English. And thank you for your love, care and prayers once again.

Your unworthy stewards of the Lord,
Sun Sokha and Lee Nam Soon

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