Elder Leong Yin Chu (Katong Presbyterian Church, Singapore)

 

Mission Cambodia (2002 March 25 to July 3)

In 2002, the call from Komponsom Bible School, Sihanoukville, Cambodia, reached us. Reverend Moses Hahn, Principal of the Bible School wrote several letters enclosing some photographs, inviting us to go and help reap the harvest.

Reverend Hahn was a Deacon of Jesson Presbyterian Church in Saipan. It was a Korean church. He was very concerned about the lost souls and very burdened to reach out to them. To do so, he thought he needed some training in theology. So he sold his piloting service company and together with his wife and two sons came to Singapore. He and his wife enrolled in the Far Eastern Bible College. After graduating, they responded to God's calling, and went to open a Bible school in Kompongsom, to train the Khmer Christians to become preachers to bring the Gospel to their own Khmer people in the various villages in Sihanoukville. If the Bible school remains to exist, the Gospel may be spread to the whole of Cambodia.

We flew to Cambodia in March 2002 to co-work with Rev. Hahn. When we arrived, there were about forty five students who worked very hard, attending the Bible class and the English class. Besides, on Saturdays, they went to the villages to reach out to the adults in the morning, and to the children in the afternoon. Then on Sunday mornings, they would preach to the adults and teach the children in the Sunday School.

My work was to teach English to all the students and helped to preach in the Sunday Service. The speakers would preach in English and interpreted into Khmer Language. So a copy of the sermon had to be given to the interpreter one week before hand for him to translate into Khmer. That was why the interpreter could interpret so fluently in the service. My wife helped the Chinese Preacher Chang to teach Chinese to the Cambodian Chinese, and also preached in the Chinese Service.

At the end of our ministry, we had to go to Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, to take the plane home to Singapore. Following our daughter's suggestion, we stayed one day in Phnom Penh, visiting some of the famous resorts, such as the Genocide Museum, the site where two million people were killed during Pol Pot's regime, the Genocidal Centre where the recovered skulls of the massacred victims were stored for display in a pagoda, the Royal Palace and the Mekong River.