Cambodia Bible Education Centre

Well it’s been a wee while since our last post, well and truly time to update you all on the happenings in Sihanouvkille, that’s for sure.  Classes got underway at the start of December and we were pleased with the way numbers were increasing each week – word of mouth seemed to be working best to get us more students.  Some of the registered students didn’t turn up and have been impossible to get hold of, so all in all we have been teaching 3 classes per day, utilising an English course that uses Bible passages.  End of December we all headed up to Phnom Penh to attend the Bible School.  Unfortunately this meant a two week break from teaching and since then we seem to have lost our initial impetus.  Students are no longer turning up consistently and despite numerous phone calls this doesn’t seem to be changing.  We’ll have to put our heads together and work out what we can do to change things.  We do realise there are a variety of reasons for the l...

The lot has fallen to me (Melinda) to update you about the goings on in Phnom Penh.  I was originally planning to just copy something from the group email I sent out last week... and then I thought that wouldn't be fair on the people who'd received the email and were looking for something more... so I procrastinated for a while... and then on Sunday morning inspiration hit! Worship Service!! Worship Service is a name that the Cambodian Ecclesia has picked up somewhere along the line.  They use it interchangeably with Memorial Meeting. This Sunday morning, sitting in the worship service and participating in the singing, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of thankfulness and praise. Five short years ago the Phnom Penh worship service consisted of Jonathan, Sara-Rose, Bro Him, Sis Loy, some interested friends and myself.  Jonathan gave every exhortation.  Over time Bro Him took responsibility for chairing and reading.  And I always played the keyboard...

Nice and early on Thursday morning, Jonny, Melinda, Sam, Him, Theavy, Luke, Maisy, Saruon, the Hugheses and myself all bundled onto the bus for the trip down to see K, Sarah, Ezekiel, Srey Puov, Sam, Jordan, Jonno, Ren, Theung and Savvy at the BEC in Sihanoukville. After snoozing our way through the trip we arrived in the beachside town just in time for lunch, which just proves my theory that while over here in Cambodia my whole life revolves around my next meal. After spending the day on Friday being snorkeling, sunbaking, volleyball playing tourists we got down to the most important aspect of our visit: the seminars. Saturday afternoon brought the first 2 sessions, during which we firstly had Jonny speak to the group about Introducing God and Tim Hughes speak on Introducing Jesus. Then after another delicious meal courtesy of Theavy and Maisy we heard Luke speak about the Kingdom of God. We had about 15 interested people come to hear the seminars which was fantastic, and we even ...

After Rathmines bible school I headed to Sydney airport. After a flight to china, where it was freezing, I went on another plane to Phnom Penh. After getting a visa I was met by brothers Sam Hallmark and Jordan Riley. They called our tuktuk driver, brother Tuth, who had been baptised a few days before. After a stop at the BEC to drop off my luggage, we went out to the bible school. It was held at the lucky star hotel just a few streets away. We saw in the New Year with a lot of dancing, and food. Then it was late when we went back to the BEC for bed. Next morning, my room managed to sleep through an alarm and missed breakfast. We hastily went to the hotel, arriving late. Just as we walked in brother Raju made an announcement about people being late. I joined the same group as Sam. Our group was behind, but with K and D translating we made good progress and finished our classes at about the same time the rest of the groups did. We had tea at the dorms and then we played a game of socc...

We are studying teaching at Uni and in our Uni holidays came over to Cambodia to teach at LCDI School. We arranged with the principal to teach 4 hours in the morning – Tabby health and Kiri history, and then return in the afternoon to teach Bible to whoever wanted to learn.  We set up two bible study classes – Kiri teaching with Rasmey to translate for the newer English students, and Tabby teaching the more advanced English students. Right from the start, we were amazing at how, despite half of them being older than us, they were so respectful, grateful and willing to learn. Our bible study students were all very keen to learn, asked interesting and insightful questions and were all very excited about the kingdom of God and eternal life, as it gave them a real hope to look forward to. One boy asked “but how can we get baptized?!”. We were very surprised on the first night teaching from 4:30 till after 6 when it was too dark to see anymore. The mosquitoes were biting and we had...