Celebration time!
There is so much to celebrate and give thanks to God for in life! Here is an update of our October news;
We are so thankful for a month packed full of ministry opportunities, fellowship and friendship. God is so good, He is faithful, and when we place our lives and plans in His hands, He goes over and above in the way of blessing and guiding our hearts. Faith in Christ is a journey of commitment and honour and just living in a way that truly gives thanks as we focus on Him and follow the purposes He has for us; That enables us to flourish in all that we do. There are many distractions in this life, many avenues we could go down and many ‘gods’ we could focus on, that do not honour the One True God. May we be challenged in our lives to put our hearts into the hands of the One who created us in love, the One who plans and prepares the way so that all things will work together for the good, no matter what! (Romans 8:28). Now that's the God to put your hope and confidence in, for life!
Deuteronomy 6:13-14 puts it clearly;
‘Honour the Lord your God, worship only Him, and make your promises in His name alone. Do not worship other gods, any of the gods of the peoples around you.’
This past month we have celebrated the opening of our new church rental space, we have celebrated old friends coming to join worship services and fellowship groups, some members haven't join us since COVID, and others who have yet to trust in the Lord. We have celebrated the start of our new English course which serves our community and creates opportunities to meet more people. We celebrate the ability of our Pastors who ran a successful ‘1st steps’ preaching seminar for our CGGC male members. We have celebrated new life as we visited a sweet friend and her baby and had the opportunity to pray and encourage her in a challenging family situation. We have celebrated time away with our dear friends visiting us, Jay and Laura, to encourage other good friends of ours who serve internationally also and the reunion was so special, as was the opportunity for Chetra and I to give a special talk during our visit. (Pictured with our friends below, including a lovely Chinese Christian brother who was a joy!).
We have celebrated a long awaited marriage in Christ, that we know will result in blessings for that family and service to the Lord in the work here; and we celebrate the fact that this was Chetra's first time to officiate a wedding! I also give thanks to God for the many incredible conversations I am able to have with my new language tutor as she supports my Bible reading skills and the advancement of my vocabulary and teaching skills in Khmer; discussing the Bible with a non-believer excites my soul and brings so much joy, she is showing much interest and intrigue into the Scriptures and that is wonderful. We also celebrate other learning opportunities such as the recent 'Super Book' kids ministry training that us three missionary ladies took part in. Perhaps we were all a little curious as to how much we could fully understand of a training seminar in Khmer but it went really well, we each engaged and had lots of fun and can share what we have learned with others later on as we have it in mind to lead our own Sunday-school training to help encourage the Cambodian women from our churches to get involved.
We also give special thanks to God as CGGC celebrated 6 years of our Chom Chao Church! (Picture above). Year by year we see God's faithfulness to sustain us and the ministries here and the wonderful fruit of much labour. We congratulate Pastor Rathy and Sister Channtha as they are training their members well, to step up and take on new roles, they felt this was evident during the celebration as they could finally take a moment to breathe from their many roles and responsibilities all these years, and enjoy seeing everyone do their part and serve together.
There is much being done, but so much more to do! There is so much to give thanks for as the Lord remains so faithful. And doors of opportunity continue to open. Thankful for your faithfuness to pray for us all here.
