Monday, April 19, 2010

7th Anniversary of Good News Baptist Church

This past Sunday the Good News Baptist Church of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, celebrated its 7th anniversary.  We had a wonderful day!  Some of the highlights included: 7 new converts getting baptized, meeting in our brand new auditorium, presenting awards to 36 people who said all 12 of the monthly memory verses last year, and having a guest speaker on Sunday night to kick off a four night revival meeting.  Here are a few photos from the day.  

This first picture is of part of the crowd that was there for the morning service.



Several years ago while teaching on the importance of the Bible, I mentioned that it is important to memorize verses.  Several middle-aged ladies told me after the service that there was just no way they could memorize verses.  At the time, I was translating the book "Changed Into His Image" by Jim Berg, and he has a great section in that book on people who say they can't memorize verses.  I gently rejected their excuses and began to encourage them to try to memorize something short.  Over the last couple of years, 2 of these same ladies who told me they couldn't do it have been making excellent progress at Scripture memory.  This past year, both ladies publicly quoted all 12 verses for the year!  I was thrilled to give them their reward.  The picture below shows Ming Mallee receiving a framed picture with a Bible verse on it.  Her husband also quoted all of his verses.


The next picture is Ming Munee getting baptized.  By the way, in case you are wondering why every lady appears to have the same first name...Ming is not a name but a title.  It means aunt.  It is a friendly yet proper title for me to call women who are between the ages of 40 and 60.  There are many different titles to call someone here in Cambodia, and they are all based upon the age of the person speaking and the age and gender of the person being spoken to.  In other words, I call these ladies Ming and so do most of the adults between 20 and 40, but children, teens, and older adults would call them by a different title.  It takes a while to get the hang of it.  So, this woman (below) is named Munee, but I call her Ming Munee (Aunt Munee).  She is the lady with AIDS about whom I recently wrote in one of my email updates. She hasn't missed a Sunday since the first time she came a couple of months ago.


The next picture is the group of folks who were baptized after the morning service.  I will name them all here because I have written specifically about each one of them in recent letters and updates.  Left to right: Hawn, Roatana, Mon Ta, Srey Line, Munee, and Nuet.  Many of you have prayed for these folks, and I thought you would appreciate seeing a picture.


My son was very excited to wear a tie to church on Sunday.  He also insisted that I wear my light blue shirt so we could match.  


My good friend, Rodney Ruppel, came over on Sunday night to preach.  He preached a tremendous message on the fear of the Lord.  It was a great starting message for a revival meeting.  I know God used it to speak to many hearts. 


We thank God for a wonderful day with our church family, and we look forward to seeing what God has in store for the future!

2 comments:

  1. Very pleased to hear all the good news. Glad to see teens and adults being baptized. We are doing the monthly memory verses here too, and I think this is the first attempt at memory work for many of our church folks. We are also having a three-day revival this week with Bro. Johnson.

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  2. Hard to belive that you are now seven your with your own work. It seems like yesterday you were my right arm on the bus. We can really be getting old? Love you and your family. The blue shirts look great.

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