10 Prayer Requests For Our Medical Clinic Outreach

Image courtesy of Sura Nualpradid at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This coming week (May 27th - 30th) we will be hosting a free medical clinic at our church as an evangelistic outreach. Healthcare in Cambodia is generally not too good, and many of Cambodia's poorest people do not have the money to obtain even substandard healthcare. God has laid it upon the heart of Bro. Bradley Edmondson, director of Medical Missions Outreach, to bring his team of volunteer medical professionals from the U.S. to conduct this clinic. His team will be providing the medical expertise and the needed medicines, and my team (our church and some other area missionaries) will be providing the translators and logistical support as well as sharing the Gospel. Also, a missionary friend from Singapore, Bro. Chantha Chhim, will be coming with his wife and children and a few of his converts from their new church plant in Singapore. We are excited about this wonderful opportunity to share God's love by meeting some of the physical needs of the people and pray God will open doors to meet the greatest need of all, salvation through faith in Christ. 

Here are 10 specific prayer requests for this outreach.

The Benefield's 2011 Furlough Video

This is the video that we showed on our furlough (fall of '11 through summer of '12). If you are a pastor or church member of one of our supporting churches and we did NOT visit your church on this past furlough, I hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to see a report on your investment in Cambodia. 

A number of people who saw this video last year requested a copy or a link where it could be viewed again or shared. Finally...here it is! We originally intended to post this video immediately upon the completion of our furlough, but technical difficulties prevented that from happening. Special thanks to my good friend, Adam Wood, for taking some time to help me figure out and resolve the problem.

Shall We Plead With Sinners?

One of the sad byproducts of this modern age where "tolerance is king" is that Christians have lost the  urgency of the Gospel message. We are so afraid of being criticized, ostracized, or marginalized that we oftentimes unintentionally make our presentation of Christ sound like something that can be taken or left with no consequence. I have read statements from so-called "Christian" mission organizations that went something like this: "We are not here to proselytize. We are just here to show the people love and compassion. If they choose to believe like us, that is fine. If not, that is fine too."

To be sure, there are some tactics being used in an attempt to reach people for Christ that are wrong and inappropriate. But just because there are unethical men who would try to bully or trick a person into making a "profession of faith," that does not mean that we should go to the other extreme and be tepid and timid in our presentation of the Gospel. There are times that a person hears the Gospel explained and readily agrees to believe on Christ. But what about the times that a person hears the Gospel and then sets up camp in the valley of indecision? How should we deal with fence-sitters? Should we leave procrastinators alone? Should we simply give them the message from God and then walk away? Is any amount of pressure justified? If so, how much? In other words, shall we plead with sinners?

Enough To Go Around

© Anatoliy Babiychuk | Dreamstime Stock Photos

In 1980, Cambodia was just emerging from one of the most horrific periods of time that any nation has ever endured. Between 1975 and 1979, the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, under the leadership of the infamous Pol Pot, abused the Cambodian people in a way that is hard to describe and even harder to comprehend. An estimated 2 million people died either of starvation, malnutrition, or disease or were killed outright by the Khmer Rouge. When the North Vietnamese defeated the Khmer Rouge in 1979 (or at least drove them out of the highly populated areas and into their jungle hideouts) they assumed by default the responsibility of picking up the pieces of the Khmer Rouge's razing of the country and its people. I recently read an account of that time in Cambodia's history and the difficulty that was faced in getting emergency aid distributed to the people, and it gave me some things to think about with relation to the Great Commission.

Rats in the Rice

When the Vietnamese rolled into town, their first task was dealing with the starvation, malnutrition and sickness that abounded on every hand at some of the greatest levels ever seen in modern history. Sadly, when foreign aid and relief began to come flooding in, they had a very difficult time getting it properly distributed to those who were in need. Ships waited for weeks to dock and unload, because of the interminably long time (mostly due to inefficiency) that it took to unload each ship. Once rice and other aid was unloaded, the distribution was just as bad, if not worse. Various aid organizations had donated 1,100 trucks for delivering food and relief supplies, but they were misappropriated, kept mostly around Phnom Penh and used for transporting people. Meanwhile, the stockpile of rice and other food items was getting infested with rats as it sat undelivered. Journalist Henry Kamm went on a 500 mile journey on the main roads and saw only 3 of the relief trucks. Every time he stopped in a village, he was told the same story: very little rations had been delivered and no seed at all. Mr. Kamm told of meeting a 25 year-old man who pedaled his bike for two weeks from Kampong Cham province to Phnom Penh in search of rice. With 80 pounds of rice strapped to his bike rack he began to push it back home. His family was waiting, he said. Instead of distributing the relief supplies and food, certain people at the top of the "food chain" were hoarding it. High ranking Cambodian officials were eating very well while the rest of the people were still starving. Many who had enough for their own family seemed unconcerned with the plight of those who had nothing.

Such As I Have Give I Unto Thee

During the month of January, I am teaching a series in Sunday School on "How To Lead Others To Christ." I'm thankful that on the whole, our church members are unashamed to identify with Christ. They are constantly requesting Gospel tracts to hand out, consistently bringing friends, family, and neighbors to church, and continually taking flak for their faith in Jesus Christ. However, when it comes to Christians being able to personally lead a soul to Christ, we need to grow. We have some who are very competent in that area, but not enough. 

Two Sundays ago, after I preached from Acts 8 about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, a good number of our people raised their hand in the invitation to express the following decision: "I have never personally led someone to Christ, but with God's help, I want to establish a goal this year to both learn how to lead a soul to Christ and actually lead someone to Christ." I would like to ask my blog readers who pray for our ministry to make this issue a matter of prayer in 2013. 

Interestingly, just a few days after preaching this message, I was reading a devotional by Charles Spurgeon and I came across this:

On Being An Effective Messenger

© Algimantas Balezentis | Dreamstime Stock Photos

In the Bible, although angels were used by God for a variety of purposes, the primary use was to deliver a message. In fact, the very word "angel" means "messenger." Webster's 1828 Dictionary further defines an angel as "one employed to communicate news or information from one person to another at a distance." Angels played a huge role in the story of Christ's birth, delivering messages from God to Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and likely to the wise men. But it is the angel's message to the shepherds that has struck me as being very similar to the part that we believers have been asked to play in God's master plan of redemption. Just as God dispatched an angel with a specific message for a specific group of people on a Bethlehem hillside, God has dispatched us with a specific message for a specific group of people. We have been commissioned to bear the Gospel to a lost and dying world.

The problem is, some messengers, while their heart may be in the right place, are extremely ineffective. A few days ago one of the men in our church told me about a "messenger" he saw walking the streets near a busy market. The man, a foreigner, was carrying a megaphone, and his message consisted of two words and one dramatic hand motion.  First he would say (into the megaphone) "Jesus." Then he would slowly extend his arm and point up to the sky. Then he would speak another word into the megaphone, "Heaven." He walked all around the market repeating this phrase and hand motion again and again, and saying nothing else. According to my friend, half the people were amused and the other half of the people were confused. And no wonder! Regardless of the sincerity of the man, he was an ineffective messenger.