Christian Life Gospel Center, PJ @ Poipet

The kids at the Poipet children center had so much fun learning the bible last week with a team of people from Christian Life Gospel Center, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. The week long programme included a 4 Day Kids Camp entitled Treasure Island and workshops on guitar and balloon sculpting. We were also glad to have four youth from the children center at the Kracheh province joined us. It is good to see them learning to minister to the younger ones here.

The camp focused on three aspects of a child – spiritual, social and physical. The spiritual aspect was being addressed through the bible teaching sessions and the one-to-one group time with each child. While the social and physical aspects were addressed through the game sessions. In this camp, children learned discipline and respect for one another. We saw positive changes in some of them as they responded to the word of God and words of encouragement from the team.
The team also shared and taught the Word of God every night to the leaders here to encourage and affirm them of the work that they are doing here. During this time several children also experienced the healing of God as some of them were sick.

We thanked God for His faithfulness and love for the children here and His providence that every need was being met each day. All glory to God!


Balloon sculpting: The team teaching the older ones on sharing the gospel through balloon sculpting.


Teaching session: Kid interact with the team leader during one of the teaching sessions.


Ministering to the leaders.


Icebreaker


Guitar lessons: Simon Kang with the kids.


Guitar lessons: Tammy Leong with the kids.


Group cheer from the parrots!


The monkey group!


The team getting ready for the camp day.


Game: Flip it right.


Game: scissors, papper, stone & WET the game master!!!


Game: Telematch


The game masters.


The game master giving instructions on the game.


Teaching session: Illustrating a point through acting.

Children's Center in Poipet

After nearly 18 months of exhausting work the new children’s center in Poipet,
Cambodia was dedicated. The Deputy Prime Minister, Keo Kim Yan, was the one to
officiate the dedication ceremonies along with Governor Oeung Oen, the Governor of
Banteay Meanchey province.
There were over 2,000 guests including members of the National Assembly, Senate,
Military, Police, all provincial officials, business community, and organizations. Since its
inception our desire was to include all government, local business people, international
community and the community in meeting this need. On this day thousands of people
involved came together to celebrate the dedication.
The Deputy PM made a personal donation of 3 million Riel ($750) along with other
donations of bicycles, beds, dishes, and chairs by other officials. The Deputy PM also
called on other officials to use this center as a “Model Center” for the nation.
At the center, apart from general education, we also teach the children English,
computers, agriculture, and music which is all centered around the Word of God and
character based discipleship. We are also hoping to start a crisis pregnancy center and
kindergarten on the site as well in the near future.
Currently we are housing 34 children but we are prepared to take on more children
immediately. The capacity of the center is 100 children. We will soon be taking in
children (approximately 15-20) who were born to female inmates and have no place to
care for the children. These kids, because they have no home, are being held in prison
in the general population. There are still hundreds, if not thousands, of abandoned and
orphaned children in this area as well.
Please continue to pray for us and the new center in Poipet, Cambodia. We still need
further assistance and are offering sponsorship of the children at $35 per month. At
present, we have more than 70 children in Kracheh Province and 34 here in Poipet and
the number will soon grow.

New Friends:)

New Kids

The kids have been back in school for almost a month now and they’re finally starting to get into the swing of things again. 15 new kids have come to live at the Center for the new school year. Most of them are in second and third grade but there are a few older ones as well. Adding 15 kids to a family of 60 is actually a pretty big adjustment. There are a lot of things to get used to at the Center. New classes, new rules, new books and a whole lot of new faces, but the new kids are making friends with the ones that have been there for a while and it is working out well.






Heights Church from Arizona

Heights Church sent a team of ten hardworking men and women to help finish up the new boys dorm. They painted shutters, windows and walls. They moved sand, rock and dirt. They laid cement and cut hardwood boards with nothing but a handsaw and they did it all with a smile on their faces. Gina from southern California also joined in the fun and together they all showed great compassion by serving in a practical way.

In the middle of all their hard work and sweat they found some time to play with the kids and have fun too. Volleyball and soccer are always a big hit for the kids, but the team also brought face-paint, cards, Rubik’s cubes, sparklers, crazy hats, glow sticks and best of all s’mores! It was like a carnival at some points and of course the kids ate up all the attention and fun times. Relationships were started and new friends were made. Of course everyone was very sad to see them go but we’re all hoping they’ll be back again someday soon.

SUMMER UPDATE:)

NEW LEARNING CENTER

We’ve been working on getting a learning center in town ready for quite awhile now. There is still work to be done on the place but we decided to run a summer English program for the past two months to test it out. The summer interns, Tim Van Hal and Christine Law, joined forces with the staff and kids from the Kracheh Children’s Center to teach three different levels of English. We limited the number of students to only 30 but we had so many students asking to learn that we had a couple of the older kids from the Children’s Center teach a class all on their own.
Kids had fun learning, relationships were built and we have people calling us all the time asking when the next sign up is for more classes. At this point we’re hoping to continue in October when the kids are back in school although it will be more of a challenge with fewer people around to teach. We are also getting requests to learn computer which we hope to teach in the near future. We’ve been working on creating a computer lab but currently only have enough to teach the kids that we already have at the Center.
Summer Kids Camp






SUMMER KIDS CAMP

For the past four weeks the mornings at the Children’s Center have been filled with summer camp fun for sixth grade and down. Children from the village came and joined the kids at the Center to learn, sing songs, play games and do arts and crafts. Over 80 kids attended. Some of the older ones had the opportunity to be leaders and they all got to practice working together. Everyone had fun and hopefully learned something in the process.









NEW BOYS HOUSE

The Children’s Center continues to expand with the addition of another boys house. All of the boys at the Center have been crowded into one house and it is pretty tight sleeping and living quarters. The new house will give everyone a bit more space as well as make room for more students. A construction team has been working hard all summer and the house is going up quickly.

KRACHEH

Summer vacation is here and what better way to spend it than going to summer school? The older kids are out of school for the summer so we hired two high school teachers to come to the Center and teach five days a week. From 7 a.m. until 11 a.m. the kids are getting a head start in math, chemistry and language studies. They’re working hard and hopefully learning enough to give them a better understanding of the next year’s curriculum.

We also have two more English speakers that have come to help teach the kids for the summer. So there are extra English and reading classes for the kids in the morning and afternoon. They’re also getting coaching in piano and trombone. The kids enjoy having new people around to learn with and play with.


NEW SCHOOL

We’ve been working on getting a house in town ready to open up as a school for anyone to come and learn at. For the past year people have been coming and asking us if they can learn English and computer with us but we haven’t been ready. We’ve finally opened it up for a test run. We’re teaching three different levels of English for six weeks for free. We told the kids at the Center that we especially wanted to help their friends who wanted to learn English but were too poor to pay for classes. We limited the number of students to 30 because of classroom size.
Classes have been going since July 13th and we’ve had to turn away over 20 kids because the classes were too full. Some of the kids from the Center are helping to teach and making new friends while they’re at it. It is going well and people are having fun!





COMING UP...

In August we’re going to be running a four-week summer camp for the younger kids and their friends. It will be in the mornings and we’re hoping to give them one of the most exciting summers of their lives!