FCOP International

July 6, 2016

Pa Thom in USA

We had another busy month with me beginning it by attending the Foursquare Convention for the first week of June. I spoke in five different churches on the mainland and Hawaii and got our first FCOP support from Hawaiian churches. At the “Potters House” in Vacaville, CA, USA, I spoke for just a few minutes at a Thursday evening prayer meeting and Missions Pastor Tim Nalley and Senior Pastor Dave Patterson took our little video and raised $20,000 USD for the printing of our Catechism in their next service. May God Bless them!

July 6, 2016

Rice Farm in USA

Sonny Weimer went with me and we visited with our friend and rice agronomist, Dave Sills, at his farm near Sacramento, CA. We always learn new things with endless amounts of potential!

July 5, 2016

A True Hero!

Sophat or Mak Phat (translated as Mom) as she is known as in FCOP church homes was born in the late 1940s and grew up as a beautiful young woman in Pursat, Cambodia. She received a 7th grade school education and later married into a good family and had three children with her first husband, a successful lumber businessman in the city. Not long after the Khmer Rouge regime took over Cambodia in the 1970s, her husband was killed and she lost their home and property. After working in the collective system and barely surviving the Cambodian holocaust of the …

June 3, 2016

Healthy Kids = Healthy Futures

What’s a rice crop have to do with building a church and protecting thousands of young Cambodians from “Human Trafficking”? We always knew that Thany and his two younger brothers, who were raised at FCOP, were prime victims for human trafficking but I never really understood the depths of his emotions until we sat down to do a short video (see video here and please feel free to use this video in any way that will help defeat this common enemy of the human race). As for Thany, he could use some math lessons! He realized after the fact, that he …

June 3, 2016

First Rice Planting of the Year

Who would have thought that in the midst of the worst drought in a hundred years, we’d have a problem completing our rice planting because it is too wet and muddy? Three prophets stood over me in February a pronounced, “The drought is broken!” Because of that, I was inclined to plant in mid April but all the experts were warning farmers to hold off planting until July. When I asked that we start planting all the farmers in our rice farm village seemed to be in agreement, “Don’t do it! Rice seed is very hard to get and it …

June 3, 2016

Cambodia’s Golden Rule

One of the great commandments of Cambodia is: “Thou shalt build higher than thy neighbor!” Church homes we built fifteen years ago in remote areas of their prospective cities have seen development surround them. Even though when we built the homes more than a meter of fill was hauled in to raise them above flood grade, everyone in the area who built always adds at lest half a meter more fill than the neighbor. Even though Cambodian roads are rife with signs explaining that it is illegal to build higher than the roadway, it is the most thoroughly ignored law …

June 3, 2016

Same Church, New Dirt

Living Water Church from Olympia Washington came to the rescue they hauled in truckloads of fill and built a dike around the Our Kachey church home in Battambang, Cambodia. Working like slaves, they hauled hundreds of cubic meters of soil to build a dike around the church home, that 15 years ago was built higher than the road, which now it is almost two meters lower than the new construction nearby. The first floor of the church rapidly becomes a lake when the rains fall. Thanks Team! Hopefully, the church will be dry!

June 3, 2016

Painful Reality Check

When the unfortunate news came in, it hit us like a ton of bricks. This very same day that Thany’s daughter came into the world we lost another. Veasna had grown up with us and was one of the first orphans we cared for in the Mondolkiri province. We sent him to trade school at Don Bosco and he moved on to open and run a café where he was from. He was killed in a motorcycle accident. These are always painful times for us. You would think that with 18,000 kids that the loss of one would not hurt …

May 5, 2016

Stop Human Trafficking

“What! FCOP is the number one organization for the prevention of “Trafficking” in Cambodia?” I think my mouth fell open, but as a prominent Cambodian businessman started to explain, he talked about something that never occurred to me. “Most of the kids trafficked into the sex trades and into forced labor (slavery) are orphaned, abandoned, or separated children, they have no one to advocate for them. You’ve kept 18,000 kids from being trafficked. Who else has done that much?” So, we started to check it out. Most of the kids in our care, that we talked to, have been propositioned, …

May 5, 2016

“A Monk?”

I feel like one of those 10th century monastic scribes. Rising at 4:30-5:00 am, going to bed at 10:30pm and living off of Campbell’s Soup. For two weeks I focused on a project that I have been struggling with for 18 years, basically because there is no precedent for it. It isn’t that it was extremely difficult, just different! I don’t think it has happened for 1900 years. It may get me excommunicated or stoned, but FCOP now has an official Catechism. What? Thats correct, and I’m not a Catholic. I had to look the word up! Basically, it means: “A …

May 5, 2016

Proclaimer

We are so grateful for the “Proclaimers!” They are an audio Bible produced by Faith Comes By Hearing in New Mexico, USA. These allow people who are “oral learners” (never went to school to learn to read or write) to become powerful leaders in the church! Some our best pastors use the “Proclaimer” which has dramatized versions of the Cambodian Bible in two versions, we also have a Lao version for the Northern Tribal people who usually speak the Lao language. There is no way I can overstate the value of these devises! Pastors who can’t read or write have …

May 5, 2016

Clean Water

Clean drinking water is a big problem in the drought. Thirsty people will drink anything, and that becomes a big health issue. Fortunately, Lukas Graf and our former staff member, and now Jenny Graf showed up from Switzerland with a team and worked for a couple weeks testing and installing water filtration units. These are a combination of concrete sand filters that have been manufactured by FCOP at our national training center by Bob Hollandsworth and some newly developed filters from Switzerland. When these devices are hooked together they make a great combination for producing clean, clear, bacteria free, water …