FCOP International

December 1, 2014

Rice Harvest

Rice is being harvested! It’s too early to tell how good it will be, but even though many people questioned the wisdom of planting the third time, it looks like it will pay off. When you farm you don’t quit. It is the same principle used in ministering to the hopeless. Ecclesiastes 11:4 states: “He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who observes the clouds will not reap.” We keep on plugging away, and the only farmers with a crop of quality in our region, is FCOP. We’ve already harvested some seed rice which we knew was …

December 1, 2014

Pastor Training

Training never ends here. Our main focus is on training pastors on how to “hear God”. We’ve seen pastors who can’t read and write their own language be able to minister effectively by listening to the Holy Spirit. In fact they are some of our most productive pastors. FCOP is a great believer in teaching the written word, but we’ve found few that teach methods to enable people to actually hear his voice, and none that teach it in a Cambodian context. We are working on that, and it appears we will wind up developing our own curriculum, as there …

December 1, 2014

Dr.Mike Dental Team

Dr. Derrick Dauplaise, Dr. Mike Callan, and Gary Houzenga have been visiting Cambodia several times a year for several years and always have a huge impact with their group of faithful servants sent through Medical Teams International. Dr. Mike brought some dental students from the University of Iowa, and it looks like it may become a regular feature. They served hundreds of our kids, church members, and needy people from the community from Khampong Channang Province. The love of God shown in practical ways is our prime motive for bringing in so many medical and dental teams. Infected teeth make …

December 1, 2014

Container Arrival

We were out of rice. There were four, 40 foot long, shipping containers heading for port and even though they’d been donated for free, we didn’t have the money to clear them through Cambodian customs. Then came our financial miracle. We paid up our past due fees and rice started to flow. Four containers of food stuff were received in November. That’s 88 tons! It may not have been turkey dinner, but it was surely something to be thankful for!

December 1, 2014

Pastor Healed of Terminal Liver Disease

After our financial miracle, Sou had a dream that God was going to do another miracle. We received word that one of our top pastors from near the Vietnam border was dying. He’d been to a local hospital and the doctor gave him the words you never want to hear, “There is nothing we can do. Go home and prepare to die.” We put his name up on our prayer board, and Dr Lina, our staff physician, asked that he be transported to our hospital for further examination. When the pastor arrived, Dr. Lina examined him and confirmed that his liver …

December 1, 2014

Thanksgiving Miracle

Geezers do dream. Acts 2:17b is true! We have much to be thankful for! I learned a big lesson this month; about trusting God. It was truly miraculous and humbling! I feel a little like the starving tiger that got so focused on the flea in his fur that he didn’t even see the water buffalo calf walk by, so he went on being hungry. Make no mistake; our focus is on building the Kingdom of God in Cambodia! But, this work of caring for the orphans, widows and separated children of Cambodia has got to become less dependent …

November 4, 2014

Elders Rise Up

I don’t do this! I make the Cambodian’s do this kind of work. But, they trapped me! Four women, one man, Elders of the Cham Chao Church, stood in front of the congregation of 400 people, at the end of the Sunday service, and announced that God had called them to go evangelize some remote villages in Mak Sophat’s home province of Pursat. Mak Sophat, age 69, widowed twice, has been one of the primary caregivers to FCOP orphans since 1999. We never thought of her as leading an evangelistic team. They insisted that Mak Sou and I come and pray over them for the trip. We barely touched them and down they …

November 4, 2014

Glenn’s Healing

It’s not, “good news”, but fear can be very empowering. The good part about realizing this is that we have a great incentive to operate by God’s invective against fear; “Fear not”! I am nearly convinced that fear is as empowering to the devil to wreak havoc in our lives as faith is to releasing God’s grace. The only reason we don’t get ‘Steam rolled’ is that God is greater than our fears. On the last day of the ECFC Conference our International President, Dr. Glenn Burris, fell ill. I asked our staff physician, Dr. Lina, to spend the night with him. At 1:30AM Dr. Lina called me, “Pa, Dr. Burris is throwing …

November 4, 2014

Booshway Team

Colorado Mountain Men, “Booshway” in local terminology, took on building more than a mile of fence with 125 pound concrete poles for our Pailin Church/home. They not only had to clear the dense growth, but mix the cement by hand, and carry some of the poles nearly a kilometer. Although there were bruised shoulders and blistered feet to go around for all, there were also some revitalized souls. Above all, a bunch of orphans who’d been thinking they were “stray dogs”, now see their lives have real value in the fact that nine men came half way around the world just to give them some security. None of …

November 4, 2014

Rice Harvest

You fall into a pit easy and you crawl out hard.” This now $250,000 US hole we’ve dug, raising three rice crops without a major harvest, has us clamoring for breathing space. We saved about 12 hectares (30 acres) of rice from our second planting because it was valuable seed, even though drought had seriously damaged the yield. We’d paid about $3.00 per kilogram for this “Breeder’s Seed”, and it was what we intended to plant next season. The yield was poor, but because it was planted on newly cleared jungle, the roots went deep, and we did get about 25 tons of seed. The bad part about this was, as we …

November 4, 2014

Food Arrival

Nutrition rice meals have kept us alive for the past 7 months. We usually pay the freight, but that still saves us 50% over the cost of buying rice in Cambodia, and it is very nutritious. One meal per day of this product will give a person the necessary vitamins and minerals for a healthy life. FCOP has developed quite a distribution network around these meals. We have four insulated, climate controlled, 40 foot long “High Cube” containers for the initial storage, two, 5 ton trucks and two, 2 &1/2 ton trucks to haul the product around the country. Keeping our 104 church homes supplied.

November 4, 2014

ECFC 2014

I didn’t exactly “fear” the Eastern Council of Foursquare Churches Biennial Conference, (ECFC) which we hosted in Cambodia this year for 500 representatives from 21 nations, but I did flippantly pray (You know? One of those prayers that you know won’t get answered), “God if you could give me a time machine, and just let me leapfrog over those days of October 7th through the 10th, I’d be most grateful!” Job said, “That which I have greatly feared has come upon me. ” And all hell had broken lose in his life. So, I refused to open that door. It’s interesting that in the Bible God tells us 365 times to, “Fear not”. …