Sandok’s Testimonies

A voice called me in the darkness and flooded my life with light.  My name is Sandok.  In 1996, my father was a Khmer Rouge Commander.  Where we lived in Southern Pursat Province was experiencing drought, the cattle had nothing to eat.  My father sent me to take the herd about 30 kilometers north to the east of the city of Pursat where there was grass for them to graze.  I arrived and set up camp along highway 5.  Late that night, a pastor was traveling to Pursat so he asked if he could stay with me since I had already built a fire.

He shared the gospel, it went against everything I knew because the Khmer Rouge taught that there is no God.  Jesus came into my heart in a strong way that night.  The next morning, the pastor left me a Bible before he went on his way.  That day I read my Bible as the cattle grazed, I experienced incredible joy.  I went to lay down and just before I fell asleep I heard a voice call to me, “Come follow me!”  I replied, “Who is that? Come out and see me!”  I looked and looked but there was no one to be found except the cows.

I thought to myself, “Maybe I am dreaming?”  So, I laid down again, I was almost asleep when I heard the voice again, “Come follow me!”  This time I was certain someone was there.  I looked and looked but again could find no one.  I became afraid, I thought one of the cows was talking.  I tried to sleep again, but the voice came back and said, “This is the Lord Jesus Christ, and I want you to follow me and tell others about me.”

I was so happy!  I found a man to watch the cows and I set out from village to village telling them the good news.  I could not keep it to myself, I had to tell people.  I shared how Jesus came to set us free from our past sins and give us a new life.  All we simply have to do is believe that he died on the cross for us and rose from the dead to prove he had power over death.  The people in the villages were happy to find a way to be free and I watched as whole villages came to faith in Christ.

Someone told my father that I had become a Christian and had abandon the herd to follow Christ.  My father was furious!  He vowed, “I will kill him! He has betrayed me!”  He set out to find and kill me, but every where he went to look, the people were so happy that they had found Jesus that they pointed my father in the wrong direction in order to protect me.

After several days my father went home to find that he had been robbed of all his belongings.  He remembered the joy of the people that I had led to Christ, he fell to his knees and prayed, “I need to know the God of my son”.  He sent a courier to find me.  The courier told me that my father no longer wanted to kill me, but that he wanted to know my God.  I immediately went home and led my father to accept Jesus into his heart.

My whole family, five brothers and my father, now serve as pastors.  We have started hundreds of churches, helped raise more than a thousand orphans, and led thousands of people to faith in the God who came to earth as a man to set us all free and give us eternal life.