Love, Life and Death in Cambodia!
At 11:30pm on Sat, August, 3rd, our phone started ringing. It was district supervisor Savang from Siem Reap province calling to ask for urgent prayer for her sister Pastor Savee from Phadau Penh in Kampong Speu province. Pastor Savee is seriously overweight and had been taken by ambulance to the Russian Friendship Hospital in Phnom Penh with a severe case of COVID-19 delta variant. The doctors examined her and told her family there was nothing they could do. Her lungs were completely shot and she should go home to die. The hospital agreed to let her sleep on a cot in the hall that night. Prayers for her went on throughout the night. The next morning, she was sitting up on her cot talking. The amazed doctors retested her and could not find any COVID. Today she’s fully recovered and back preaching.
That same evening on Sat, August 3rd, the orphan boy who married a local girl in our machine shed last year and had a baby 1&1/2 months ago decided to celebrate by drinking a can of “Sting” (similar to Red Bull). The young mom died of a heart attack at 9:00 pm. They cremated her on our rice drying runway at noon last Sunday. Paul Mok’s wife is going to raise the baby! Paul says he’s going to be a farmer! Life, death and love simultaneously.
You remember Paul Mok, our rice farm manager? He had a massive stroke about 2 months ago but his recovery has been amazing! He is working way too hard but we have someone actually trying to destroy him. While he was in Phnom Penh for his last check up, someone drove our big CAT tractor into the river; it was underwater for hours. The foreman should have exposed the treachery but our workers were afraid to tell Paul, as they were under the total control of the foreman. They dragged the soggy machine out of the water with our other dozer, drained off the water in the engine oil and got it running. Paul came back and was using it to plant our second crop when the engine totally quit. It was ruined! Paul Mok found mud had plugged the oil filter.
They worked day and night to rebuild it. An 80-year-old worker even ground the crankshaft in the field with emery cloth and twine string. We managed to catch the saboteur, but after serious reflection and repentance, we kept him on. We assumed he operated under the great Cambodian commandment, “Thou shalt never speak ill of thy fellow Cambodian”. We suspect this is a survival tactic learned from the Pol Pot genocide. Conversely, another learned skill is the power of subtle rumor and innuendo. You can have your enemies killed and maintain an aura of complete innocence. We knew there were forces out to destroy Paul Mok and the rice farm but we had no idea of the depth of the deceit. Our FCOP Board knew there were serious errors in the land deed registration and that we needed to get them in order. We soon had a major revelation of our error.
We sent general supervisor and active military police major, Som Art, to do some investigative research. What he discovered was a great shock to our internal trust. We’d been deceived! We knew of high level corruption at the farm under our former national leader and his brother (who had been the farm manager) but we did not realize the continuation of the rot through the active participation of two current district supervisors, the foreman, a former local pastor who died earlier this year, and the former township director who is also dead. They are all in direct rebellion against God’s directives of Proverbs 6:12-19. Som Art worked with the current township and county directors to expose the plot to kill Paul Mok and steal our rice land. We found evidence showing that they already have stolen 125 acres. This exposure of corruption has given me a sense of completion of mission; a confirmation of the importance of the farm. These individuals were using active witchcraft to direct demonic attacks against Paul Mok. These are men who confess Christ but, “They are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame—who set their mind on earthly things” Philippians 3:18-19 NKJV. Now they have actually stolen from the orphans they swore to protect, the orphans have cried out, and these individuals will reap the wrath they have sown.
Paul Mok got the crop in and then the rains came as a torrent! He’s been up drawing water off fields most nights and got really sick. He had the local guys scrape him with “Tiger Balm” and a flat washer… he looked like a tiger. God had mercy on me and spared his life once again. But, I came down with strep throat and became dehydrated. Dr. Lina pumped 12 bottles of IV fluid into me over the next 3 days and put me on Ivermectin based protocol from America’s Frontline Doctors. Other than losing my appetite and feeling lost for a week, I’m on the mend! Dr. Lina and our nurse Khemerin ran over sixty COVID tests on people with symptoms but all came back negative except for one.
The rains have been a terrible trial. We have one 260-acre field that is the best rice we’ve ever raised. It could fill all 4 of the bins you helped me build. Pray the rain stops! We will need food. China’s obsession with world domination and forced artificial food shortages by their stranglehold on the shipping containers of the world is really hurting us. Shipping containers are hard to get and cost us 80% more than one year ago. It’s a China manipulated catastrophe. To cover their evil plot, they started the rumors that local governments are paying farmers 1.5x the value of their crops to destroy them. It’s a fabrication and the mainstream media and Google are promoting it. No farmer would destroy their crop for any price if hungry people needed it! If government officials tried this, they would find themselves reduced to crop fertilizer. Don’t fall for the media lies!
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