The Barna Research Group provides leadership and unique, strategic information and resources that help facilitate transformation in organizations, communities and individuals. The current Barna study indicates that nearly half of all Americans who accept Jesus Christ as their Savior, do so before reaching the age of 13 (43%), and that two out of three born-again Christians (64%) made that commitment to Christ before their 18th birthday.

Jesus gave us a parable of the talents in Matthew 25. He rewarded those who invested the talents where they received the best return. To win our communities and to evangelize the world requires investment. It costs us our time, energy and finances. We see through the focus of the “4/14 Window” and Barna’s research that the greatest return for saved souls is with children and youth.

Most churches and ministries invest the majority of their time, energy and finances trying to reach adults where there are minimal results. Perhaps we should reevaluate and adjust where the greatest return is? As mentioned earlier, none of the facts, focus and research surprise those who have any considerable time invested in ministering to children. Our hopes and prayers are that church leadership around the world would come to understand this. Even beyond all these facts and figures, children are precious! You will find no greater joy than sharing the love of Jesus to a child, especially to children who live in desperate living conditions both locally and around the world.

Tim & Debra Blanarik

Ever get that big question? It’s not loud at all — not even heard by ear, really. But, deep inside, a bit more than a whisper … Will you go? It pulls at something in our core … that part of every Jesus-follower that wants to share this amazing Giver of Life with those still searching, and with others who have given up. We have heard the question in the past. Each time a mission trip was announced there was the question. When we realized the number of local children without families, there was the question. Would the quiet urge win against the questions, doubts and concerns that piled on the other side? Sometimes. Would we focus on fear or allow a deeper search to take place? We have never regretted saying yes.

The Pink Family

In fact, every yes has brought us closer to Jesus. Every step outside our comfort zone has opened our eyes to where His passion is. In New York, we looked into the eyes of the homeless and we met Frank living under a bridge in Pittsburgh. As we offered food, clothing and prayer, doubts and cares of the daily grind were meaningless and only love mattered. The embraces and shining eyes of children in Cambodia, in the aftermath of genocide and cultural decimation, showed us the incredible power that a new hope in Jesus will give. And as we watch our daughter Takaila, adopted at age 8, grow, give her life to Jesus and grow some more, we’re reminded of what yes can mean.

Now the question has come again. This time, it is indeed a big question! Will we go? Will we move to Cambodia? Will we bring the gifts God has given us to teach art and design, love for His creation and love for Him? You can be sure the list of concerns began to fill fast and the doubts over our abilities seemed endless. But we heard, Look at Me instead, at what I have done and can do.

Looking back at God’s work, he had brought Steve from a state of hopelessness into His family and truth and given him a passion for education, a gift for teaching and many opportunities to exercise it and grow in — tech school, college and our church. And through our church, God had brought Christie out of confusion and searching, to Him and, then, to SEAPC, giving her space and clients to grow a design business. He has led her in teaching children about His love, faithfulness and the beauty of His creation. He is guiding us in financial wisdom and (after four years and a generous family) we are officially debt-free. Between our family of three, He is bringing us close, showing us true love and transforming us from the inside out. How can doubt even stand a chance!

We have said yes. A trembling yes, it may be, but God’s faithfulness is astounding us. We plan to leave late 2012 and start Creation Haus. As an affiliate of SEAPC, and working alongside SEAPC-Cambodia, Creation Haus will be an art and design school, reaching out to the NHO children’s homes, CCSN and public schools. Further plans are an artist’s coffeehouse and an apprenticeship program for other Christian professionals to spend short-term trips, teaching the talents they’ve been given. A fantastic group of people have surrounded us with prayers, advice and encouragement. We are speechless, taking one step at a time, and in huge anticipation of what He has ahead!

Steve, Christie & Takaila Pink

We have been so looking forward to getting to India. The excitement mounted. Our seats were quite good (although I was worried about being in row 55), aisle seats with the middle seats open! We were boarded early so it was very empty still. I decided to use the bathroom before any others did, knowing it would be clean. I was becoming aware that we were the only Caucasians around.  When I exited the tiny airplane bathroom, I was face-to-face with a bunch of men headed for their seats. Did I say bunch? I meant pile. As I tried to get to my seat, the crowd of tall Indian men seemed to swarm. They literally climbed over each other to their seats. I was between anger and panic and was verging on tears when I saw myself barge through the tangle firmly saying “excuse me, excuse me” and pushing them aside until I arrived at my own seat and took refuge. Why am I feeling this way… indignant, bothered, out-of-control, outnumbered?

Mark with boys in India

Right before we boarded this flight, I had checked my emails and found one from a missionary we have hand-carried to get on the field and have been doing admin and newsletter mailing for as a service. The email was a scolding to an office staff about how we handled his financial reporting. He was accusing and overbearing, without receiving an explanation which solved the situation quite understandably. This staff person had done nothing but serve the missionary and in no way deserved this treatment. Was I reacting to him instead of the Indian people? Was I tired? Or was I being as ungrateful as he? My feelings were anything but gracious to a group of people I had traveled across the world to pray for and introduce to Jesus who had done nothing wrong to me. Yes, I am humiliated at my first response these people. How ironic my feelings are in light of how I felt about the missionaries’ behavior. His stress must have been very great. So how will I get past this response?

Obviously, I will move on by asking the Lord to forgive me and give me a new heart of peace and love. I have been responding in like kind for days. “Help me, Lord, to act like you. Help me to love like you.” Walking to my seat is not a time to overturn the tables and idols in the sanctuary! I need a quick work, Lord. I am already here among them. I am happy to be here and amazed at God’s goodness to us and yet I am not demonstrating that feeling.

By the time you read this, it will almost be Valentine’s Day. I know He will turn this around and break my heart so I can love like Him. He wants that more than I even do. Thank you for listening to me. I needed to pour it out. Now, I am looking at a piece of blue colored cake, having passed over all the other food on my tray!

Isaiah 25:6-8 is our scripture for this mission. Please pray that I get out of the way and get in God’s path. The picture above is of Mark, always ready to have some fun talking with people to open a door for the Lord to love them. God is good all the time.

WORKERS
Pastor Sinai Phouek and Somalay, Sothea Chap, Sokhom Sor, Lim Lun, Vanna Srun, Hou Bun Heng, Cambodia Christian School Network teachers and administrators and New Hope for Orphans houseparents, caregivers and administrators

DOORS
Siem Reap and future school, children’s home and church locations

FRUIT
Souls to be saved, village children educated and
orphaned/abandoned children sheltered

FINANCES
The Cambodia Christian School Network provides education for over 3,000 students through over 170 teachers. Approximately $12,000 is needed each month to pay the teachers’ salaries and office expenses. New Hope for Orphans cares for 275 children at 10 different locations through approximately 50 caregivers. The child sponsorship need each month is approximately $11,000. For 2012, the estimated budget for all projects in Cambodia is $500,000 plus sponsorships.

BREAKTHROUGH
Establishment of Creation Haus in Siem Reap to develop an
art and design school.

PRAYER WARRIORS
We need hours of intercessory prayer.
Please sign up with Jesus today.

Hubert

I Found God in a Hopeless Place
By  Esther Gayfield

I found God in a hopeless place, a foreign land, in the most remote corner of nowhere.  I was in Laos on a bus to be exact. The bus was old, uncomfortable and much past its prime. I was sitting on a bag of rice in the middle of the aisle, surrounded by supplies, belongings, and people packed into the narrow seats.  Already full from its place of origin, the bus had picked us up along the muddy, red dirt roadside in the tiny village of Sop San. Ahead of us was a 6-hour ride down one lane, unpaved mountain roads to the still, remote town of Sam Neua. We hadn’t encountered running water in days so we had no proper showers. No worries! Judging by the strong odor on the bus neither had many of our travel companions.

I held onto the seats in front of me, elbows propped on my knees for support, swaying with the bus around the twisty turns and bumps in the narrow, unpaved mountain road. The erratic motion frequently jostled me against the legs of the wrinkled soldier sitting in the seat next to me.  You cannot ride a bus here and not get a little cozy with all your seatmates as we quite frequently did during our many bus rides.

It was on this ride when I felt the presence of God in the strongest of ways on this trip. I found God on the bus in the most unlikely of places … or perhaps it is the most likely.  We serve a God who came down, emptied Himself into His son and dwelt among us, experiencing life with the least of us, the most unlikely of people. Our God did not consider Himself above any of this and demonstrated His love in the most vivid of ways. Christ was broke, homeless and spent his time with a motley crew of social outcasts, pouring out His life for us in living and then sacrificing His life for us in dying. Love is not something just to be talked about, it is to be demonstrated by living a life of servanthood, becoming like the least so that the least can become great. Faith without works is dead, the book of James tells us. Our faith in and our experience with the love of Christ must compel us to step out in faith and demonstrate this with action.

It is this love of my Creator, who gave it all up for me, that compelled this city girl to take this trip to work out my faith by finding an unreached people group to share the love of Christ with in the remote mountains of Laos – a place where few foreigners will actually go. The idea for this trip was born from my first trip to this country with my church ten years prior and inspired by the fact that this is one of the most poor, undeveloped countries in the world with many hard to reach places and people groups combined with the fact that Christianity is against the law and highly policed by the government. This was not just another mission trip, but a risky trip with a number of unknowns and the promise that I would, at times, lack the creature comforts of the western world and of modern civilization. But this is their life, their reality. Most Laotians live in poverty, making only an average income of $40 per month.  Outside the cities, most people live in bamboo huts with grass roofs; toilets are still more like outhouses, little more than a hole in the ground.  No running water at times, showers may be in the river or a communal water source out in the open in the middle of the village.  Many roads are dirt.  Some villages can be reached only by foot paths; vehicles cannot yet reach them.  The only semblance of a western home in a village is usually the home of a government official. And these are often no more than a simple concrete structure, one open room with a tin roof.

By the time we left Sop San, our trip had been quite successful. After multiple plane rides and over 16 hours on buses that took us over and around many mountains and an encounter with the police in a very unwelcoming town, God had opened the right doors in Sop San. After quizzing us on our purposes, the head chief of Sop San had given us his blessing to stay at his place and to go where we wanted to go unhindered. They are very skeptical of Westerners around these parts, most likely because they believe that we could be CIA or government. People do not come here for tourism. The rare Westerner is most likely CIA or a “bounty hunter” – someone the CIA has paid to search for MIAs from the Vietnam War. Our location was dangerously close to Vietnam, in an area where the CIA waged a secret war during the 1970s and was heavily bombed by the U.S. during the war. This portion of the country was also the birthplace of the communist party of Laos. The communist government still keeps a stranglehold on the people of this country.The blessing of the head official enabled us to find and reach members of the particular small tribe that we had been looking for. We got to stay with and share with a teacher and his family, leaving them with literature, prayers and blessings. We made connections that other believers will be able to follow up with in the future.

The Encounter

And here we were, beginning our mountain decent, and this was the moment of my sweetest spiritual encounter where I was absolutely overwhelmed with the love of God in the middle of a stinky bus. Such encounters are hard to put into words, but it was an intense and extraordinary feeling of love, joy and peace that came over me, that I felt in every fiber of my being. It was a sweet spirit and the tangible presence of the Creator that I long to feel and walk in every day. The bus may have been jostling, but I felt as if I was floating. I felt as if I was caught up in another dimension, looking at the people God loves with His own eyes and heart. I was not sitting in a church service, not surrounded by believers, but surrounded by those dear to the heart of God, those whom Christ died for just as much as for you and me.

I have sat in many a church service where we cry out and beg God to come down and visit us and move among us in a much longed for spiritual encounter. We sometimes forget that to experience God the strongest, we must step out and work out our life of faith, allowing His Spirit to flow through us as we take action steps. “Act and God will act” is a Joan of Arc quote that I like to frequently repeat. If we want to truly know and experience intimacy with God, I am quite convinced this requires action to go out among His beloved people – those He holds dearest to His heart. Those Christ commanded us to go to when He gave the commission to go and preach the good news throughout the world. God is moving and He is among us, and often in the most unlikely of places. Twenty hours of flying, twelve hours on a train and sixteen hours on a bus far away from anywhere.

Esther Gayfield first made her trip to Laos 10 years ago as a 19-year-old. She has never forgotten about Laos and this is an excerpt from her journal of the most recent trip to the unreached peoples of Laos. Currently she is the Chief Operating Officer of Stafford Hospitality, a company that owns and operates hotels in the southeast US.

We are going together to Hong Kong to soak in the revival that God has brought to GA 611, our home church in Hong Kong. Pastor Joshua and his leadership team have agreed to have the team from Singapore come up and spend time together seeking the Lord about this new work in Singapore. We all have a word from the Lord that, through this work, millions will come to know Jesus and be set free from their bondages. I am so very excited to bring these two men of a great God together.

A team from Hong Kong is preparing to come over to Cambodia to lend assistance to the Cambodia Christian School Network. I can only imagine how they will minister to the teachers and the students they support. This is another example of the way in which the Lord has raised up the SEAPC Global Christian Community. We are “mending nets” to reach the nations and now two great hubs of faith, Singapore and Hong Kong are going to be joined with a thread of relationship.

These are the signs of true revival: spiritual, human, and material resources moving along relational lines to take the knowledge of Jesus to neighbors and nations. Please continue to pray for these wonderful friends as they multiply the message to the masses. Hong Kong and Singapore are two Antioch cities in Asia.

Mark Geppert

Some CCSN elementary students

This month (February), Mark will be heading to Banteay Meanchey Province to spend time with the teachers and students within CCSN. As CCSN continues to grow, this trip is to take a look at the process so far and the goals for the future to see what needs to be done to take the best position possible to accomplish those goals. Of course, the first and most important thing is prayer. He will be spending time with the leaders, praying. Together, they will look at and evaluate everything. They will also take communion together.

Some CCSN teachers

This coming visit is very important for CCSN. We are on the verge of expanding from the schools within the Chamnoam School district in Banteay Meanchey Province to opening schools in other locations around the country. There are land sites ready and as soon as the buildings can be built, the schools will open. This is why it is important to spend time with our brothers and sisters who are working so hard on this project and to look at everything within these model schools in Banteay Meanchey to see what the strengths and weaknesses are for the future. Thousands of children are at stake.

Please pray for this coming trip. There is a sense of quick growth coming and we want to be ready to successfully grow with it to reach as many people as possible in the name of Jesus.

Tina Tomes

I am also excited to announce that I will be coordinating the February campaign from Singapore! Matt, A.J., and I will be staying there from February through September of 2012. So much of the work that SEAPC does is in South East Asia, and we are going to experience life there first-hand for the first time as a family. If you would like to get in touch with me, I can still be reached via email at seapccoins4kids@seapc.us or jessica_geppert@yahoo.com. I look forward to hearing from everyone!

Jessica

Jesus had just healed the man at the pool of Bethesda. The Pharisees were angry because he had done this on the Sabbath and were persecuting him. His response was that God’s reaction was more important than theirs. Who are we listening to? Do we try to get glory for ourselves by doing things to get the praise of man or do we glorify God by obeying Him? There are three things which keep us from God if we focus on man, but if we focus on God, these three things fade away.

1. Pride – Self-righteousness.
Being prideful makes us think that we are the most important. However, as our faith in God grows, we realize that everything is only through Him. We are here through His great mercy and His humble spirit then shines through us.

2. Competition
When we are competitive, we do whatever we can to place ourselves above others and often harm relationships. By obeying God, we become secure in our place in Christ. We realize that we are not in a competition and that everyone is equal. We are better able to work together with others to reach people for Him.

3. Selfishness
Focusing on obtaining everything for ourselves makes us lose sight of the needs of those around us. We let them suffer while we “wallow” in our things. Seeking God’s glory, however, we realize that all is His. Our eyes are opened to those around us and we are encouraged to help them, benefitting everyone.

As this article is being written, we at Nueva Esperanza are in the middle of a seven week prayer emphasis with six other churches. Each week, one church is the focus for prayer and each of the other churches takes a day to go to that church and pray for them so that they are prayed for throughout the week. This will continue for seven weeks until each church has been prayed for. At the end, all seven churches will gather for a combined worship service. The pastors and congregations are quite excited about this effort and are anxious to see what God does through it.

At the end of March, Mark is coming to teach the Attack Lambs seminar.

Continue to pray for Little Rock and for Nueva Esperanza. We are operating day-to-day without a lease and $125,000 is still needed to complete the deal to purchase the church building.

Hector

One-2-One is a non-profit organization that provides full dental care, prevention and some medical care to the needy in Cambodia. They have mobile teams and supplies that they take with them to various locations. In December, they made their first trip to each of the NHO homes. They did everything from cleanings to extractions. In addition, they showed the kids how to correctly brush their teeth, provided lice treatment as necessary, provided worm treatment/prevention, gave out new toothbrushes/toothpaste, clipped fingernails and even gave a few haircuts.

The kids were very happy to have someone come to check their teeth. The team reported that the kids were extremely friendly (which we all know). Within the year, they will visit the homes 2-3 more times to continue these things and to provide various medical trainings to staff. Join with us in praising God for this great blessing for the kids!

Tina Tomes