In 2006, our son Taylor spent a couple of months in Cambodia as a part of Youth With a Mission. In Battambang, the second largest city in the country, everyone he met had lost family members in the murderous reign of Pol Pot, the extreme Communist leader who had slaughtered his own people.<\/p>\n
In 1975 there were twenty-seven evangelical churches in Phnom Penh, the capitol, and there were over 10,000 Christians in Cambodia. By the end of 1979 only two hundred Christians remained alive.<\/p>\n
But Pol Pot did not just target Christians. He killed people of all religions, he killed people that had an education, he killed people that wore glasses, he killed people that could speak English\u2026 Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge murdered 1.7 million people and \u2018the killing fields\u2019 became synonymous with Cambodia\u2019s genocide.<\/p>\n
Sovann was one of the survivors. He came to know Jesus in 1972 and walked with the Good Shepherd through danger and imprisonment and torture and loss. He cannot explain why he lived and others did not, but he knows God has called him to shine light.<\/p>\n
Sovann was given the nickname \u2018Barnabas,\u2019 which means \u2018son of encouragement.\u2019 Though he witnessed horrors beyond description, Barnabas believed God wanted him to lead Christians to worship the Lord with all their hearts. \u201cYes, I suffered. Yet I shouted praise in my heart. Yes, I was afraid. Yet I learned to trust my Lord. Yes, so much was taken away. Yet so much was given.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Yet\u2019 is a little word we can all courageously choose. The One we follow is worthy of praise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.\u201d Psalm 42:5-6<\/p>\n
(Quote from Church Behind the Wire<\/em>, by Barnabas Mam with Kitti Murray, \u00a92012, Moody Publishers, p 131)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2006, our son Taylor spent a couple of months in Cambodia as a part of Youth With a Mission. In Battambang, the second largest city in the country, everyone he met had lost family members in the murderous reign of Pol Pot, the extreme Communist leader who had slaughtered his own people. In 1975 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-persecution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1987"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1993,"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987\/revisions\/1993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}