Day 16– July 15, 2005: The best dinner yet

Today Dan (one of our leaders) told us a story about his favorite encounter with God. I can’t tell the whole story here as it took him two hours to tell it, but I’ll sum it up. He was leading a team to Cambodia a few years ago. They prayed about where to go and God told several in their team that Cambodia was it. Then they prayed about where and what to do while there. God told them to teach the leaders of the Khmer Rouge about Jesus. No one on their team had heard of the Khmer Rouge before so they looked them up on the internet. They are basically sort of equivalent to the Nazis, but in Cambodia. They were in power from the late 70’s to about 1997. Since then, most of them have been in hiding so they don’t get thrown in jail for the awful things they have done and the millions they have killed. Back to the story. The team is pretty dumbfounded at what they are feeling called to do. They decided to go and see if God opened the doors. When they got to Cambodia they first had to find out where the Khmer Rouge were, let alone find the leaders. They asked many locals (thru a translator) and they basically laughed at them. “No one speaks to the Khmer Rouge, especially not a westerner” they said. They did find out though that most of the Khmer Rouge were hiding in a town in southwest Cambodia, close to the border of Thailand just in case they needed to escape. They prayed if they should go there, and God said “go”. They decided to just take half of their team of 8 as it seemed pretty sketchy and no one really goes there. When they got to this town (sorry I forgot it’s name) they asked around again for the Khmer Rouge and preferably the leaders. Again they were laughed at. They decided to pray for guidance, and one of the team members pictured a red cross during the prayer. So they looked for this cross. It turns out that it was at the church in town and they talked with the pastor their who said they could sleep there. He said he also knew of one member of the Khmer Rouge and he might be able to set up a meeting. They met with this guy who was the secretary of the Khmer Rouge. They actually ended up going out to dinner with him. This guy liked them. They told him about Jesus and that was kind of it.

The next day they left. A few of them really felt that God had more to do there because they knew God meant for them to speak with the leaders of the Khmer Rouge. So they went back, again with 4 of them, hoping to at least meet with the secretary again. They went to the Secretary’s house and he mentioned sort of accidentally that some of the leaders were meeting the next day at 8 am. This is it they thought. They asked (almost begged) the secretary to let them come to the meeting. The secretary said “no” many times and told them that he could be killed if the leaders even found out that he told them about the meeting. They showed up at the secretary’s house at 7:30am the next day and again begged him to let them go. He said “no”. They were troubled. They knew God wanted them at that meeting. So they hung out and talked with the secretary’s helper (I guess that might be the secretary’s secretary). 8:30 rolls around and the secretary comes flying up on his moped. “The leader wants to speak with you… come to the meeting”. They about dropped their jaws. Thinking in their heads “Oh crap, now I have to figure out what to say to these guys!”

Dan was the first of the four to walk in the meeting. He was picturing 10-20 Cambodians. There were about 250 people in this secret meeting. He could barely move. The main leader told them that the only reason they were there is because they were young and therefore not a threat. Dan and the others were close to speechless. Eventually they started talking and were there for over 4 hours talking with these people who have basically been in charge of killing millions over the years and are now in hiding. They told the Khmer Rouge leaders how God specifically put them in their minds because He wanted to let them know that even they can be forgiven for what they have done. Christ’s blood on the cross forgives even the harshest most sinful man. The Khmer Rouge were stunned. They have never felt anything but coldness from anyone but there own. Eventually Dan and the team had to go, but the leaders told them they were welcome back. Since then many churches have been started in this town and many of the leaders have committed their lives to serving God. All because Dan and his team heard God tell them where to go and kept at it.

WOW. I didn’t mean to ramble on, but I left a lot of exciting parts out and it still was lengthy. After hearing this we all started praying about where God wants to send us for the second half of this journey. I know God has a plan, but I don’t know where yet.

Oh yeah, and tonites dinner… Pizza and coke. Then we all jumped in the pool to cool off. It’s great having Jonny’s stitches out so we can all swim again.