Last year, when I gave my testimony to the Seek cohort, I noted that reading the Bible from cover to cover, over and over again, was a spiritual discipline that I learned from a young age. This caught Charlotte’s attention and she decided that she was old enough to read the entire Bible. So most…
Month: December 2024
Goel Community
One of our SALT participants this year is living with a member of Goel Community in Phnom Penh. Goel Community is a fair trade artisan’s association that specializes in handwoven, naturally-dyed textile fabrics. Last week Goel Community hosted their annual Christmas Fair and it reminded me a little of Gift Festival at Fairfield Mennonite. So…
Article: The United Nations is a Mission Field
The Mennonite Central Committee Representative to the United Nations, Chris Rice, recently wrote an article for Christianity Today about his work titled “The United Nations is a Mission Field.” We’ve greatly appreciated working with Chris particularly during the coup in Myanmar. He was very active in connecting the voices of communities on the ground to…
Reflections on Political Violence
The 48 hours around my birthday were intense this year. In Myanmar, there were widespread non-violent demonstrations and general labor strikes protesting the February 2021 coup d’état. The military junta responded with brutal force. They turned guns and grenades against the peaceful protests. They forced Doctors and Teachers to go to work at gunpoint. Doctors…
CCA Conference on Myanmar
Last month, the Christian Conference of Asia held a four-day international conference on Myanmar. There were 57 participants representing various ecumenical groups, Christian organizations, NGOs, universities, government agencies, and so on. I represented Mennonite Central Committee at the conference and moderated a couple of sessions. The goal of the conference was to develop a communique…
Thanksgiving 2024
We had a wonderful time hosting American Thanksgiving here in Phnom Penh. It was a time of good food, fellowship, and discussion. Altogether our guests represented ten nationalities. We invited the SALT and YAMEN participants. Our service workers. Friends of ours and friends of MCC. And some of the Cambodians on our team. After meal…
How did indigenous land become Mennonite land
On Thanksgiving this year Anabaptist Perspectives published an interview with historian John Ruth exploring the historical backdrop of the land that many Anabaptists settled in Pennsylvania. How did this affect the indigenous population that lived in this region? How were Mennonites culpable in the appropriation of native lands? In 2021, John L Ruth wrote a…
Pray for South Korea
Last night around 10:30PM the President of South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol, declared martial law. This decree prohibited any political activities including the National Assembly, and suspended freedom of the press along with many other citizen rights. The South Korean military mobilized, with military vehicles in the street and nearly three hundred soldiers entering the…