An open air sewage canal empties into the Boeng Trabek lake near the MCC office in Phnom Penh. Across the waters, you can see a strange tower with a ball on top standing in the near distance. This tower is slowly being swallowed by new construction and doesn’t stand out like it once did. This…
Author: Charles
Seek – Sreyhem’s Life Story and Testimony
On Friday, Sreyhem Roberts shared her life story and testimony with the Seek cohort. Sreyhem was five years old when the Khmer Rouge took power and was an early convert to Christianity through an underground House Church in the 1980s. She told us about her life, what it was like to be a Christian at…
MCC Mistaken Identity
Acronyms are helpful for simplifying a name but they can lead to confusion. Last year, while we were in Nepal, I kept on coming across a message spraypainted along the streets, “No MCC. Go Back America.” I teased the MCC Representatives to Nepal about this – already knowing that it wasn’t our MCC – and…
Phnom Penh High Rises
In my recent post about leading a walking tour through Phnom Penh I mention the rapid growth of high-rise buildings in the city. Specifically, that there were only three skyscrapers (two completed, one in progress) when I left in 2009 and that a decade later the Phnom Penh skyline was filled with high-rises when I…
Seek – International Women’s Day 2024
We had the Seek cohort over for International Women’s Day last Friday. It’s a national holiday in Cambodia and the MCC office was closed, as where many businesses. We started off with a hymn sing in the living room while Greta played the piano for us. The schools were not closed for International Women’s Days…
Deities, Divinities, and Spirits of Cambodia
While many ‘Westerners’ know the fact that Cambodia is polytheistic, rather than monotheistic, they rarely understand the broader implications of this when it comes to fundamental differences between their own worldview and the Cambodian worldview. In terms of spiritual belief and practice Cambodia is far removed from countries that are majority Christian, Muslim, or secular…
Elijah, Highs and Lows
When I’m low I often think about the prophet Elijah. Specifically, how he lived for three years on the run while drought and famine plagued the land, then how he confronted King Ahab and challenged 450 Prophets of Baal to a public contest on Mount Carmel. There, in front of a crowd of witnesses, Elijah’s…
Who is Marcy (Weber) Ninomiya?
Last month the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) contacted us to invite to join a book launching for the memoir of Marcy (Weber) Ninomiya. Marcy, her husband Akiie, and Naoko from JICA also decided to visit the MCC Cambodia office a few days before and catch up on MCC’s work in the region. Marcy is…
The Lord is Near the Broken Hearted
I shared in an earlier post that my father was unexpectedly diagnosed with aggressive stage 4 lung cancer in December. Our family went back to see him in January and I had plans to go to see him again in March. On Sunday he was admitted into the hospital with pneumonia and on Wednesday he…
Myanmar: Saying No To War
In October, the Three Brotherhood Alliance – a partnership of three armed ethnic groups in the north – launched an offensive campaign against the military junta that lead the coup in February 2021 (and which, to varying degrees, has been the dominant force in the country since taking power through a coup in 1962). The…