2 weeks from now, nine people from the Church will be packing our bags ready to catch a flight to Bangkok at the beginning of our trip to Cambodia. We are going to meet up with our friends and partners at CHO, to see their work at first hand and to take part in it in some way or another. Nearly all of the arrangements are in place; in the Church service on Sunday, we will be prayed for by the congregation; the money that people have raised will 'go with us' electronically; we're set to go, with a mixture of excitement and apprehension.
You can learn more about CHO through the link on the Church website.
While we're away, you can follow our progress by our new blogsite http://junipergreenincambodia.blogspot.com/ on which we plan to post something every day that we're away.
Why are we going? 3 reasons:
1. we are partners in the gospel with CHO; they seek to serve Christ in their community and we seek to serve Christ in our community and we both do so because we know the love and grace of God for us in Jesus Christ. We are going to strengthen that partnership. So we will run a pastors' conference for 3 days, with 70 people coming to learn Ephesians.
2. the work which CHO does amongst the poorest people of the world is vitally important in the mind of God and we are looking to take part in that work, even in a very small way. So we will be making bricks, planting crops, teaching children.
3. justice for all is such a huge part of God's kingdom; by visiting Cambodia we can learn a little of what justice means and what justice looks like when Christians get to work to rescue people from violence and oppression.
Desmond Tutu: "Christians shouldn't just be pulling people out of the river. We should be going upstream to find out who's pushing them in." For a long time, we've given money to good causes and that has been a good thing to do; but we also have to learn about what causes people to be in need and change the world. If we can do that even a little, our 2 weeks in Cambodia will have been well worth while.
