Cambodia Discipleship Program from Joyce Cho on Vimeo.

This is a guest past written by Hojin Lee who was a member of the Christ Central Presbyterian Church summer 2014 short-term mission team.

When I first came to the village, my prayer was that God would show these Khmer brothers and sisters (most of them probably first generation Christians in their families) how precious worship is because worship is where we taste the heaven on this earth. To share God’s love was my personal goal for this mission trip, and I thought doing so was a good way to help them to see the greatness of our God as long as God enables each and every one of us. However, as soon as the Sunday worship started the day after our arrival, my entire perspective of this mission trip changed. Although shy, they were very welcoming and willing to be taught; they loved praising even though all they had were simple Khmer hymns; their eagerness to learn more about God was no less than any other Christians that I know of; and I could see that some of them truly delight in the Lord and enjoy the fellowship as I got to make friends with them. It was a humbling experience for me because I often find myself looking for something “greater” to satisfy what I “think” is the right and sincere kind of worship when all we need to know is the sufficiency of His grace and nothing more. It was myself, perhaps more than these Khmer brothers and sisters, who needed to acquire greater understanding of worship and realize the depths of the love of our Lord.

Now that I am back in the States, people often ask me, “so, did you learn a lot?” when I tell them I just came back from a Cambodia mission trip. To be honest, I have hard time answering such a question because I don’t know how much is “a lot.” Besides, I’m not very good at describing the events that took place either. However, I definitely believe and want to share that God has taught me what I had to learn through this trip.

There was a song that we sang together before the team departed from AKJ. The title of the song is “God is So Good,” and I would say that this song pretty much wraps up everything that I learned in Cambodia. The song goes like this:

God is so good
He answers our prayers
He loves you so
He’s so good to me

Also, one of the brothers named Sophea gave me a note that reads how all of us are going to see each other again though may it not be on earth because we believe in Jesus. How amazing is this? That we worship and praise the same God regardless of our backgrounds and that we will see each other again one day because we possess the citizenship to Heaven through Christ Jesus.

Indeed, God was good to the team, He answered all of our prayers, He showed us how much He loves us, and because of all these things and so much more, He was and is so good to me.