Category Archives: General

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Teresa Smith’s Reflections from Her Trip

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Teresa Smith’s Reflections from Her Trip (Luke’s mom)

On Jan 7, 2017 DeAnn Harris and I took off on our almost thirty hour flight to Cambodia. We went to visit missionaries, Luke and Sokha Smith, who reside in Ank’jeay village. Luke is my son and Sokha is my daughter-in-law. DeAnn is a good friend of Luke and Sokha’s and now a good friend of mine and a great traveling companion.

Once you arrive you feel like you have already been through many dangers toils and snares (jet-lag). Ha! Even though it was my second time to Cambodia. It was a time of venturing out of my comfort zone and putting my complete trust in God.

First of all it was a joy getting to know my long distance grandchildren. Hannah was two and one half last time I saw her and is now four and one half. We had lots of fun with tea parties, playdough, and puzzles. I also gave her bread making and cinnamon roll lessons. She has mastered kneading bread very well. The dough took some pretty good punches but turned out some tasty bread and cinnamon rolls. Good job Hannah!

This was my first time to meet seven month old Asa . He is a very busy boy and just beginning to crawl.He seems to enjoy life in the village with the constant attention. What more would a seven month old boy want?

Now a bit about life as a visitor in a missionary’s world.
One of my highlights of course was just experiencing life as a villager. Since I am a country girl I adapted well. Not to mention eighty degrees in January. Not bad.

One of the things the Smiths’ do is teach English classes in their yard to the children. It was great to meet them and interact with them. Some are very fluent in English.

I read Bible stories, played basketball, and oh yes! The girls and I had a hoola hooping contest. You are never too old to hoola hoop. After meeting these beautiful children I know why Cambodia is referred to as “The Land of Smiles.”

Another thing I done was to recite a couple of the books of the Bible that I have committed to memory. I recited the book of Jonah and the book of James. I taught them the value of the memorized word of God. On my last night in the village three of the students had memorized Psalm one and recited word for word.I never dreamed that when I started memorizing scripture in my forties that God would send me to the ends of the earth. World Traveler was not in my vocabulary, but God had a different plan for my life.

I spent eight days in the village and four days in the city of Phnom Penh and two days of travel time. What an adventure! I truly saw God’s love all over the world.

General

Summer Update 2016

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Hello friends and family,

As summer comes to an end, we wanted to send you an update.

Family update
Our son Asa Eldad Smith was born on May, 29th! It was a difficult delivery that ended in a c-section. Thankfully, Sokha and Asa both made it through in good health. I have attached a new born picture of Asa and a more recent picture. Karen, a nurse practitioner, on our team wrote a blog post about his birth that you can read here: http://mccluremissionaries.org/2016/06/06/meet-our-newest-mtw-cambodia-team-member/

Hannah turned 4 on July, 28th. She adores her little brother at times and is very jealous of him at other times. We have just started a pre-kindergarten home schooling curriculum with her. Hannah loves playing with the students in the village when they come to study, and picking flowers in the flower garden by our house.

Translation Update
After five years, Sokha and I have finished translating the Westminster Shorter Catechism into Khmer. We have tried to translate it in a manner that is accurate and easy for Cambodians to understand the biblical truth that is being taught. We have printed off and distributed 300 copies so far. We are using it in our outreach classes and Saturday evening youth Bible study.

Prayer for New Missionaries
We have had three families leave our MTW field team this year for health reasons or a change in call. Could you pray for new missionaries to join our team, especially long-term missionaries? Our team urgently needs someone to handle finances and administration. In addition,church planting opportunities are plentiful. The latest statics show that 87% of the villages in Cambodia our still without a church plant Here is a link to a description of some of the opportunities on the MTW website:https://mtw.org/serve/index?query=&filter%5B2%5D%5B%5D=237

Link for support
https://mtw.org/missionaries/details/luke-and-sokha-smith

Thanks for partnering with us through your prayers and giving!
Luke, Sokha, Hannah and Asa

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Village Sustainability Project

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Here is some information written by a former teammate a while back about Eternal Life in Christ Church’s pastoral intern, Samuth, and his wife, Kunthea. They are part of what we call the Village Sustainability Project:
I’d like to share just one more story about a young man named Samuth. Here he is pictured with his wife Kunthea. Like most, he was raised in one of Cambodia’s 14,000 villages, and like 96% of Cambodians, he was raised a folk Buddhist, his worldview dominated by the pursuit of good fortune, a fear of spirits, and ancestor veneration. In fact, when Samuth and Kunthea got married, most of their families did not attend the wedding where their ancestors would not be worshipped, but I’m skipping ahead.
Now one characteristic of Cambodia that is still as true now as it was nine years ago when this story begins, is that if you can speak English, your life can be radically different. There is just a world of opportunities that becomes available for you. And so in the second semester of tenth grade, Samuth began to study English with a missionary who had moved relatively nearby. I say “nearby” because not many missionaries come to live in the village; but I say “relatively” because it was still an hour away by bicycle. And so in order to study English, Monday through Friday, he began to stay at the nearby Buddhist temple during the week.
The following year, in some way perhaps foreshadowing what was to come, he left the Buddhist wat and moved into the student center the missionary had organized. And it was now English on weekdays, Bible study on weekends. He grew in his understanding of the gospel and grace, and the next year, he was baptized into the faith.
So if I may now skip ahead several years, Samuth has now completed Bible school and is currently serving under the mentorship of MTW missionaries Luke and Sokha Smith at Angk’jeay church plant, where some 30-35 of our brothers and sisters gather for worship every Sunday; and where they have baptized twenty-eight students over the past three years.
Every Sunday, Samuth now preaches or presides over worship in rotation with Luke. On Monday afternoons, he visits and reviews the sermon with two elderly adult church members and again to kick-off an evening outreach class. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, he now teaches English to about fifty grade school students; they’ve come to learn English just as Samuth had nine years ago. And once the English lesson is complete, he teaches from Scripture.
Once monthly, he travels to Phnom Penh to attend Presbytery meetings as well as review sessions to prepare for his upcoming ordination exam. And he hopes one day to plant a church in another village, perhaps one of the 12,000 villages in Cambodia that is still without a local, worshipping community of faith. It has been a privilege to see him grow in his faith and in the exercise of his ministry gifts, all through personal tragedies and trials that have faced both Kunthea and him.
Well, one of the most vexing questions we and others around the world face, is: “How we can more wisely and thoughtfully steward those resources God has given us to give?” And in particular, in contexts of extreme poverty, how can we do this in a manner that does not breed dependence, but rather promotes the long-term health of the local church?
Last spring, we were awarded an Ambassadors grant for a Village
Sustainability Project, which provided Samuth seed money to purchase cows. The income he generates raising cattle would provide for his family, while honoring both his past experience, and his local context, where he is eminently more relatable raising cattle – as others in his village are apt to do – than solely ministering while receiving foreign funds.
Through this grant, Samuth has a way to pursue his call to pastoral ministry and provide for his family, in a way that a community of young students and subsistence rice farmers never could. Because of the support of donors, we have the ability to implement a creative, contextually-appropriate solution to that vexing and urgent question: this has been a way to share our resources, generously and sacrificially, in a manner that dignifies rather than patronizes; that fosters healthy interdependence, rather than perpetual dependence.
We are still in year one of this project and it will be another year before the first calves will be sold, but Samuth is thrilled about its prospects and sincerely grateful for this partnership.