I sit here on NIBI’s campus at the end of the semester,
final reviews and exams behind me and some grading ahead of me. On Friday, I
plan to say goodbye to all the dear students and teachers here and return to
Phnom Penh, where I will be teaching English skills in the Evangelical
Fellowship of Cambodia (EFC) Women’s Department. I’m so sad to leave my friends
here, but also excited to see what God has in store for me next.
I’m sorry I haven’t written in such a long time; the past
few months have been extremely busy, but also very wonderful. At the end of
December, my boyfriend came to visit me for nine days over Christmas, and we
had some great adventures seeing the temples of Angkor, biking around Phnom
Penh, visiting Plong Village, and hanging out with many of the people I’ve met
and come to love here.
In the second week of January, students and professors
from Calvin College were here in Siem Reap for the Transforming Cambodia
interim, the same class that drew me to Cambodia in the first place. It was
wonderful to see a dear friend from Calvin, catch up with my professors, and
meet many other earnest and curious students. The NIBI students and I also got
to attend an excellent conference on development that the Calvin students led,
along with law school students from a Christian university in Korea and Cambodian
students from several universities in Phnom Penh.
The day after the conference ended, I left for Chiang
Mai, Thailand, where I was blessed to attend a Christian Reformed World
Missions (CRWM) retreat for missionaries in South East Asia. It was truly amazing to meet and spend even a
few days with such faithful, courageous people and their families. Hearing
about the great diversity of things they do – from translating the Bible into
new languages to teaching in seminaries to running social enterprises – has planted
all sorts of new ideas in the part of my brain formerly containing only the
word “mission work.”
Finally, my parents visited during the second and third
weeks of February, and we took a similar – though far from identical – tour of
Cambodia as my boyfriend and I had taken. Please pray for my mother’s swift
return to health, however. She arrived in Cambodia with a bad head cold, and we
all got bad cases of Montezuma’s revenge during the last few days of the trip.
Now back in the states, my mother is still recovering from the cold. Overall,
though, it has been so good to see many of my beloved ones from the US in the
flesh these past few months!
Besides the business of visits and travels, there have
also been some significant changes since I last wrote.
Two NIBI students, James and Ratanak, have been accepted
into universities in Korea. This is a mixed blessing for NIBI – while we’re
proud to have produced students who are capable enough to study in Korea, they
will be dearly missed here. James has left already, and Ratanak will leave
during the coming months of vacation. Please pray for them, as they will have
so many challenges there!
Both have fairly good English, but they don’t speak much
Korean at all. Ratanak is going with her sister, who was also accepted, but
James is all by himself. They have never even been to other South East Asian
countries for short trips before, so moving to Korea for four years of study is
an unbelievably big change. And while
they have been somewhat exposed to Korean culture through the missionaries
here, Korean and Khmer culture are extremely different, so they will be facing
a lot of culture shock. Please also pray that they remain true to God’s calling
on their lives. There are Cambodians who go abroad to study intending to return,
catch the materialism bug, and never come back to serve their country with
their new knowledge and skills.
The total count of NIBI students for next semester has now
dropped to five, and we’ve been unsuccessful becoming certified as an Institute
that can award bachelor’s degrees. So the school has decided to make some major
changes to their strategy. They have discovered that they can be certified to
award associate degrees, so they’ve decided to shrink their program from five
years to two. They’re also very seriously recruiting for this next semester,
and have already found two students from Burma who will attend next semester.
This is a lot of change and will certainly be a difficult
transition. The three remaining third- and fourth- year students will be
allowed to stay and work at NIBI’s social enterprise, or they can apply for
another university in Cambodia or Korea. Either will be a big change from what
they had been expecting, and it’s certainly disappointing that they will only
be able to receive associate degrees from NIBI after so many years of study.
Having students from Burma attend the school is a great opportunity, but will
also introduce new cultural and communication barriers, as the languages here are
English, Khmer, and Korean. Hopefully, the Burmese students already know a fair
amount of English. Furthermore, NIBI does not yet have an English teacher for
next semester. Please pray for NIBI as they make this huge transition.
A big change for me is that I’ve decided to apply to
Calvin Seminary for a Master's of Arts in Worship. This hasn’t been a light decision for me, but one made with
fear and trembling, prayer, tears, and counsel. I had planned when I returned
from Cambodia to start a master’s program in urban education in Memphis. My
plan sounded great: I have loved teaching here in Cambodia, my boyfriend is
also in Memphis for four years, and there would be a stipend to live on. But after many prayers to release my plans to
God, His Spirit called me in a different direction.
He brought up my deep longing to worship Him through
music, study His Word, and lead others in responding to His Word through
worship. He brought up the gifts He’d given me in singing and harmonizing,
leading and songwriting, and confirmations from others. He brought up the deep
need that I’ve seen in Cambodian churches for new songs written by Khmer
Christians in Khmer, as well as needs in US churches for theologically sound
worship that can speak across cultures and generations.
I don’t know where God will lead after seminary, but for
now, I’m trusting that God will sustain me as I follow Him. I thank you for
your prayers in all of this. I will turn in the application tomorrow, which is
rather late. I’m supposed to be accepted into
Calvin Seminary by March 1 to be considered for scholarships, so please pray
for a fast review process for my application!
Love from Cambodia,
Amanda
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