A year ago, our mission team was busy working on a biogas digester project at Teen Challenge Cambodia. On our team was a young woman named Lacy Beach. At age 19, Lacy’s desire was to be a missionary. She had been inspired to serve in Cambodia beyond the two weeks that our team would be in the country. So when our team left Cambodia to return to South Florida, we left Lacy behind.

Lacy stayed in Cambodia for the next eight months. During that time, she navigated life in Cambodia, serving as an intern to Koy and Reny Chhim, founders of Cambodian Care Ministries. She assisted them in establishing the Light of Future School #1 in the Tuolpongro neighborhood of Phnom Penh and led the Children’s Ministry at the first Light Church.

Today, over 200 children attend Light of Future School #1. When Cambodia 2015 Mission team visited Light Church in August 2015, I learned that the church’s food bank ministry is made possible by the financial giving of the Children’s Ministry kids. What amazes me is that the children no longer see themselves as needy, poor, or disenfranchised. They see themselves as people who have something to share with others. I know that Lacy’s inspiration to serve was a catalyst that ignited them to begin serving others.

Today, Lacy is a full-time student at Lee University, majoring in Missions. I’m proud to know her!

This Sunday, we begin planning for 2016 mission trips. As part of our preparation, we will be studying the book “When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor….or Yourself” by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. We will be discussing questions such as:

1) What is poverty?
2) Who are the poor?
3) How can we effectively help those at home and abroad?

And we will be discussing how one young woman inspired children who desperately needed help to become children who provide help.

 

“The time at our disposal each day is elastic; the passions we feel dilate it, those that inspire us shrink it, and habit fills it.” ~ Marcel Proust