TURNING CAMBODIA'S KILLING FIELDS INTO FIELDS OF LIFE

Ernie and Jonalyn Canja | Ernie and Amera Gardose |
Nancy Corsonada and Marianne Estrella | Alice Asong

Cambodia (also called Kampuchea), was once the center of the great Hindu-Buddhist Khmer empire. But successive wars and the bloody reign of Khmer Rouge dictator Pol Pot during the seventies devastated the country. Almost two million Cambodians, the educated class, were slaughtered and buried in shallow graves called the “Killing Fields.” The land lies in waste, plagued by droughts and famines, and most Cambodians live in terrible poverty and backwardness. But this has pushed the Khmers to seek deliverance and a new beginning. And they are finding this in Jesus Christ. It is now a land gleaming white and ripe for harvest, where people turn to the Lord, not just by the family, but by the village! Some 13 ACM-trained missionaries are now serving there. But many, many more are needed.

Ernie and Jonalyn Canja – Bringing Christ’s Light into the Heart of Darkness

After watching films about the “Killing Fields,” ACM-trained missionaries Ernie and Jonalyn Canja set their hearts on going to Cambodia. They wanted to bring Christ’s healing to the remnant of that nightmare. Little did they know they would minister to the family of Pol Pot himself! They began in Phnom Penh, where one of their first converts was a Buddhist monk who became their interpreter. He is now studying to be a pastor in the Philippines.
When Ernie decided to set up an English language and Bible school, he took a map of Cambodia and pointed his pencil at its very center. That was where they would settle. It turned out to be the poor and landmine-riddled province of Kampong Thom, birthplace of Khmer Rouge dictator Pol Pot. There they live with their disciples, launching weekly crusades in surrounding villages, helping widows and impoverished families set up backyard vegetable gardens and duck ponds, helping disabled landmine victims secure prosthetic legs from NGOs. They teach villagers health and nutrition, like eating high-protein mongo, lice prevention, herbal cures for scabies. They have also taught them how to pray for God’s supernatural healing. Some of the miracles that ensued are a woman blinded by Pol Pot’s soldiers who was able to see and several lame people who were able to walk through prayers in Jesus’ name.

The Canjas are sticklers for discipline and industriousness. They are up at 5:00 a.m. daily for devotions with their disciples, teach English and the Bible the entire day, and hold three worship services a week and multi-weekly village crusades. They have been hit by malaria, threatened with eviction, and starved during famines with their disciples. Jonalyn has been electrocuted (she went into partial coma and was revived), but God has delivered them and their ministry continues to grow phenomenally.
Today, the Canjas have thousands of converts and have planted churches in 50 villages. One of those is Prek Sibauv, the village where Pol Pot was born. Five years ago, touched by the kindness of the Canjas, Pol Pot’s older brother Saloth Ngap opened his home to English lessons and Bible studies by Jonalyn! The light of the Gospel has come to the heart of darkness in this province.
Their Bible school is now graduating 16 potential pastors from a four-year course. Students include former Khmer Rouge rebels, including a pilot who trained in Russia. Eleven students are former Buddhist parents of children who they used to persecute for turning to the Christian faith through the Canjas!

The Canjas now have state permission to share the Gospel and plant churches in the 21 provinces of Cambodia. One of their closest disciples is a former monk and highly placed official of the Ministry of Cults and Religions. Before he will stamp approval on any request to start a Buddhist temple or project, applicants must first listen to him share about salvation through Christ!
In addition to their school, the Canjas now have a main church building, a dormitory for their Bible students, and a 15-hectare cashew farm. Kampong Thom, hometown of the author of the “Killing Fields,” is now Christ’s harvest field.

Ernie and Amera Gardose – Reaching the Poorest of the Poor Khmers

Ernie and Amera Gardose, now based in Phnom Penh, started as a support team to the Canjas. Today they have planted house churches in three villages, including Steung Menchey, the Cambodian version of the Payatas garbage dump. Like the Canjas, their ministry has gained much credibility through humanitarian outreaches and God’s signs and wonders. In one village, the Gardoses prayed over Sey, a 75-year-old woman with a crooked spine. Her spine and posture straightened out. She became a faithful church-goer, walking 42 kilometers to the house church of the Gardoses, until her son came to Christ and offered their house as a church venue.
During one Bible study of the Gardoses, a drunken man kept interrupting the Scripture reading. But at the end of it, he received Christ as Lord and Savior. Since that day, he has been completely sober. He has spread the news of his deliverance everywhere, and now the Gardoses have planted a house church in his village.

The Gardoses have taught the villagers how to dig fishponds, provided them tilapia fingerlings, and shown them how to plant backyard gardens. Most importantly, they have taught them to pray for God’s blessing on their land and grant them good harvests. They quickly saw the difference. Before prayers, their gourd vines yielded only very small gourds (a vegetable made into loofah) not even a foot long. But after prayers, their vines yielded three-foot-long gourds! During one extended drought, the gardens and ponds threatened to go dry. But the villagers prayed to Christ for rain, and miraculously it rained for three days, but only in their neighborhoods! It was a powerful witness to the non-Christian villagers around them.
The Gardoses continue to win more of the impoverished Khmers through clothing distribution and medical missions, where they give free medicines and check-ups.

Nancy Corsonada and Marianne Estrella – Caring for Widows and Battered Wives

Tapreak Province is “no man’s land,” a hideaway for Khmer rebels and criminals, with the highest crime rate in all of the region, and also with a great number of broken families and homes. There, two brave, single lady missionaries, Marianne and Nancy, have partnered with Hagar, a Swiss NGO, through its Director for Operations, Anabelle Gonzales, another ACM-trained missionary who has worked with the Canjas and the Gardoses.
Hagar, a ministry for mothers and children, has secured land in Tapreak as a home for widows and battered wives. There, Marianne and Nancy have started several livelihood programs, including making waste baskets, wedding giveaways, bags, mobile phone holders, and papaya soap. They also provide counseling and deliverance for abused women, and conduct feeding and Bible studies for 44 children of widows and the abused. They start their day with a Morning Watch with the mothers, and end with prayer and worship with the children at 4:00 p.m., after English class. They have also planted fruit and vegetable gardens with the children and youths as a way of teaching them the value of hard work and discipline.

During crusades and house-to-house Bible sharing, one of their most effective evangelists is Ngaet, a widow whose husband and four children were killed by Pol Pot. She had fallen from her bike and fractured her shoulder and collarbone, causing her arm to become atrophied and immovable. But after much prayer, she is now able to lift her arm in praise to the Lord, and go back to biking and her household chores. “Jesus healed me!” she proclaims, sharing the Gospel everywhere with everyone she meets.
Nancy and Marianne’s ministry is in the midst of the wilderness of Tapreak, where many are afraid to venture, especially at night. They have no men to guard and protect them. Yet they have never been attacked or robbed. Their ministry is under the grace and protection of the Lord, Husband of the widowed and Father of the fatherless.

Alice Asong – Transforming Orphans into New Creations in Christ

In a very remote village in Cambodia called Stung Samrong, in a Christian house called “New Hope for Orphans,” a young, single Filipina from Iloilo named Alice is helping transform neglected children into new creations in Christ. These are children whose parents died of AIDS, or who had simply been given away because their parents could no longer feed them. Others were saved from being sold to pedophiles. They were full of sores and scabs from bathing in a dirty river. They were thin from malnourishment. When they saw Alice, they were aloof, mistrustful, and they rarely smiled. But Alice embraced them, carried them, kissed them. She taught them to take a bath and wash and comb their hair. She taught them to read and write, sing praise songs, pray, read the Bible, and speak English.

Today if you will go to Stung Samrong, you will meet about 50 good-looking, healthy and smiling children who will even dance, sing and recite verses for you. They want to become missionaries, English language tutors and Bible teachers like Alice. They sing How Great Thou Art with an Ilonggo accent like Alice. They wake up at five in the morning to pray like Alice. (Even the youngest children, not wanting to be left out, insist on joining this dawn watch.) Best of all, they will run to you and embrace you affectionately like Alice. That’s 50 children who will grow up to spread the love of Christ in Cambodia. And that’s what one Filipina, moved by God’s unfailing love, can do.