Our Reasons For Going

I have been excited about going to Cambodia since the GBGM-UMC missionaries, the Chans, from Cambodia came to Bartlesville. They invited me to come. Our church has been planning this trip for two years. It is almost impossible to believe that this adventure is almost here.

Representing Oklahoma in this mission field puts us in the company of France, Malaysia, Switzerland, Singapore, and Korea. We are gong to work with our mission partner at Doun Lep to strengthen, nuture, and support their spiritual life by our witness, worship, and service. We hope to support the spiritual and physical needs of the people of this village by our visit, work, and caring presence.

So we set out to meet people I have met and care about, to renew old acquaintances, and to make new friends in this far away place.

There are so many needs in the world, everyone of us should pick an area and work on something. We are obligated as humans to extend our hands where we are able.

There is an American Indian story that is loosely paraphrased like this: God was walking in the woods and heard all of the animals complaining about their lot in the forest. Each animal felt that his problems were greater than any other animals. So God listened to their complaints and finally addressing the animals he took all of their problems. He tied the problems to a fir tree in the forest and told each animal that he could pick his own set of problems to work. So the animals gathered around the tree, studying each set of problems, circling, thinking, trying to decide.


When God came back and asked the animals their decision, to choose for themselves the problems that they had decided to work, each one stepped to the tree and choose a set for his life. When God asked each animal what they had chosen, they confessed that they had chosen the original set of problems that God had given them.

The lesson for us is that each one of us has a set of things to work on in our lives. Other people have other things, so we are going to leave the set that we work with and travel to the other side of the globe and see what set of problems our brothers and sisters in Cambodia are working.

We will keep you posted as this journey continues, and let you know our progress.