Katherine Parker in Nepal

From Katherine, a missionary from California to Cambodia , and Irene, a missionary from Zimbabwe to Cambodia , To our sisters and brothers in Bakersfield who have received a faith as precious as ours through-your relationship to our God and Savior Jesus Christ: May grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. We write to you today with the words of the Apostle Peter when we say: God's divine power has given us everything needed for life. While we have been eagerly preparing to write to you about the faith we share, we have also been busy hosting a Medical Outreach Clinic this week. We were visited by a team of volunteers from a Methodist church in Singapore who came to Cambodia this week to help us host a Medical Outreach Clinic. It was the first time for the people from Singapore to visit a Cambodian village and so they were shocked by the poor conditions of the people living there. But they were eager to share their skills and...

From Katherine, a missionary from California to Cambodia , and Thy our brother in Christ Jesus here in Cambodia , To the church in Bakersfield : Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ. We write to you again with the words of the apostle Paul when we say that we give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters. And this is right to do, because we know that during this time together of Vacation Church Camp your faith is growing and the love of each one of you for one another is increasing. Mr. Thy and I heard that you will be visiting a farm in Bakersfield this week. You will get to see how we grow food to eat in the United States . What did you eat for breakfast this morning? We had rice noodle soup. What will you eat for lunch? How about dinner? We will have rice with some stir-fry vegetables and fish, the same as other people living here in Cambodia . In Bakersfield , most people probably eat cereal and bread and pasta, but in Cambodia we eat ...

From Katherine Parker, United Methodist Missionary who has been sent from California to Phnom Penh in the Royal Kingdom of Cambodia in Southeast Asia. To the community of God that is in Bakersfield , to the children and youth and adults who gather this week for study and prayer and work and celebration, together with people from around the world who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and Jesus the Christ. I want to say hi to you with this formal greeting in the style of St.Paul's letters to the churches throughout the Mediterranean, to remind us that the church has always been more than a group of people in our own town with which we get together on Sunday. Rather, it is a community of people around the world who believe that we are called to love God and to love our neighbor. And, whether we see each other every day or every few years or we never get to meet, we are still a family, a community that suppo...

The Community Health and Agriculture Development program is richly blessed to be supported by so many people from around the world. Our staff of four people is made up of four different nationalities (Zimbabwe, Philippines, Cambodia and USA). In addition, we work with volunteer-in-mission teams from Malaysia, Singapore, and the USA. (And I'm not sure I can count all of the nationalities of the other missionaries and volunteer teams that work with other parts of the church.) For other partnerships, about 1/3 of our program funding comes from the 1000 member Methodist Church in Finland. We appreciate not only their financial and prayer support, but also their support for planning. We have been working closely with our contact in Finland, Catarina, to develop a 3-year strategic plan for our program. Here is a summary of our vision, mission, goals and focus that have come out of that work. The activity plan is too detailed to post. It has been a great exercise for our team, which has j...

Binn Im is the assistant pastor at Prekedai Methodist Church in a village about an hour down some dirt roads outside the provincial city of Batambong in Cambodia. Binn Im's story begins several years back when she received a gift-loan of a pig to raise through her participation in the Women's Association of the United Methodist Mission Initiative in Cambodia. She struggled to care for the pig and overcame several obstacles, including the death of her second litter and slow weight gain, to pass on piglets to another woman in her community. It was during this time that Binn Im was responding to the call to ministry in her life. She applied and was accepted to study at the Methodist Bible School in Phnom Penh, where her son was also a student. Last year she graduated and was appointed as assistant pastor to her current rural congregation. Four months ago, Binn Im welcomed a medical mission team to her church through the UMVIM (United Methodist Volunteers in Mission) partnership wi...

Saturday afternoon, March 15, 2008, I returned to Phnom Penh from four days in the field (my seventh week in-country), where Mr. Leng Thy (my CHAD program colleague) and I met with seven churches. I found the week's experience both sobering in the challenges and exciting in the prospects. Here are some pictures and my immediate reflections upon return to the city. Cambodia is a country still visibly struggling to rebuild community trust, stability and self-sustenance after many years of civil war and foreign occupation. There is a strong sense in the poorest parts of the country of needing "relief" and looking to the West for that relief. For individuals who are Christian in this predominantly Buddhist country, there is sometimes a disquieting hope that since "now we are Christians ... you should provide for us." However, the urgent solicitation of Western relief, on whatever rationale seems promising, is not limited to the growing Christian communities. A...

See the March/April 2008 edition of NEW WORLD OUTLOOK to read the story Toward Sustainable Development in Cambodia by Rev. Dr. James L. Gulley.