Sterling - March 2010

Over the past five months I have been trying to get used to being back in Cambodia, but I have realized I was missing something that has made all the difference in helping me get settled back into life here. I am here because God sent me here. I’m not just here because my parents are. I'm here because God has His reasons for having me in Cambodia.

I feel God has been encouraging me that some of the main reasons He has had me here since I was five is to live, grow, and walk with the Heritage House kids. Since I have been back from the states this time, I feel called to continue to encourage them in their walk with God. But again, God has even bigger reasons. Sometimes I’m the one that needs encouragement.

I have been trying to encourage my Cambodian brothers to follow Christ wherever He takes them, but they keep encouraging me. It has made me think a lot about what missions really is. I think about how we send all these teams into countries and think they are really going to help the church there because the church ”really needs it.”

Sometimes it does need the help that they think it does. God said go and make disciples in these nations, but sometimes we’re the ones that need to learn. Sometimes missionaries really just need to go back to their own church and pray and see what God needs them to do there. There’s always lost people around you in your own city or town. I used to always think of a mission field as it having to be in a different country, but I just now learned that a mission field is where God calls you to minister where ever that may be.

Now I am understanding more clearly what God is doing with my life here. God has called my family to S.E. Asia. He has called me here to minister, and to be ministered to. This is where He has chosen to place me and I have to be faithful to follow Him and help others follow Him right here. It’s been a great experience living in S.E Asia for the past 8 years, and I just hope through all of it that God will get the glory only He deserves.