2026 Vietnam- Cambodia Mission Team- Update #3
Hello Family, prayer partners and friends,
Monday, we wrapped up our time in Vietnam with an evening of conversation and ministry with one of David (Duc) Tran’s English ministry classes. David (below) also serves part time as our ALWM Vietnam Vital Links project manager. It was a blessed time of conversation games, encouragement and testimony!
Tuesday our early morning flight to Phnom Penh Cambodia was the beginning of a busy day! We were met by the founder of ALWM Cambodia, Pastor Sam Chim. Pastor Sam has been preaching and helping plant churches in Cambodia for more than 30 years!
After a stop at our lodging for the week, the Golden House Motel, we had lunch nearby. and then most continued on to visit to important historical sites. The Killing Fields Museum and the “S 21 Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum” honor the 1.5 million to 3 million people who were murdered during the dictatorship of Pol Pot and his reign of terror under the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979. Both are sobering reminders of the horrors of communism, a part of the recent history of this country that is still recovering from those horrendous years. Pastor Sam personally shared some of the experiences of his family during and afterward. He was born in 1976 and grew up in the civil war years 1976-1993 and beyond that followed the fall of Pol Pot. His father was a doctor, and many in that profession were executed, but their family miraculously survived. His parents came to faith in Christ in the late 1980’s, growing in Christ with teaching from a small illegally owned radio they hid and used, which was a lifeline from Khmer speaking believers who broadcast into Cambodia. Soon after his father planted a church, and when that grew into two churches, 16 year old Sam Chim began to preach!
Today, Wednesday, our team visited the ALWM Cambodia “Island School”, about 2 hours from Phnom Penh and another 40 minutes by boat north of Kampong Chhnang!
With the English Bible Camp starting tomorrow, we still have work to do to get ready, so our visit was of necessity relatively brief, about 2 hours or so. We met Pastor Tor Heoun, principal and main teacher at the Island School and Pastor of the Island church. Serving grades 1-6 with a Christian education for kids who otherwise would not attend school at all because of the distance from the island to town, this school is changing lives day by day! We also shared reading glasses with some of the older adults, and gave gifts and books to the 30 children currently attending!
After the return boat trip to Kampong Chhnang, we stopped by the new future site of the ALWM Cambodia Youth & Ministry Training Center. It is a few kilometers outside the city, and a new location for this vital project after the border conflict began in summer 2025. They uncertainty along the border for the first time since the 1960’s, only 80 km from our planned building site, initially looked like a setback. We delayed, Pastor Sam’s team prayed more, and then determined a site further from the border conflict and any future unrest was necessary! The new location is affordable by the grace of God, more central, and will serve a third purpose beyond Youth Conferences and Leadership Training: a place for Island school children to live and study beyond grade 6, even into college. Even as we start the “BELC Greenhouse” in Bangladesh for discipleship of young adults, God seems to be planting the vision for an “ALWM Cambodia Greenhouse” too! The land up north can be sold at a profit, and God’s vision is unfolding as He relocates this project further south! We had time to gather and pray at this new land!
As I write, we are driving to Takeo, the site of these year’s English Bible Camp! Please pray! Think of it as a three day VBS in English for 45-50 students ages 10-13!
The reason we bring short term teams to Vietnam and Cambodia, for example, is to serve alongside our local leaders and their teams. Our presence and activities open doors for them: deepening relationships and gathering youth and adults who will be loved and served in the months that follow, like this English Bible camp! Please pray for God’s favor and presence with all we do here the next few days: preaching, conversational English, crafts, music, games, meals and more!
More in a day or two!
On behalf of the team,
Pastor Bill Moberly, Director of ALWM
