Back to the Killing Fields
With a ministry of love and beauty

"I was a Buddhist growing up in Cambodia," Noren Tan explains. "The first time I went to a Christian church just out of curiosity, I saw people raising their hands and looking at the sky, I covered my face laughing and laughing."

"Crazy people," I thought.

But in the months ahead Noren's life was shattered. In 1974 just four months after her visit to the church, Pol Pot, the Communist leader and his Khmer Rouge forces "came in like a river." He cleared out the city of Phom Penh, forcing thousands to live in camps in the jungle. In the midst of the horror she found herself thinking about what she'd heard about Jesus, but not comprehending the Truth.

Noren's husband disappeared to work for Pol Pot's forces. She and two of her children moved from place to place, building shelters to live in, scratching an existence out of the jungle. The children, eight and nine years of age, died of starvation, diarrhea and malaria. For about three years her husband managed to return to her from time to time with clothes and food. She last saw him in April, 1977. "I don't know if he's alive or not." Nor does she know whether her third child, a daughter, who had stayed with relatives, is alive.

A Smell of Death

After the Vietnamese "freed" Cambodia in 1979, Noren walked for 28 days back to Phnom Penh. She returned to her old home to find it occupied by strangers; everything she'd owned was gone. She was able to get a job working for the Vietnamese, but she realized more disaster coming as they began requesting "lists" of Chinese living in the country. Noren recalls, "I smelled death."

So she hired a guide and began her escape from Cambodia. In the darkness of the night she got separated from her guide in the jungle. Fearful of stepping on a land mine or being apprehended by soldiers she found herself for the first time in her life, crying, "Jesus help me!"

Though she'd never held a Bible in her hands, and admits that her calls to Jesus were simply out of a natural passion for self-preservation, Jesus answered her prayers. He led her to a refugee camp in Thailand, then on to the Philippines, and eventually to the United States. After some time she managed a restaurant in Chicago, and there a Christian woman helped her to know who Jesus really is and discipled her.

Noren joined a Cambodian church in Chicago and soon was active in teaching and preaching in a house church. There she met Gioia Michellotti, an American woman who loved the Cambodians "more than they love themselves." When Noren heard Gioia singing in Cambodian and encouraging Cambodians to relearn the beautiful art forms they'd lost under Communism, it touched a chord in Noren's heart. Cambodians love art, music and dancing, and she realized here was a way to present Christ so Cambodians would understand. They wouldn't think it was crazy to preform the graceful motions of hands and feet to tell the story of Jesus' love to traditional music.

Out of this vision, the two women have formed the Cambodian Christian Arts Ministry and since 1995 have been presenting the gospel throughout Cambodia in the beautiful traditions they'd lost in Pol Pot's Killing Fields.

Cambodian Christian Arts Ministry
Bringing healing to a painful heritage

Noren and Gioia have faced many challenges as they began the Cambodian Christian Arts Ministry in Phom Penh. God gave them a ready-made team to train in dance and art, as orphans and abandoned children were brought to them. Today 30 youngsters between the ages of 8 and 18 live in a rented house with no air conditioning, an unreliable water supply and rats the size of cats. The boys have to sleep in the schoolroom because of limited space. Finding a bigger house and funds to rent or purchase is a major need.

Gioia explains "It�s like home schooling 30 children." Each day's activities include Bible study, classes, art, music, drama and hours of dancing. A local Fine Arts School has helped them choreograph dances to depict Bible stories, like the resurrection. Ten of the students from the Fine Arts School have become Christians through the ministry, and often come to help train the students at CCAM.

CCAM offers a unique gift of beauty and love into a country still in shock from seeing millions of its people killed or disappear. Patrick Johnstone, author of Operation World, describes this as "the most savage slaughter in this century. Almost all former military personnel, civil servants, educated or wealthy people and their families were killed and the nation was turned into a vast labor camp." Most women under the age of 25 remember losing fathers and brothers and sisters through the cruelty of the Khmer Rouge.

"The culture was destroyed by Pol Pot," says Gioia. "There is no sense of morality or honesty." Kidnapping young girls to sell them into prostitution is common. Boys are sold as slaves in Thailand. Disciplining and training youngsters who have come off the street in such an environment is a challenge in itself. And a new political threat hangs over the country.

But the young artists from CCAM have more invitations than they can fill to present the radiance and beauty of Christ to people who had lost hope. Many respond to the gospel presentation through their testimonies, dance and drama. For Noren and Gioia this makes living under the painful heritage of the "Killing fields" worthwhile.

Thirty-five functional leaders and founders of the AD2000 and Beyond Movement met in Colorado Springs in May to assess progress and discuss the next two and a half years of the movement. In the first session, C. Peter Wagner, director of the AD2000 Prayer Track, asked a spontaneous question, which set the tone for the entire three days.

"With thirty-one months to go, do we still have faith that there will be a 'church for every people and the gospel for every person by the year 2000'? And if we believe it, what are the indicators that give us that faith?"

After a momentary pause, several leaders answered a rapid and enthusiastic "Yes." With many reports to give substance to the hope that, as God gave the vision, He is also bringing it to fruition.

As the leaders assessed the rapid progress of the gospel since the inception of AD2000 & Beyond both on an individual and peoples level, they could easily see that through God all things truly are possible.

Repeatedly, the necessity of prayer emerged as a major theme from the movement's beginning and into the future. Michael Little (Christian Broadcasting Network) and Vonette Bright (Campus Crusade for Christ) are leading the effort for Praying Through the Window IV, a global prayer initiative in 1999 to focus on the 62 nations of the 10/40 window. The previous Praying Through the Windows, held in 1993, 1995 and 1997, have each mobilized 20 to 30 million participants to pray for the needs of the 10/40 window. This has opened up territories to the gospel in ways that would have been unimagined just a dozen years ago.

Surprisingly, the primary roadblocks to world evangelization were not seen to lie primarily in numbers of missionaries, supplies, finances or methods. Everyone agreed that, as was revealed in many ways, God is able to work in astounding ways "on His own," in response to united prayer. He is fully capable of revealing Himself to all in an instant. But according to John 17 God considers it a necessity for the Whole Body of Christ to develop His heart for the nations before He will complete the entire task. He brings tremendous power to any willing to "show up to do the job." The primary roadblocks to world evangelization were cited as being disinterest, self-absorption and lukewarmness within the body of Christ.

Recently Olga Spachil, who publishes the Study Guide and Women of Vision 2000 newsletter in Russian, received this letter. She describes the city Khabanovsk as in the far east of the country, thousands of kilometers from Moscow.

My dear sister in the Lord.
I thank you for the package with the Prayer Evangelism Guide. The sisters here organize seminars and conferences all over the far east region We give each church one or two books. Sisters take this book with gladness. In many churches of our region we have started prayer triplets. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for this wonderful book which calls for successful prayer.
May the Lord bless you.
With respect, Sister Elena

The AD2000 Women's Track was able to help a Christian leader in a closed country print 4500 Study Guides for Evangelism Praying in Arabic. He arranged to have three different printers each print a quantity, so that if one was confiscated, they still had the remaining copies to distribute.

Write the representative from your region:

Webmaster
2/11/99