SLUM FIRE: Our team handed out tarps and bags of emergency supplies to hundreds of families left homeless by the massive fire in Phnom Penh.
Cambodia: Ministering to Survivors of an Inferno
All of our work in Cambodia laid the foundation for the biggest emergency relief project Samaritan's Purse has undertaken in that nation.
During the 1970s in Cambodia, the murderous dictator Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime exterminated one-quarter of the nation's population and tried to eradicate the Christian faith. More recently, God has opened doors for Christian organizations like Samaritan's Purse to return to Cambodia.
Our teams have been clearing landmines, building schools, providing livelihoods, supplying clean water, and ministering to the victims of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In the border town of Poipet, we equipped a medical missionary with basic surgical equipment to help the victims of landmines.
After decades of living in fear and hopelessness, many Cambodians are now turning to Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. One man, whose life was saved after he was wounded by a landmine, not only became a Christian but began sharing the Gospel with dozens of people in his village.
SLUM FIRE: Our team handed out tarps and bags of emergency supplies to hundreds of families left homeless by the massive fire in Phnom Penh.All of our work laid the foundation for the biggest emergency relief project Samaritan's Purse has undertaken in Cambodia. On April 11, in the capital city of Phnom Penh, a house caught fire in one of the poorest neighborhoods and quickly became an inferno that consumed 12 city blocks. The blaze destroyed hundreds of tenements and shanties that were home to nearly 3,000 people, most of them garment workers and domestic servants. Thank God, everyone survived.
Samaritan's Purse was one of the first organizations on the scene, ministering to families who had lost everything they owned. We provided victims with food, water, hygiene kits, and assistance in building emergency shelters. These include desperately poor families who moved from the countryside for the promise of city jobs that pay as little as $2 per day.
In the weeks ahead, these families will need more help, and Samaritan's Purse will continue to reach out to them with the compassion of Christ. As we meet their immediate physical needs, we are also working with local Cambodian churches to make sure they hear the Gospel and have opportunities to respond.
God's Word says, "The Lord is ... longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9, NKJV). God's desire for every man, woman, and child to be saved is the source of our urgency in taking the Good News of forgiveness and eternal life to the unreached peoples of Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East - even to the far corners of the world.
Through the prayers and support of compassionate people like you, Samaritan's Purse is able to share this Good News with millions of hurting people each year.
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