A Young Christian's Success Story

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Three years ago the management of the church leaders training program in Phnom Penh was dropped on us without any prior warning. We were unprepared for the task to be added to all the other responsibilities we had.

We began to attempt to work with the seven students then enrolled. Their Bible teacher was doing a good job teaching but they had no plan or direction for life after school. None of them had a marketable skill and fewer then half of them had finished high school.

My first step was to encourage them to get some training so they could go to work when they finished school to support themselves and their families. I offered to send them to trade school if they would decide what type of training they wanted. Three chose auto mechanics school. The two young women chose beauty school and chef's training. One of the young men asked to go to the university. When I explained that I could not pay his expenses for four years but would give him the same amount I was providing to others for trade school, he jumped at it and enrolled in the university. We provided enough money to pay tuition for one year.

He then wrote his sister, who lives abroad, to ask her to lend him funds to continue. In April he will graduate with a degree in Management. However, that is not the most thrilling aspect of the story.

Unbeknownst to us, seeing skyrocketing land prices, he borrowed more money and invested in several pieces of land. He recently reported to me that he had made $10,000 on a “recent land sale" and he brought Christmas gifts to hundreds of the children in the nutritional feeding program, as he said, “To say thank you to God.”

Once a benevolent case, he grasped at an opportunity to start school and now we know the rest of the story.

He goes to the countryside every week to teach a group of five village church leaders, who have made great strides in their ability to teach and help their local churches.

As he shared this with me he said, "Without your encouragement to go back to school, I would be where I was three years ago, stuck and without hope." Then he insisted on buying lunch for three of us that had serendipitously met him at a restaurant.

Many of you have helped make this happen and on behalf of this young man in Cambodia, we say thank you. $250 produced a miracle!

William E. "Bill" McDonough, Director
Partners In Progress
Phnom Penh, Cambodia