Prayer Postcard
A Ratanakiri Special Edition
'Where oh death is your sting?' (1 Corinthians 15:55)
In a village accessible only by boat, somewhere deep in the forests of Ratanakiri, 20 or so emerging new believers meet to pray and study God’s Word. How did the gospel reach this isolated group of Brao tribe believers? It began with a elderly, but sprightly lady called Buoy. Buoy’s first exposure to Christianity as a little girl in Loas, was the Swiss Brethren Leprosy Clinic. Her grandfather suffered from the disease, but the ‘Christians’ at the clinic had devotedly cared for him. Many years later, living in Cambodia with a husband and 4 children, disease struck her family again. This time it was her husband, who was slowly being suffocated by an enormous neck tumor. The Village Diviner told them to appease the evil spirits with sacrifices, so starting with a chicken and ending with their much prized Buffalo, Buoy and her husband sacrificed one by one all the animals they owned. They were now impoverished, but it had all been in vain - her husband was still sick. One day Buoy heard about a Christian man who helped take isolated tribal people to the District Hospital. Maybe the news reminded her of the Christians who had once cared for her grandfather. Buoy brought her husband to that man, Kevin Olson (an OMF member), who for the next few months lovingly cared for Buoy’s husband, taking him to hospital, helping make him comfortable and sharing the gospel with him. Before he died, Buoy and her husband received Jesus. Together they now looked not for temporal healing in this world, but for the promise of a far greater and more permanent healing; the promise of a bodily resurrection (1 Cor 15) and life eternal in God’s New Creation (Rev 21).
Buoy and her daughters now host and lead a small church in their rickety old wooden house in their very remote village. Once or twice a month Kevin and two Brao believers from another village travel out to Buoy’s house to help teach them God’s Word. In the near future, OMF in partnership with EMU plan to start training ministry leaders from this group at their ‘Brao and Krung Language Church Ministry School’. Please pray this group of new believers would remain strong and faithful as they patiently wait for some of their own to be equipped to teach and lead them.