A Special Time in Cambodia

I was working with Paul Kauffman for the Orient with World Outreach, then known as "The Slavic and Oriental Mission". (Together with Paul Kauffman we had a great friendship with Len Jones its founder. As there was now virtually no ministry into the Slavic countries Paul and I suggested that he change the name of the mission to "World Outreach", which he did). I was editor of World Outreach's magazine "The Evidence" which qualified me to travel with a press card. This enabled me to get into many places which would have otherwise been impossible. One such situation was the inauguration of the new President of Cambodia.

Just prior to this time I had ministry in Singapore, taking a leaders' seminar. It had been organised by Canon James Wong. There were several hundred leaders from all churches present and it was a wonderful time of blessing. I had been staying, as was our custom, at the home of Brother Goh - a man of great love and a leader in the Body of Christ in Singapore. Brother Goh and his family have the dealership for Yashica cameras and he used to receive samples from different firms around the world. One of these samples was a pearl handled 16 mm camera from Scandanavia (video cameras didn't exist back then). When Brother Goh heard I was going to Cambodia he asked me if I would like to take it.

So I found myself in PnomPhen. General Lon Nol had taken power in Cambodia and, as I watched thousands of young people (many of them teenagers) who had supported him and helped him to power, in a celebration march-pass, a French missionary told me that most of the ones I was seeing would eventually die. Tragically this proved to be so true as "the killing fields" were not far away.

Through my press card, I was in the official staging area for the inauguration ceremony of the President. With my 16mm pearled handled camera, I was positioned together with all the major international camera crews of the various networks. We were only about 30 to 40 feet away from the swearing-in platform. The network cameras were silent as they ran but, unfortunately, as I attempted to film this historic event, my camera made a significant, though not too disconcerting, whirling sound. At a lull in the proceedings I headed for a dark hallway to put in a new film. Much to my disappointment, when I opened the camera, there before me was a tangle of film. What a disaster! Maybe I was never really called to be a cameraman :).

However, this visit opened up a ministry into Cambodia. Later I was to return to PnomPhen where Todd Burke was experiencing a great visitation of the Lord. In the midst of so many people being slaughtered, and many young people without work, they became part of a unique Training School. As they studied the Word of God, book by book, they would then go out preaching what the Lord was teaching them each day and many were responding to the Gospel.

As the situation worsened we were able to get Todd Burke out of the country. We felt led of the Lord to send him an air-ticket which got him out just before the North Vietnamese took over.