Another life spared…
God has graciously allowed our ministry to participate in saving another child’s life. In July, a 2.2 pound infant was brought to the Shelter of Love Center by a grandmother who was desperate for help. The child’s mother died three days prior and the grandmother was considering throwing the baby into the lake. When the Center received the baby, only one month of age, the child had only been given rice water; never tasting a drop of milk. The staff and children at SLC decided on the name Joshua. Just as Joshua of the Bible said “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord,” it is our deepest hope and prayer that this baby will grow to serve and honor God with his precious life.
University student
Our first student from SLC to go away to the University is Sok Ang Chay, who is finishing her first semester this month. It’s a big transition to go from countryside to the urban life of Phnom Penh, traveling around on a bicycle. Sok Chay has adjusted well to living in an apartment with three other female students. A couple lives downstairs, who have Bible study with the girls each week. It is our prayer that all the children and youth living at The Shelter of Love Center will be able to receive university training or technical or vocational training.
Determined to beat the odds
The contrast between a child in a life of poverty and an educated citizen who can make a difference in this land, where great poverty exists, is astonishing. Every child’s story attests to the differences that have already occurred in these children’s lives during their years of living at the Shelter of Love Center.
One of the girls that always comes to my mind when I ponder the life of each child is Phally, who had to stop school in grade 4. When she entered the Center the school tested her at the third grade level in some subjects, but she was too big for the third grade so she had to go into the fourth grade. I prayed that she could begin to catch up in her schooling because she was, indeed, one of the larger children. This July she passed the national 9th grade test and will be entering senior high school in September. She has worked diligently in school and I believe that her future will be bright. Had she stayed in her village, she would have been another of the uneducated, most likely married to an uneducated rice farmer as a teenager. May God receive Glory in the life of Phally, who was rescued and placed at the Shelter of Love Center. God is Good!
-Sue Singleton
Changing lives…one child at a time.
Sok Nye was a ten year old girl who lived under a piece of plastic behind the market in Kompong Thom town with her mother who is mentally limited and has tuberculosis. She has never known her father, and had never been to school. Walking around town with a bag looking for recyclables was her daily life. The police contacted the Shelter of Love Center to ask if she might go there to live. Today, she is doing adequately well in school and will soon enter 5th grade. She has accepted Christ as her Savior. If it were not for the Shelter of Love Center Sok Nye would still be an illiterate street child, and even worse could have easily been picked up and made to become a teenage prostitute.
