Cambodia Community & Education Project
Written by Dave & Alice Griffin
Canadian missionaries to Cambodia
Our missionary journey
Our missionary journey began in 2007 when we attended the Ethnos Asia Ministries Missions Conference in Bangkok, Thailand followed by a vision trip to Laos and Cambodia. What we learned at the conference, the people we met there and the visits to these countries changed our lives. We could not imagine returning to our regular lives in Canada and forgetting about the people in SE Asia.
Over the years, we visited Cambodia, a couple of times a year and helped at the Functional English Center (FEC) near Siem Reap (2.5 hours flight from Phnom Penh, capital city of Cambodia). We taught English there and shared the gospel with the students. We worked with youth all our adult lives in the churches we attended which now we see as a preparation for working with Cambodian students.
In 2017, we were invited to join the staff at the FEC school. We packed up our two businesses and left for Cambodia in November 2017. We served in this school until July 2024 at which time we changed our focus to helping a Cambodian pastor, Pastor Vey, in the relocation site Run Ta Ek, 30 km outside Siem Reap.
We raised funds to build simple but strong homes for four poor families who had been forcefully relocated. Pastor Vey was one of them. He previously had a church in Mondol 3 village where the FEC school still is.
Now at Run Ta Ek he has a vision to have a home church and a place where children, young people and adults could come and learn about Jesus, learn English and skills to grow their own food and raise their own animals. He cares about his people and the community at large. He desires to instill a good work ethic in the people who come to the church. He has taken two training courses with the Community Health Evangelism (CHE) program.
We are now working with Pastor Vey with the vision to strengthen and serve the Body of Christ at this new location.
The new church and future school project
In June 2024, we started worship services in the home of a family whose children were former students at FEC school. The whole family had come to Jesus and needed a church and Christian teaching. Others who were previously at the FEC school also joined us.
We provided funds to build the home church of Pastor Vey and moved the church there when it was ready in July 2024. The people called it “Love in Action Church”. Every Sunday we have a morning worship service and a children’s church. We eat lunch together and in the afternoon we have two bible teaching classes. Alice teaches the younger children with the help of interpretation by an older student and Dave teaches the teens and any parents who come. The students read and write English and we have Khmer for the parents. Sometimes on weekdays we do home visits with Pastor Vey.
We live in the city as does Pastor Vey and his family. His wife has a job with a large church as a social worker and they have two daughters in school there. As time went by, the parents of the students began to ask us to teach English again as their children were not getting good English teaching at Run Ta Ek where they live. Pastor Vey desires to teach the young children English and we can have two classes of older children and teens.
In order for this to happen, some things need to be put in place. We need rooms to teach in and those rooms equipped for teaching.
Needs to set up a school
Two class rooms separate from the church building. One has been started with limited funds and there is more to do:
Finish the interior walls, construct a ceiling and cement floor, add lighting and fans.
A second complete room to be built.
Construction is brick with a metal roof.
The ground floor of the church building can be used as the third classroom.
Equipment needed:
Desks with built-in benches or desks and chairs. The former is preferred.
Whiteboards, and 32 or 40 inch TVs for power point lessons.
Printer for worksheets and other documents.
If you would like to support this project, please go to the GIVE page and designate your giving to Cambodia Community & Education Project.
THANK YOU.