Please Meet One of Our First Ordained Pastors
During our first tenure in Cambodia, we were privileged to be able to attend the ordination of the three Lutheran pastors, all local guys, into the realm of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cambodia.
One of these men is Pastor Sarath, a young man, married to a khmer gal, and they have one son with a daughter due to arrive in mid December. As is the case with this new generation of pastors, most of them have some English background, making our direct communication with them much easier, and it speeds up our relationship building with them as well. Having known Sarat from before is also a plus for us now.
Pastor Sarath’s role these past four years has been focused in Ratanakiri, ministering to a minority group called the Jarai people. This is where the church has asked him to serve.
This ethnic group numbers at about 140,000 as I could find in my search, with most of them located in the Vietnam area and into Ratanakiri in Cambodia. Their bible looks more like the Vietnamese dialect than the khmer. However, when we talked with Sarat, he said that he is able to communicate with these people in the four villages where he is present.
To give you a sight glimpse into the terrain of Ratanakiri, George has previously mentioned it as ‘the ends of the earth.’ It is indeed a very diverse terrain, very rugged, and very isolated. We have been there three previous occasions, and each time it took hours to get just to the closest village to visit these lovely folk. Roads are almost nonexistent now we were told by Sarath. His travel will take him away from home for 2-3 days at a time and he will sleep in whatever village he is working with. Additionally, he said that he is not willing to travel at night due to the problems with robbers on the road in the dark.
Sarath’s responsibility is to teach Lutheran doctrine to the people in the four villages he travels to. In the villages they have formed a five member church council leadership with about 15 or so as a total church body at this time. He said that the faith of the Jarai people is stronger as time has passed till now. We remember Pastor Douk who was the local ‘barefoot’ pastor who was there before Sarath. He was called home to a higher job while we were there in 2013, so his sons who are still in the area offer some assistance for Sarath to continue God’s work there.
The Jarai people were initially quite transient (and had been split up during the Khmer Rouge) after the war, so that they could use the land effectively for their needs of survival. Sarath related that now because of higher land prices they are not moving so often and so are concentrating on what will be a source of income for their needs. He mentioned rubber trees, cashew nuts, palm sugar, and tapioca. The biggest issue in all of this is that their main prospect source are their neighbors, the Vietnamese, who have been undercutting their efforts to broaden their market, and yet do not often offer them a reasonable price for their products.
The church is also beginning work on sewing projects, but he was not aware of what that would look like. We will add here though that these people are beautiful weavers and we are privileged to have some of their bags from our previous visits. As we would walk around the community we could see women sitting on a mat on the ground with a strapped loom at the waist doing theirwork.
To share the gospel message Sarath is using the New Testament for the most part at this time. He has related that the complete bible has been translated into their heart language, but at this point maybe only 1-2 exist per each village due to the cost and availability to the people. We talked a bit about how that could be improved before we departed our ways and after praying with and for him.
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