Happy New Year! Greetings from Koh Kong, Cambodia!

These past few months have been an amazing time to see God working! He has opened many doors for us in our short time in Koh Kong. Since September God has allowed us to seize the moment, and I think, we have taken advantage of it. As of September we have had 540 conversations with people in Koh Kong. Some of these are follow-up but still amazing. Roughly, we have met 450 people in the last three months and out of those 450 we have shared the gospel or had a spiritual conversation with 197 of those. As a team we have shared the gospel or been involved in a spiritual conversation with 44% of the people we have interacted with. I know it is not about the numbers but I think we can use these numbers to A) praise God for what he’s doing and B) encourage us as we work here.

Earlier in this month Jeff and I were able to go to a local village, Tmaa Saw, and share a video made by Cambodians that shares the gospel. We showed it in an open air coffee shop in the evening. We figure over 100 people watched part if not all of the 1 1/2 hour video. Later on in the evening we had several people come and ask question. Sret, our Khmer staff here in Koh Kong, got the majority of the questions. The village is very welcoming and open to our presence. We are praying about our future ministry in Tmaa Saw. You know, it amazes me that there are people there that have never heard about Jesus. The town is not that isolated and yet the gospel has not yet reach the area. May you all be encouraged as we partner together to reach a new area in Christ’s name!

Personally, our lives have been changed forever just in this past week. As you all know we have not been able to have any children due to infertility issues. We have been researching adoption this past year. Cambodia is closed for US International Adoptions but for US citizen’s living in Cambodia, a way have been opened for foster care and adoption. The US embassy signed an affidavit for us about 4 months ago stating we could proceed with adopting a Cambodian Orphan. We have been working directly with the Cambodian government and US government. We received a phone call early in Dec stating a 5 months old boy had been found for. We meet him on Dec 15th and he has been with us since Dec 25. Yep, since Christmas Day! So for those of you who are emailing us or viewing our face book account and saying, “What! We didn’t know anything about your adoption!” Take heart, neither did we until two weeks ago! The process has happened relatively quickly so we all can be praising God for his gift to us, little Weston Lewis Hogue, born July 15th, 2008.

We are still waiting for the final paper work to be signed so we would greatly appreciate your prayers for him too! Once the paper work is signed we will need to have care of him for 2 years before we will be able to return to the states with him wherein we will re-adopt him and get him naturalized!

Many things to be praising God for as we start a new year and we are so grateful for your faithful support! It amazes me to think we have been in Cambodian since 2000. We are eager to see the work God has for us this year. Our private prayer is Tmaa Saw, an area that appears to have God’s fingerprints on it.