Outreach to refugees cont. from page 1 As relationships begin to form with the new arrivals, opportunities to share the Good News arise. “When I saw that the Dari prayer books were available from LHF, I thought: ‘This is how God is going to speak to people who have suffered great trauma and great wounding in their lives,” Yvette shared. For Muslims or people from an Islamic culture, prayer is deeply respected. Thus, LHF’s Catechism and Prayer Book is highly effective for introducing new believers to Jesus, as it invites readers to pray through Luther’s Small Catechism. Ten dozen of those prayer books now have been shipped to the Washington D.C. area. “God is going to use these prayers to heal them and come alongside them in this new journey in the United States,” Yvette said. “My prayer is that Christians will witness to them: ‘You will know them by their love.’ Pretty simple, right?” Another great need: Spanish Halfway across the nation, Natalie Valle was also checking the LHF Publications Database (www.LHFmissions.org/publications), this time for children’s materials in the Spanish language. An email from her homeschooling group had alerted Natalie to large numbers of Spanish-speaking children from the U.S. southern border arriving at a nearby facility in her home state of Michigan. Donations of clothing, balls and toys to play with were requested, but Natalie thought of something else that would be needed. “I thought of LHF right away because I knew A Child’s Garden of Bible Stories, which I used for devotions with my own children, was available in Spanish,” she said. “I was also familiar with LHF’s ‘Jesus Never Fails’ booklet, because we’d given that out at community suppers. It’s a wonderful little booklet with a message that might be good for older kids.” Soon, 100 Spanish Bible storybooks and 75 devotion booklets were on their way to the facility. “It touches my heart,” Natalie reflected. “I’ve been told most of these children will be going to family members, but some will go to foster families. All over the country, wherever they go, these children will take the books with them! We have no idea what the outcome will be, but we know that the Holy Spirit is going to use His Word. God uses these things beyond ways we could even imagine.”
Cambodia
A HISTORIC EVEN
Twenty years ago, there was no Lutheran church body in Cambodia, a country in Southeast Asia just west of Vietnam. It’s been an amazing journey over the past couple of decades, but today, Lutheran church leaders there are celebrating a historic moment in the life of the Cambodia Lutheran Church (CLC): the translation and publication of the Book of Concord in the Khmer language. “It’s exciting to see how God, through His Word and the Holy Spirit, Sopha Korn, pictured at r is using us and LHF materials to bring His teachings and faith to the Khmer people,” said Rev. Ted NaThalang, LHF’s coordinator for Southeast Asian projects. “This is what mission work is really about, and I am sure that Martin Luther is looking down on us with a smile, seeing God’s Word translated for His children in Cambodia.” A key to training up faithful pastors Sopha Korn, LHF’s translation coordinator in Cambodia, said that the Book of Concord will be essential for helping to train up faithful pastors in his country, where there are no Lutheran seminaries. “For Lutheran churches in Cambodia, it has been a challenge to get a theological education, due to the lack of Lutheran classes and shortage of confessional Lutheran instructors who are Cambodian nationals,” he explained. Rev. J.P. Cima, an LCMS missionary to Cambodia who
