Additional Praises/Prayer Requests

1. The Lord continues to bless the weekly Bible study at Maow’s house. She has professed faith in Jesus, but I continue to lay a foundation from Genesis with her. Please pray that her daughter, Srey Tua, will be saved as well as others in her family.

2. We are halfway through a 13-week kids’ club that we have on Sunday afternoons at our house. This past week was the “midterm exam,” and five or six kids quoted all the verses, including our Rachel (in Khmer, I might add!). Please pray that these kids will not just memorize Scripture for a reward but that they will understand the truths in these verses.

3. We praise the Lord for the wonderful wedding of two believers in Pursat. Ti and Hooie were married on July 24. Even in the face of great persecution from Hooie’s side of the family, they endured with much joy and displayed a wonderful testimony. Please pray for this dear couple as they start their married life together.

4. The first week of August, Rachel and Isaac entered a Cambodian school here in Pailin town. This has opened many doors for us in the community and has given us some new relationships. We are praying about some additional ways to be involved in the community through this school. Please pray for this.

5. There are many exciting opportunities that appear to be opening up for us. We need special wisdom from God to discern what things we should become involved in at this point. I realize that this is a vague request, but do pray for wisdom.

I think that gives you at least ten things to pray for. Our goal, since we call this a “prayer letter,” is to make it easy for you to pray specifically and intelligently. Now to the work of prayer!

Until the net is full,

Chris for the Seawright family

Greetings from a place where it is actually cooler than much of the USA right now!! We are enjoying the cooling rains that have kept temperatures in the upper 80’s and low 90’s most of the time. It has been some time since we sent out a “Holding the Ropes” update. We want to update you about some prayer needs:

1. Thanks to all who pray for my trip to Myanmar in early July with the BJU Southeast Asia Team (the picture is of the team at Ann Judson’s memorial grave about 7 hours from Yangon), and for our time with summer intern, Jonathan Biddle. Both of these times were a great blessing.
2. Continue in your prayers for Srey Maow, the lady who has invited us to teach the Bible at her home on a weekly basis. I have finished teaching through Genesis 1 with her and her children. She continues to have a hungry heart for God’s Word.
3. The biggest prayer need in this HTR update is to pray for the wedding of two dear believers in Pursat. Many of you remember praying in previous prayer letters for a young man named Ti. The Lord has miraculously provided Ti with a believing helpmate. Hooie, who was saved back in 2009, will be marrying Ti this Saturday, July 24. It is quite a story of God’s grace and a direct answer to prayer that Hooie’s Buddhist family is agreeing to this Christian wedding. There is still much opposition and persecution. Both Ti and Hooie want their wedding to glorify God and be thoroughly Biblical, so it will be significantly different than the typical Buddhist Khmer wedding yet also striving to be culturally Khmer. Please pray for the wedding ceremony this weekend to be a great testimony to the community, particularly Hooie’s unsaved family. Also, pray for their marriage to be a bright light of the power of the Gospel to change lives in this heathen land.

Thanks for “Holding the Ropes.”

Chris

Dear Family and Friends,

Praise the Lord for pleang, the Khmer word for “rain”! It has been raining nearly every day in Pailin for about a week now. The hot season this year was the hottest since 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina in the U.S.A. I was reading the other day in my Khmer Bible from Acts 14:17, in which Paul says to those in Lystra, “He [God] did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons.” Many here in Pailin have plantations, and some have rice fields that depend totally on this “rain from heaven” that God gives. We hope that many will come to believe in the God Who provides the rain.

I think the best way to communicate what has been happening here and to let you know about some future events is to simply list some specific praises and prayer requests.

Praises

1. We had a very special visitor from America with us during the month of May and early June. We want to praise the Lord for the wonderful time we had with Heidi’s mom, Carol Gray, who came to visit us for 31 days! She came to help Heidi with the kids while I went on a study tour to Israel for two weeks with a group of mostly pastors from the States as well as a missionary friend, Michael Carlyle. Heidi, her mom, and the kids spent two weeks in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where our Susanna was born in 2007. I had an incredible learning experience in Israel. It was extremely helpful to see the way the Bible is interpreted through Jewish eyes. I had no idea how much my “Gentileness” influenced my Bible study!

2. After I returned from Israel, we took Mom Gray to our home in Pailin, to Angkor Wat for a day, and to our old home in Pursat for a weekend. That weekend we were able to attend the Inheritance in Christ Church’s fourth anniversary service. The service that morning was very special as the assembly recognized two men, Ti and Puek, as their first deacons! I had the opportunity to pray over these two servants of the church. This was a very significant event because many church leaders in Cambodia have their position due to their financial relationship with a foreigner or foreign organization and, in many cases, are not recognized by the Cambodian assembly for their spiritual qualifications based on I Timothy 3 and Titus 1.

3. We want to praise the Lord for an open door to teach God’s Word in our village of Bordaneiu. A lady down the street from our house, Srey Maow (aged mid-40s), has invited us to come and teach her and her family God’s Word every Sunday. Both of her children—Riech (aged 20) and Srey Tua (aged 13)—as well as some neighbor kids have been attending as I teach through Firm Foundations. We are taking time to work through Genesis 1, as we know it is very important to replace a faulty worldview with an entirely new worldview.

Prayer Requests

1. Do pray for Srey Maow and her family. She says she has already “entered Jesus” (this is a literal translation from the Khmer) and has already received some persecution from some of her neighbors, but I believe she still needs more teaching on the meaning of the Gospel.

2. Please pray for a village kid’s club that we have started on Sunday afternoons. We had 13 kids at our house this past Sunday, and I taught the kids from Luke 4:4 about the importance of God’s Word as our spiritual food. We plan to go through the key stories of the Old Testament and the life of Christ just as we did with the kid’s clubs that we held in Pursat.

3. July 1–5, I will be traveling to the country of Myanmar to meet up with the Bob Jones University Southeast Asia Team led by Dr. Kevin Oberlin. I have had a desire for many years to see the land of Myanmar (formerly called Burma) and the status of the local church there. Please pray that the Lord will use this short trip for His glory in my life.

4. In mid-July, we will have the privilege of having a BJU summer intern, Jonathan Biddle, in our house in Pailin for a few days. He is interning with Forrest McPhail in Pursat this summer. Please uphold him in your prayers through August, asking the Lord to use this trip in his life.

5. God is burdening my heart about structured cultural study of the Khmer people as well as the many ethnic Cham (who are mostly Muslim) who live in Pailin. Please pray that God will give me wisdom about how to accomplish this in an effective way.

6. Last but not least, please continue to pray for our four children. I believe that God is starting to work in the hearts of our two older children. They are realizing their sinfulness and their need for the Doctor (Jesus) Who can heal them of their great disease of sin. We need wisdom to shepherd our children’s hearts to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Here are six requests for you to bring before the Lord. May the Lord give each of you great opportunities during these hot summer months to spread God’s fame to others.

Until the net is full,

Chris for the Seawright family

P.S. I wanted to make sure everyone has our new mailing address since we are still receiving mail in Pursat and even in Phnom Penh (the address we had 6 years ago!!!). Please change our mailing address to the following in your records:
PO Box 9901
Pailin, Cambodia

Dear Family and Friends,

Greetings for the first time from Pailin, Cambodia! Much has happened since our last prayer letter at the end of February. Heidi and I just realized that last week was our first “normal” week since early November! From the birth of Titus and our time in Singapore (November–January) to the survey trips to Pailin, our move there, and settling into our new home (January–April), things certainly haven’t been boring over here! In this letter I would like to share our prayer needs by looking at three “new” things:

A New Home

On March 25, almost five years from the day we moved to Pursat (March 29, 2005), we moved to Pailin province, a three-hour drive from Pursat. For the first two weeks in our new home, we had Ong, our house helper from Pursat, living with us. It was a great experience to have a Khmer living in our house, and we had a tearful time saying goodbye to her on April 10. She was a huge blessing in helping us get our house set up as well as helping us find and train a new helper, Naa. We had a lot of work to do on the house when we first arrived and had mechanics at our house almost every day for the first three weeks! In almost every area of life, we have had to set up new routines. Being near the mountains and the Thai border has been quite a change for us. We found some time to enjoy a nearby waterfall just before the Khmer New Year (see pictures).

Since our move, I have been doing much research on the town and getting to know the local officials and other foreigners here. We have also spent time getting to know our new neighbors and developing relationships with individuals at places we will frequent regularly. We believe that taking the time to do this is important before we start evangelizing and teaching. I have put a tract rack on our front gate and have seen some of the neighbors reading some of the booklets.

Please pray for the following about our new home:
(1) Please pray for our landlord (Sew) and his family. Time will be needed to build trust and a relationship with them. The people in Pailin in general are not used to foreigners, especially those who speak their language. We are most likely the first foreign family to have lived in this area.
(2) Please pray for our new house helper (Naa) and her family. Her husband drives a moto taxi (called a “motodope”), and they have two young daughters. Our kids had a hard time saying goodbye to Ming Ong, but they seem to be warming up to Ming Naa now. She is beginning to be more comfortable with our family as well. We have planted some initial seeds for the Gospel, but there is no interest yet.
(3) Please pray that we will live II Timothy 2:24–25 every day—not to be quarrelsome but to be kind, able to teach, patient when wronged, and able to correct misunderstandings with gentleness. I have been reminded of this often because many here in Pailin have misunderstandings about foreigners and Christianity. Pailin has a number of false teachers (especially Catholics) who use the name of Jesus but do not believe in salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone as taught in the Scriptures. We will need grace to show others that these groups are not preaching the true Gospel of Jesus Christ.

A New Tool

By God’s grace and His grace alone, Forrest and I were able to finish editing an initial discipleship booklet that we have been working on for a number of years. The booklet is entitled The Gospel of Jesus Christ: The Costs and Joys of Becoming a Child of God. It consists of an introduction and five lessons. On March 19, a few days before we moved to Pailin, we had 100 copies made, and we put them into the two Christian bookstores in Phnom Penh. For those who are interested, I have posted the Khmer version on our blog for downloading, and I hope to have the English version up soon.

Please pray for the following about our new tool:
(4) Please pray for the Lord’s blessing on this new booklet. Its purpose is to help those who have been exposed to Christianity to come to an understanding of what the Gospel means regarding both its costs and joys. We believe this booklet meets a particular need in the Khmer church at this time.

A New Door

As we consider the new ministry in Pailin, we have been praying that the Lord will work in hearts here. Strategically, we have begun asking the Lord to raise up at least three churches in Pailin province in the following areas:
1. In Pailin town where we live.
2. In a district called Sala Kraow about 25 minutes from our house.
3. In the village adjacent to the Thailand border, which is about a 20-minute drive in our car.

Please pray for the following about our new door:
(5) Please pray for the province of Pailin in general and particularly for these three strategic areas.

We appreciate each of you who have read this letter and will bring these five requests to our Lord. For those receiving the email version via the blog, we plan to start sending Holding the Ropes updates again soon. It has been a few months since these have gone out. Please note our new mailing address.

Until the net is full in Pailin Province,

Chris for the Seawright family

Dear Family and Friends,

This is our first prayer letter of the new decade and first prayer letter since our family expanded to six! We have much news to report. In this letter, we will see an honorable defender, an earthen fortress, and a former Khmer Rouge stronghold.

An Honorable Defender

This is the meaning of the name of our fourth child, Titus Fraser, who was born on December 16 in Singapore. Thanks to each of you who prayed for Heidi and the baby while we were in Singapore. Titus was born only four days after the girls and I arrived from Cambodia! We were able to obtain Titus’s passport and birth certificate pretty quickly, and we returned to Cambodia on January 11. As we have done with all of our other children, we wanted to share how we chose his name:

Titus—Greek for “honorable, defender”
“Whether any do enquire of Titus, he is my partner and fellowhelper . . . the messengers of the churches, and the glory of Christ” (II Corinthians 8:23).

Fraser—named after James O. Fraser, a pioneer missionary in China
“Solid, lasting missionary work is done on our knees” (J.O. Fraser).

Of course, there are pictures and more information about Titus on our website for those interested (blog.seawrights.com). Titus is two months old now, and all the Cambodians call him “sloat” (like “boat”) which means he is an easy baby (at least so far). Please pray for us as we train him to be an honorable defender of God’s Word!

An Earthen Fortress

In each of the last three months (December–February), we have had a two-day extensive evangelistic thrust in an area called Banteay Daiy. Banteay is the Khmer word for a military fort, and Daiy is the word for earth, ground, or dirt. So Banteay Daiy is literally the “Earthen Fortress” district! We have had many good opportunities to talk with people about the Gospel using the new “Honoring Parents” question-and-answer tract, as well as “The Ancient Path” tract that Forrest wrote a number of years ago. This month of February we actually were witnessing in our helper Ong’s village. We started going back through the area again to follow up and see if individuals had read the tract and had any questions. Please continue to pray for the sowing of the Gospel seed as we continue next month.

A Former Khmer Rouge Stronghold

Back in 2008 while we were on furlough, our team decided that our family would concentrate our energies in 2009 on evangelism in Kandieng district to see what kind of doors would open for Bible studies and church-planting. We planned to reevaluate in early 2010 and make a decision about where our family should move next based on what happened in the Kandieng district during the year. In 2009 we used many methods of evangelism: house-to-house, bookselling at the market, a kid’s club in two different villages, and showing an evangelistic video in our village. We praise the Lord for the many seeds planted and watered during this time, but they did not generate the Bible studies/church plants that we were praying for.

As we reevaluated 2009 and after much discussion of possible options, our team decided that it would be best for our family to move away from Pursat province. We will continue to have fellowship and accountability with the McPhail family but will be working in different provinces, at least for the next couple of years. We also plan to work on various projects together, including evangelistic and discipleship materials.

As part of our overall vision to see a fundamental, indigenous church-planting movement fostered in western Cambodia, our family believes that the Lord is leading us to move to a province near the border of Thailand called Pailin, where our team has had an ongoing evangelistic ministry since 2003. We have taken numerous survey trips to this area this past month and are planning to move there at the end of March.

The province of Pailin, smaller than Pursat, has about 60,000 people. In the past it was known for its mines (which are mostly cleared now) and as a former stronghold of the Khmer Rouge communists, who led a genocide in Cambodia in the late 1970s. Much has changed in Pailin in the past five to ten years, but there are still no fundamental, indigenous congregations. Many of the neighboring districts in Battambang province are also in great need of Bible teaching and evangelism.

So as we make this move and transition in the coming months, how should you pray? Here are a few requests to bring to the Lord our defender, fortress, and stronghold in time of change:

1. Pray for our family, especially Heidi and the children, as we pack, move, and transition to a new place and life.
2. Pray that we will be able to start off on a good foot with individuals in Pailin town and develop good relationships.
3. Pray for me as I am finishing the editing of a discipleship booklet that our team has been working on. Our desire is to have this project done before we move to Pailin so we can use this new resource there.
4. Do please continue to pray for our dear brothers and sisters in Christ in Pursat, especially our teammates and our helper, Ong. Pray that the work will progress there after we leave.

Our next letter, Lord willing, will be written from Pailin, Cambodia. We covet your prayers.

Until the net is full,

Chris, Heidi, Rachel, Isaac, Susanna, and Titus

(For those receiving our email prayer letter, we wanted to see if we could enlist the special prayer support of 25 individuals to pray every single day for our family and the province of Pailin for the rest of the month of March during this time of transition. We are feeling the enormous need for this extra prayer in our own lives as we move to this new location and definitely want God’s blessing on the work there in Pailin. The first 25 individuals to respond to this “special prayer thrust” will be included in a special list and will receive extra communication from us this month.)