Now I want to take you all to Cambodia. A tropical land of beauty.
Last month I went to Cambodia to spend my family vacation in Koh Rong Island and Phnom Penh, the capital city.
Before I left Cambodia I made contact with Missionary Ji Koo Ho and could hear him tell the story about his 20 years of Cambodian missionary work. Actually, I met him for the second time in Cambodia. My first encounter with him
was in November 2024. I joined an overseas mission tour team going to Cambodia along with my Synod members.
At that time I could see two Cambodian churches founded by Missionary Ji Koo Ho. And I was so overwhelmed by what I saw and experienced at those two churches. After returning home I persuaded my family and could change our vacation plan to come and visit Cambodia once again.
I’d like to tell you about this man of God.
Missionary Ji Koo Ho is a layman. Although he finished his seminary course at the Jaegeon Denomination of Korea he was denied the ordainment due to his matrimonial status. He once was married to a lady and had a happy life with two children. But his marriage ended tragically with his wife’s sudden passing and he has not remarried ever since.
He belongs to Jaegeon Church. Jaegeon stands for ‘Reformed’ or ‘Rebuilt’ because this denomination claims that the Korean church should repent their sins of having bowed down to the Japanese pagan gods during the Japanese colonial rule which ended with the Second World War. So we may expect this denomination would be quite conservative in many ways.
When he finished the seminary study and was ready to get ordained, the denomination refused to give him ordainment as a pastor because of his matrimonial status but instead allowed him to go to Cambodia as an official missionary representing the Jaegeon denomination. So he went over to Cambodia when he was 49 years old, which was 20 years
ago. Now he is 70 years old.
When he started his mission in Cambodia he invented some novel strategy for the mission.
He says he was a farm boy in his childhood. He believes that God prepared his childhood rural experience to use it for the Cambodian mission.
When he came to Cambodia he instantly understood that the rural people are quite open to the Gospel. So he quickly bought a used motorcycle and began his Gospel journey going around the rural area outside Phnom Penh. It did not take him a long time to realize that people in the rural areas are living under the substandard living at that time. Many were skipping their meals and some suffering severe hunger. He had to feed them before he preached the Gospel.
He found that ordinary people bought and enjoyed a one-dollar lunch box. So he began to buy 20 to 30 lunch boxes at a time and took them to the rural people who were hungry for the food and for the Gospel.
He did not separate himself from the local people. He also joined them and ate the cheap lunch box together with the rural people sitting on the bare ground.
He knew that people liked him not just because of the free lunch but because of his equal attitude and engagement with them. This approach gave him an enormous credence. People never saw any foreign missionaries share their ordinary cheap meals sitting down on the ground.
People came closer to him and to the Gospel day after day.
He once was a prosperous entrepreneur in Korea. After a mysterious experience one night in 2003, he sold his company and made it into cash. He saved some of it for his children to go to college and came alone to Cambodia with the rest of money. He says he relied on his money for the first few years when he began his mission in Cambodia. It was not until his money dried up and he was empty with nothing that he really started to learn how to leaning on God’s arms.
He came to learn how to rely on God’s power. He learned how to kneel down before God for help.
Later he founded 15 churches in rural Cambodia. 13 of them have chapel buildings and 2 are praying for theirs buildings.
I first went to Cambodia last November with many other pastors from our Synod. At that time I recorded some videos and I’d like to share with you one of them.
Video
He is now an old man. But he has the same passion as before. When I met his last month, I asked him if he was well.
I was worried about his health. He is already 70 years old. He says he feels still young and I do not need to worry.
He says he prays to God that he will die and be buried in Cambodia. His last wish is to die and be buried in rural Cambodia while trying to reach out to the people until his last day. He says he already bought a graveyard for his tomb thanks to some help from some donors.
He has his old mother and two grownup children in Korea but he says he will not go back home. Now Cambodia is his home and it is where he should be buried.
I came to know that he has a dream.
After deciding to die while delivering the Gospel to the people in Cambodia, he began to shape his dream more concretely. He firmly believes that education played a key role in the Cambodian mission. He has educated a lot of children and students so far. Some of them are now ordained pastors at local churches.
He says educating children and students should be a key concern for all the missionaries coming to Cambodia.
Therefore, he is always trying to discover smart students who could someday become Christian workers in Cambodia. So far a few students even finished their overseas studies in Korea and one student has just started her university study at Jeonju University. He told me that there are so many smart and promising young students who can become leaders of Cambodia if only they can get proper schooling. Many of them are from very poor families that cannot afford to send them to school.
I heard a very surprising story about Cambodian meals last November from Missionary Ji Koo Ho. People living in rural areas are very poor so they are eating field mice for protein supply. 1 kilogram of mouse meat sells for a dollar in rural markets.
Now we may understand how difficult it would be for a rural family to send their children to school. So many missionaries to Cambodia are trying to give young children a good chance of proper education as a part of their mission strategy. Missionary Ji calculated and showed me the cost of education.
There are two options for educating the young people. The first one is sending them to a nearby local school, which is usually a Buddhist temple. In this case, the young people are vulnerable to the Buddhist teachings and
practices. It costs 150 dollars a month per student. It helps young people to get schooling anyway.
The second option is more expensive and takes 300 dollars a month per student. In this case, Missionary Ji Koo Ho can take the students to Phnom Penh, the capital city, and give them a board and schooling. This option can avoid Buddhist influence on the students and give them better schooling than the rural schools.
So he prays that any church in Korea or any other countries should donate the tuition fees for the young Cambodian children who are ready to receive the Gospel. Since donating monthly 150 dollars or 300 dollars is a big burden for any one person, so Missionary Ji suggests that several people could get together and collect the total sum for one student. In this way, 3 or 5 people can educate one student.
If some of you are interested in this project please contact Missionary Ji Koo Ho on his phone at +855012889746 or send me a message or email then I will connect you to him.
More videos from Rev June’s visit: Cambodian Mission Church Worship; Baptism Service; View looking outside; Cambodian Worship
