Kim Bui

I met Kim last year at Field Forum and I was later involved in a few ministries with her that summer Cambodia. I visited her house and helped her with an English tutoring session that she provides for a group of Vietnamese students from the churches she works with. She also invited me to attended their youth camp. I saw her again at Field Forum this year and talked with her about the current direction of her ministries here.
Kim is a Vietnamese Missionary from Canada who has been working in Phnom Penh for several years training students within the Vietnamese Christian community and working to protect and rescue girls from sex trafficking. She is now been called to a growing tourist town five hours north of Phnom Penh called Siem Reap. There she will work with a team of three other Vietnamese women to plant churches in the Vietnamese villages in and around Siem Reap. However she is concerned for the safety of the team and herself because of the lack of a male presence. While she is there she will put into practice an evangelism method called the Church Planting Movement. This method centers around short, easy to remember and recite, stories from the Bible. To begin, a short testimony of two minutes is given followed by the story of how God the creator made the world. Evil forces and spirits are explained to be angels who were good and created by God but fell and now work against him but he still has power over them. The Ten Commandments are part of another story that shows mankind's inability to be perfectly good. The sacrifices of Israel demonstrates the price and penalty for our sins. These stories set the stage for Jesus who is the fulfillment of the law and the sacrificial system. Kim says that this method has been particularly effective in Cambodia and the surrounding countries because it answers questions that the people have about the origins of the world. Fear of the spiritual world is also deeply rooted in the cultures of this region so for people to hear that spiritual beings were created by God and are under his control brings great comfort to them.

A positive outcome of the activities of the Non-Government Agencies fighting against sex trafficking in Phnom Penh is decreased trafficking within the city. Since I was here last year there has been a noticeable drop in the number of brothels lining the streets. However, traffickers are now moving to other parts of the country such as Siem Reap. This is part of the reason that she feels she is being called to this city despite having to leave many students who love her and will be very sad to see her leave Phnom Penh.

I will meet with Kim in Siem Reap when I go there for English Camp and I will have a chance to talk to her more there.