Sin Somnang grew up in a Buddhist family in Cambodia’s capital city of Phnom Penh. In 1995, around age 15, he became the first of his family to become a Christian, and he now serves as pastor of a ministry he started for the poor and uneducated in his hometown.
He’s also chairman for the Love Phnom Penh Festival with Franklin Graham, happening this weekend, December 7-8.
“It is God’s time to bless our land where we have been sojourning almost 40 years since 1979,” he said.
That’s the year Vietnam forces captured Phnom Penh, just four years after the Vietnam War. The military intervention by Vietnam forces began the fall of the Khmer Rouge, a brutal communist regime that outlawed religion.
Somnang has already seen evidence of God’s blessing in his country. Multiple family members have accepted Jesus as their Savior, including his mother who just received Christ on October 23.
Part of Festival preparation is having Christians write down the names of people who don’t yet believe in Christ and committing to pray for them. Somnang had written down his mother’s name.
A First for BGEA in Cambodia
Over seven decades, Billy Graham took the Gospel to all corners of the world, even areas typically closed off to evangelism. Today, Franklin Graham and Will Graham are following in his footsteps, but even in the long list of places these three generations have visited, this is the first time a Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) event is being held in Cambodia.
Hundreds of Cambodian children heard the Gospel in late October during a KidzFest event preceding the Festival.
Derek Forbes and his family have lived in Phnom Penh the past nine months. Forbes has worked with the BGEA since 2006, helping plan Franklin Graham Festivals all over Asia, and is currently director for the upcoming Cambodia Festival.
“This has been one of the most challenging Festivals for me personally, but it has been good for my spiritual growth,” he said. “It keeps me on my knees and shows me that the enemy of the Gospel does not want the Festival to take place, but the pastors have been a joy to work with.
“The leadership believes so much that this is the perfect time for the Gospel and for Franklin to be coming alongside them in reaching the city.”
Since February, the local Festival team has held prayer rallies, trained church leaders in discipleship and evangelism, and taught more than 2,500 people how to share their faith through BGEA’s Christian Life and Witness Course. Thousands of children, youth, men and women have also been praying for specific people in their lives to come to the Festival and make Jesus the center of their lives.
While Pastor Somnang expects “opposition and persecution from the living enemy,” he knows there’s something more powerful also at work. “We have the Gospel that can set our people free from poverty, oppression [and] lacking of hope.”