A Baby is Born!

The young women crowding around Vone and  her baby!

This past Thursday evening, our young women went to the maternity ward of a local hospital to visit their bible teacher Vone who just gave birth to a beautiful baby girl called Hosanna. Vone and her husband Ratha, a wonderful Khmer Christian couple come nightly to the RAP community home to lead the worship time and bible study. They have been mentored by missionaries for several years and have been involved in youth ministry for a few years. Our young women at RAP love spending time with them and so when they heard that Vone had given birth they wanted to go and visit her at the hospital and to see the latest addition to her young family.

Vone our RAP bible teacher

One of the young women looking at Hosanna!

Opportunities like this help the young women to see and experience a ''normal'' family life with a healthy married couple. They watched how Ratha ---Vone's husband was changing the diaper and confidently cleaning his little daughter as if he had been a father all his life.

Cartons of milk

What was so encouraging to see was that several of our young women brought their own gifts of ''milk'' to give to Vone and Ratha. Each week at the RAP home, the young women are given little cartons of milk so to see them sacrificially giving up a week's supply of their own milk as a gift to bless their bible teacher was so touching but a demonstration again of how generous their hearts are despite how little they have. While we at Ratanak also blessed Vone and Ratha with a couple gifts, the greater blessing was seeing our young women take their own initiative to bless others without being asked to do so.

Before we left, we crowded around Vone and Ratha, as our young women led the prayer time, asking God to bless this family, to give them wisdom as they raise their young daughter. We are thankful for opportunities such as these in which our young women can experience a taste of the joy of family life despite all the hardships they have endured. We trust that such events encourage them too that one day they will have their own families and experience the same kind of love and blessing as they freely demonstrated that night to their bible teacher!