When I first saw her, I didn’t realize that I was looking into the face of poverty.

On one of my early trips to Cambodia, I was walking along an urban street and noticed this street vendor frying and selling rice cakes from her cart.  I had been warned not to eat food from street carts, but I was compelled to patronize her little business.  The cost for two cakes was 500 Reil (about 12.5 cents – and that was the tourist price).

Munching on the cakes with a small amount of leafy vegetable inside, I quickly did some math in my head to figure out the profitability of her sale.  Considering cost of goods and other overhead, she might have made a couple of cents on my purchase at best.  With some more figuring I calculated that this young woman, most likely a mother, makes around a dollar a day.  Even double that amount places her below the poverty line by third world standards.  When I offered her a few hundred more Reil as a tip, she looked confused because tipping isn’t part of their culture.  I gestured that it was a gift, and she hesitantly but gratefully thanked me, “aw khun” she said and smiled.

What is Poverty?
Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job; it is fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean water. Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom.  The poor are also the most vulnerable to extreme forms of exploitation like human trafficking and slavery.

Business as Mission
My concept of effective ministry was changed by my encounter with the young woman selling rice cakes.  Knowing that the immensity of the need in that one community alone far exceeded my resources, I wondered if there was a way to address the root of the problem.  Traditional charity creates dependency and is not a sustainable solution to poverty.  So later, when I discovered the Business as Mission (BAM) movement that is sweeping through the Church and human relief organizations, I was captivated by the possibilities.

As you probably already know, I have subsequently been privileged to partner with some good friends to form an organization called Marketplace Ministries Worldwide.  Through MMW, we built and opened a restaurant (Divine Pizza & Ribs) in Phnom Penh, the capitol city of Cambodia.  There we provide jobs, skills training, and transformational development to eager Khmer people.  It is a Holistic ministry, showing the love of Jesus to people in need by ministering to each of them as a whole human being. This means addressing physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.  It has been remarkable to see the effects of giving someone “a hand up instead of a hand out.”  By providing jobs that pay a fair wage, we can immediately extract a family from the crushing grip of poverty.  Being able to offer this kind of opportunity to people in the name of Jesus has been one of the greatest thrills of my life.

Transformational Development
With our emphasis on sustainability, reproducibility, and empowerment, we sent Michelle Murray, an American expatriate fluent in Khmer language and culture from 10 years experience as a church planting missionary with the Evangelical Friends Church, to be our “business missionary” at DPR.  There she manages operations, provides training in vocational and life skills, and shares the Gospel through word and deed with our staff, vendors, suppliers, customers and neighbors.

We need your help
As we near the end of the first year of operations for Divine Pizza & Ribs we are incurring some unexpected costs and also need to raise additional support for Michelle.  Please consider a one-time gift or even better a monthly commitment to support our business as mission.  A little bit from a lot of people goes a long way.

We are grateful to our supporters who have already pledged and provided the vital funds needed to bring this ministry platform into existence. As always we depend on you to pray for us and for the staff at DPR. May God richly bless you as you have blessed us.

Shalom,

Jeff Davis
MMW – Board of Directors

“Hello lovely customers please welcome to Divine Pizza and Ribs. We have a lot of food you want don’t forget come here!!!!! Thanks xxxxxx” – Hong

The above comment was written by my night shift Cashier/Supervisor, on the Divine Pizza & Ribs Facebook group. He is a young man of 27. The 6th child of 7; he has 2 brothers and 4 sisters. Unique is the best word to describe him. He still has both of his parents who are in their 60’s. They were farmers in the Prey Veng Province, which is probably why they survived the Khmer Rouge period, with their lives and their family still together. Prey Veng province is to the west and south of Phnom Penh.

Hong is the only child in his family to complete high school, and therefore shoulders the burden of being the main support for his aging parents. So the fact Divine offers health insurance, which can cover his parents because they are his dependents living in the same house, has helped him with this responsibility. His other siblings are factory workers, and he still has two sisters that live in Prey Veng and are farmers with their husbands.

He learned English the old fashion way, by being bold and courageous and just talking to people, making many mistakes and improving through the help of tourists and local expats. He has worked in other restaurants along the riverfront, but was seeking to move up and gain some supervisory skills, because his dream is to open his own store.

It has been my privilege to spend time with this young man, who always has a quick smile and a kind word. As we work together developing his skills, so that hopefully he will someday open that shop; he continues my education about all things Khmer. It is truly a mutually beneficial relationship.

I find that life is full of opportunities. Some I capitalize on, and others I let go by without a second thought. Our brains are amazing; making instantaneous decisions that help to protect us from harm, or also making other instant decisions that may cost us opportunities for growth.

Near the restaurant we have many bus companies, and we’re trying to figure out a way to capitalize on the tourists/travelers who pass by. I decided to offer a box lunch, and to sell small packets of nuts. So, we purchased a table and got a sign – and didn’t see much response. My staff was ready to throw in the towel, but I wanted to give it more time to get going. We did some research and got the timetables for the bus companies and made a purposeful push with time, effort, and advertising. Sales started to grow.  Sela, our guy outside, received a good deal of feedback. He compiled it and gave me his suggestions. First – get a case instead of a table, and sell some bakery items.  Chakriya suggested selling coffee to go. Now we are doing a regular morning business near the buses.  After the morning rush, we move the case to the front of our restaurant and make a few more sales throughout the day.

It made me think of how often I am willing to give up on something in my spiritual life, because I don’t give it a chance, like we were tempted to do with the bakery case. Persistence, patience, and being open to listen to God can garner the same kind of positive results in my spiritual walk.  Hmm – a simple lesson from God through our bakery case.

We have a young man that works for us – his name is Mouen Sela. There are 6 children in his family of which he is number 4. He is 24 years old. He finished high school but did not pass the cumulative exams, and his family did not have the money for him to continue his studies. So he created a small enterprise making spirit houses and small altars, which he sold along a prominent street here in the city. His family is from Phnom Penh, and he is blessed to have both his mother and father still living, given that they remained in the country during the Khmer Rouge period and subsequent Vietnamese Occupation. His dad worked for a pharmaceutical company making medicine, before the Khmer Rouge. For the past 15 years this father has relied on his children to provide for him, because of poor health. His mother was always a housewife. Sela has 3 brothers and 2 sisters.

He heard from a friend of his brothers that Café Yejj was hiring and he applied. He started working for them 2 years ago, and there met the young woman who would later become his wife. He took his current job at Divine with the idea that he could advance, gain more responsibility, and also because Café Yejj has a rule against married couples working together.

In February they were married and are now expecting their first child. Sela is enthusiastic about working at Divine’s. He shows great initiative, ingenuity, and a desire to continuously improve things at DPR. He is a wonderful employee who sets a high work ethic for the others. He is taking on the role of delivery driver, and responsibility for the maintenance of the delivery moto. You can see the moto in the picture. He is currently saving his money to buy a house for his new wife and child. I just know that Divine is offering this young man the opportunity to provide for a family and also develop a sense of pride in the place he works.

The other day, I was walking into the grocery store to do some shopping, and was amazed by what I saw. The idea of free samples has caught on here, so I have had the opportunity to try Pepperidge Farms cookies, various potato chips, a few types of dip, and even some nuts. But they were giving free samples of Whiskey. Not only was it the middle of the day; but the sample giver was giving out these samples to a couple of policemen in uniform. She leaned over to ask my friend and myself if we would like to try some. We shook our heads and went on our way. This ranks right up there, with my experience when I first bought a 12 pack of toilet paper and it came with a free spoon and fork inside. They use toilet paper for napkins so it actually makes sense. One of the things that impacts you when you live in another country, is that you live there but on many levels you different.

This reminds me of when Jesus is praying in John 17:13-19 NIV, “And now I am coming to you, and I say these things in the world so that they may have my joy completed in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them, for they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world but to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth. Just as you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. It is for their sakes that I sanctify myself, so that they, too, may be sanctified by the truth.”

I am here in Cambodia to be salt and light, to be a bearer of the Truth, which is God’s very word. Giving away free samples of liquor seems wrong on so many levels, but things are different here, and to stand in judgment is not allowing the sanctified savior to shine in my life. I fully understand the idea of being in the world but not of it. I live here but I am not from here, and so often I want to judge it based on the way I was raised and compare it to what I know. That does not make it inherently wrong; just different. It is then that I have to look to Biblical truth for how to live my life, being an example. It is also imperative that I have prayer support, the same as Jesus is praying for us with the Father in the above passage. Your prayers help to protect me, and allow me to be salt and light.