PEACE IN THE HEART IS MORE WORTH THAN MONEY!
Co is a 23-year-old Vietnamese living in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. He grew up in a very poor family, with a mother and father, two brothers and three sisters. Co is the second youngest, and from an early age he had to work to make ends meet. Like so many Vietnamese living along the riverbank, they live off fish. They do not have documents, such as a birth certificate or residence permit, so they do not receive any help from the authorities. There is also no requirement for their children to go to school. Hundreds of thousands of people live and work this way; poverty – and all the misery that comes with it – is passed down from generation to generation.
Co's parents are engaged in the manual production of fish balls. He says that he has never liked this work at all. Co wanted to go to school, but his mother did not allow him to. Only one of the six siblings went to school. The reason was that this brother had come into contact with drugs. His parents realized that this gave a bad prognosis, so they allowed him to go to school, hoping that it could get him out of his addiction.
Co first heard about the CGC (Children for the Great Commission) school through a friend who went there. He told him that being a student there was free, and in addition, this friend came home with some small gifts that he had received at school. This made Co even more eager, but his mother said no every time he asked. She wanted the boy to stay home and do something useful. Finally, she gave in, and in 2012 the 11-year-old started at CGC. However, the joy did not last long. After a few months, he was told to return to fish ball production.
In 2015, Co was allowed to start at CGC again, after an uncle had helped convince his parents. Now he continued as a student for three years, and in 2018 he was given the opportunity to start as an assistant teacher for the younger children. Co’s family is Buddhist and worships the fathers. When he first came to school, he had no knowledge of God, nor did he feel any attraction to all that he heard about Jesus. But in the years that had passed, from the age of 11 to the age of 15, something had happened. Co says that when he started CGC again in 2015, he felt like a big sinner. He swore a lot and said many bad things, and he often exploded in anger. He was used to this at home, but now he felt inside that it was wrong. Co understood that God had come into his life. He learned to ask for God’s help to get rid of these bad habits, and it happened. Now it is completely over.
Co says that he has never heard his mom or dad say that they love him. They have never said thank you for anything he has done. He has never received a compliment or encouragement at home – not once. As a young boy, he asked himself why he grew up in this family. His parents always argued and fought, cursed and yelled at him and his siblings whenever someone did something they didn’t like.
Has the family noticed that Co has changed? Yes, he says, they have. But they never say anything. Still, he knows they understand. The family has also changed a lot over the years. Mom doesn’t talk badly and yell at the kids like she used to, and dad isn’t as quick-tempered as he used to be. Co is the only Christian in the family, but everyone knows he believes in Jesus. His mother also shows that she respects that, because when food is being prepared to be sacrificed on the ancestral altar, she makes something else for him, so he doesn’t have to be part of it.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, the CGC school had to close. Co got a job on a dredger that pulls sand from the river. In this job, he could earn up to $2,000 a month. That’s a very high salary in Cambodia, especially for a young boy. Still, he wasn’t happy with that life. He felt a voice in his heart saying, “You have to go back to CGC.” It felt like a compulsion, he says; a pull he couldn’t resist. So when the school reopened in 2022, Co made the choice to quit a job where he earned two thousand US dollars a month to start a job where he earns two hundred! His mother wondered how on earth he could come up with something like that, but when he insisted, she let him.
Co is now a permanent teacher at the CGC school. “Even though I earned a lot when I worked on that boat, I was always restless and lacked peace. Now that I’m back at CGC, I have peace all the time. I don’t regret it at all. Money doesn’t mean anything. I love working with children. I have peace and so much joy,” Co says quietly. He says he feels he should share the gospel, witness and preach to people. “But I’m very modest, so I need intercession and courage to be able to speak. I want to serve God for the rest of my life. The worries I sometimes have about how I will be able to help my parents when they get old, I just have to give to the Lord. He will provide for us when we follow His will. I will do whatever God wants me to do,” concludes Co.
