Jehovah’s Witnesses Open Kingdom Hall Near Angkor Wat.
http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/9350/jehovah---s-witnesses-open-kingdom-hall-near-angkor-wat/
SIEM REAP (Khmer Times) – As she moves from door to door handing out pamphlets and sharing her Jehovah Witness faith in a 95-percent Buddhist nation, Terry O’Donnell realizes the challenge of converting Cambodians from the only religion they have ever known.
“We
explain what we’re doing here, what the Bible is, who wrote it,” said
Ms. O’Donnell, an Australian. “Some people are friendly, but not
interested. So you have to learn to discern the difference. I just want
to show them what it [the Bible] says.”
Last
month, Jehovah’s Witnesses completed construction of Siem Reap’s first
Kingdom Hall, or Jehovah’s Witness church. After one decade here, Siem
Reap’s two congregations now have a home.
Now, they are systematically mapping Siem Reap province for door-to-door preaching.
The
Kingdom Hall, the third in Cambodia, is located on Bakheng Club Road,
near the French School, about 10 kilometers southwest of Angkor Wat.
Most of Cambodia’s Witnesses are foreign volunteers, from Japan, Korea,
Australia and North America. Meetings and Bible study are all in Khmer
and Cambodian Sign Language.
About 240 people attend Bible studies here. Of these, about half do weekly house calls as a part of their mission.
Jehovah’s
Witnesses strictly follow Bible teachings. They are known for their
house calls, and for refusing blood transfusions and military service.
Members are not considered Witnesses, or “publishers,” unless they log
hours each month sharing their religion with non-believers.
In
2009, there were 38 publishers in Siem Reap. Now there are 60 living
here and an estimated 800 throughout Cambodia. A fourth Kingdom Hall is
under construction in Battambang.
Worldwide, the Jehovah Witness faith is growing by about 2 percent a year.
Ms.
O’Donnell and her husband Rob, both Australians, have lived in Siem
Reap for two years. They say they have no intention of leaving. In the
1990s, Ms. O’Donnell was working with refugees in Australia when she
started meeting displaced Cambodians who couldn’t speak English. She
learned the language and worked primarily with Cambodians in the years
before she moved to Siem Reap.
“I’m happy to do this,” she said over coffee. “It’s practical, good
advice that helps you to be a better person. For me it just makes
sense.”
Her husband is a pensioner, so they can afford to work full-time as publishers.
“The
area gets covered systematically,” she said, explaining the mission
strategy. “We have maps. We’ve got one brochure with some writing, but
mainly pictures. Cambodians learn better that way. A lot of people do.”
When
asked about target demographics and who shows up to meetings, she said
they target everyone equally and their meetings mirror their outreach.
She has noticed that older Cambodians are more receptive.
“Maybe
because they didn’t have access to info for so long and now they want
to know more,” she said, referring to the generation that survived the
Khmer Rouge era. “People are curious, aren’t they?”
When
questioned about the high turnout of deaf Cambodians to meetings, Ms.
O’Donnell chalked it up to statistics. “Cambodia has heaps of deaf
people,” she said.
An
old woman living at the base of Phnom Bok, a temple complex 25 km from
Siem Reap, did not know any sign language until a few years ago. Then,
an American Witness started teaching her sign language and the Bible.
Now, Ms. O’Donnell visits her every Friday with lessons from their
‘Enjoy Life’ brochure on a tablet in Cambodian Sign Language.
“I
just want to show them what it says,” she insists. “It’s up to them
what they do about it. I’m not knocking Buddhism, but people have often
sought answers and not found that. Probably because [Buddhism] is more
of a custom or tradition.”
For
her, converting is “a huge thing to do here because you’re going
against your family’s wishes straight away. If you change, it’s because
you’ve really proven that its true. Conversion isn’t in a week or month
or year. You learn about it at a pace that you can handle, you decide
what you want to do, and then you decide if you want to be a Witness.”
At a Siem Reap pagoda, one Buddhist monk spoke freely about Christian proselytizing, as long as he would not be identified.
He
said had no problem with Christians and said that Christianity was
similar to Buddhism in that both teach people to be good people. But, he
said that one Christian group appeared at his pagoda and told the monks
that Buddha was bad. Buddhists, he said, would never say that about
another religion’s god.
Jehovah’s
Wítness missionaries arrived in Cambodia about 25 years ago. The first
Buddhist missionaries either came from India in the Century or from
China in Fifth Century. With the exception of the Khmer Rouge period,
Buddhism has been Cambodia’s state religion since the 13th Century.
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