Reaching Kids Cambodia
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John & Sotey Yoder
Missionaries and founders of RKC’s operations in Cambodia, both John and Sotey are self supporting volunteers whose love for kids of all ages resonates through those they serve throughout the country. John, a businessman from Prescott, AZ, USA, felt called to full time missionary service in 2006 after completing a course entitled; ‘Worldwide Perspectives’ and taking two short term trips to Cambodia. John became a ’born again’ Christian in 1972, and has always been involved in ministries and civic projects that benefit children wherever he’s lived. He studied the Khmer language for several years after his arrival to Cambodia in 2007. Sotey, 100% Cambodian Khmer, was raised in a Christian family, amidst the poorest of circumstances in the Siem Reap region of Cambodia. Her understanding of the culture and empathy for her impoverished neighbors, augmented the effectiveness of John’s ministry soon after their marriage in 2008. Their love and understanding of children has grown even more with the birth of their son; John Jaym in 2010, and daughter Anna Jubilee in 2013. |
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Mike Kerychuk - RKI's Founder, our friend, and mentor.
Reaching Kids International, a former non-profit charity organization, which was based in Prescott, AZ, USA, was our mentor/ donor covering organization until it's closure in early 2021. Our friend and RKI founder Mike, traveled to many locations where Reaching Kids International served throughout the world, Another good part of his time, was spent traversing locations in the United States and his native nation of Canada, raising funds for our village ministries here, and those of other RKI missionaries; as well as his own projects in Myanmar and our neighbor country Thailand, where Mike lived until health problems took away his mobility, sending him back to Canada in 2018. Over the years Mike had spent a lot of time with us in Cambodia, often bringing with him teams and individuals who ended up supporting the work which Christ is doing through us among Cambodia's rural poor. We at RKC appreciate all Mike did to help us grow into the ministry that Christ has us doing today, and he will forever be in our prayers until we hopefully see him here again, with his mobility completely restored, by God's grace.
Reaching Kids International, a former non-profit charity organization, which was based in Prescott, AZ, USA, was our mentor/ donor covering organization until it's closure in early 2021. Our friend and RKI founder Mike, traveled to many locations where Reaching Kids International served throughout the world, Another good part of his time, was spent traversing locations in the United States and his native nation of Canada, raising funds for our village ministries here, and those of other RKI missionaries; as well as his own projects in Myanmar and our neighbor country Thailand, where Mike lived until health problems took away his mobility, sending him back to Canada in 2018. Over the years Mike had spent a lot of time with us in Cambodia, often bringing with him teams and individuals who ended up supporting the work which Christ is doing through us among Cambodia's rural poor. We at RKC appreciate all Mike did to help us grow into the ministry that Christ has us doing today, and he will forever be in our prayers until we hopefully see him here again, with his mobility completely restored, by God's grace.
Volunteer Staff
Unlike many mission and relief organizations throughout the world, currently Reaching Kids Cambodia is staffed entirely by self supporting volunteers, which means that close to 100% of all donations we receive, go directly to the children and their parents who we serve in 5 rural Cambodian villages and Orphanage in Kampong Thum. Srey Roath (L) has been Sotey's ministry partner in every way; since joining our team in late 2013. Assembling, teaching, cooking, serving, and comforting the children under our care during our bi-weekly outreach visits, has made her an invaluable blessing to everyone she touches, including her fellow RK-Cambodia teammates and leaders. Huot Dina (R), who grew up in a rock quarry village which we've served since 2011, has been a volunteer staff member of RK-Cambodia since 2012, helping wherever she can; especially when we host visiting teams, or find ourselves shorthanded on outreach days - while attending University full time on a Reaching Kids International Scholarship, and working part time at a local shopping mall to supplement her income. After graduating in 2016, Dina now plans to use her degree to secure gainful employment which will enable her to give back to the impoverished community she grew up in and still serves through RKC today.
Unlike many mission and relief organizations throughout the world, currently Reaching Kids Cambodia is staffed entirely by self supporting volunteers, which means that close to 100% of all donations we receive, go directly to the children and their parents who we serve in 5 rural Cambodian villages and Orphanage in Kampong Thum. Srey Roath (L) has been Sotey's ministry partner in every way; since joining our team in late 2013. Assembling, teaching, cooking, serving, and comforting the children under our care during our bi-weekly outreach visits, has made her an invaluable blessing to everyone she touches, including her fellow RK-Cambodia teammates and leaders. Huot Dina (R), who grew up in a rock quarry village which we've served since 2011, has been a volunteer staff member of RK-Cambodia since 2012, helping wherever she can; especially when we host visiting teams, or find ourselves shorthanded on outreach days - while attending University full time on a Reaching Kids International Scholarship, and working part time at a local shopping mall to supplement her income. After graduating in 2016, Dina now plans to use her degree to secure gainful employment which will enable her to give back to the impoverished community she grew up in and still serves through RKC today.
Beginnings / RKC Orphanage
Shortly after John arrived, he found an orphanage where the children were literally starving to death, and rural villages; where malnutrition and sickness ran rampant. Many families had no shelter to call home. They (John & Sotey) quickly realized that it was only after the children’s spiritual, physical, emotional, and economic needs are dealt with, that they could begin to address the hopes of our original vision (help with educational needs).
So with few funds to start with, relying totally on Christ’s provision through the generosity of friends and relatives overseas, they began with the basics like, shelter, clean water (filters), clothing, electricity (where available), rice and supplies for producing meat and vegetables, then disease prevention through regular checkups and mosquito nets, and treatment of illnesses before they become serious; finally providing books, school supplies, uniforms, furnishings etc.
Orphanage: In 2012, RKC provided equipment and training for our orphanage in Kampong Thum province; to begin manufacturing shoes to sell at many markets in their general area. As the children are now becoming teenagers, this income helps provide more food, clothing, and other basic needs that RKC used to provide through yearly donations.
Shortly after John arrived, he found an orphanage where the children were literally starving to death, and rural villages; where malnutrition and sickness ran rampant. Many families had no shelter to call home. They (John & Sotey) quickly realized that it was only after the children’s spiritual, physical, emotional, and economic needs are dealt with, that they could begin to address the hopes of our original vision (help with educational needs).
So with few funds to start with, relying totally on Christ’s provision through the generosity of friends and relatives overseas, they began with the basics like, shelter, clean water (filters), clothing, electricity (where available), rice and supplies for producing meat and vegetables, then disease prevention through regular checkups and mosquito nets, and treatment of illnesses before they become serious; finally providing books, school supplies, uniforms, furnishings etc.
Orphanage: In 2012, RKC provided equipment and training for our orphanage in Kampong Thum province; to begin manufacturing shoes to sell at many markets in their general area. As the children are now becoming teenagers, this income helps provide more food, clothing, and other basic needs that RKC used to provide through yearly donations.
New Homes
As the funds from generous donors increased, we began building new homes one at a time. First in a community of people unjustly evicted from their homes to make way for new hotels and malls, then a village where the residents were forced off their good land by an illegal land grab, forcing them to live on land that floods during most of the year, and another where families made due in makeshift shacks at a rock quarry; where they toil all day turning large rocks into gravel for a daily poverty level wage of $1.25.
For less than the price of an iPad, upper end smart phone, or weekend getaway; we’ve built many homes with rain proof roofs, wind proof walls, and cement footings; high enough in flood prone areas that families will never have to step from their bed into in water again.
Toilet Facilities
More recently, the generosity of many have increased our home building projects; where alongside other organizations; we’re rebuilding entire villages, and now providing public toilet facilities where residents had only the nearby fields and trees to use before. Families we serve who have no beds, cooking supplies, mosquito nets, etc., receive such things and more from generous donors abroad.
Medical Needs
Because of malnutrition and a lifetime of eating tainted foods and drinking polluted water, all of the villages which RKC serves, have many sick children and adults as well. As funds are available, John & Sotey do their best to either invite medical teams or individual professionals to the villages and orphanage as often as possible. Sometimes it becomes necessary to take the kids to hospitals for emergency surgery.
Medical for All: Though their ministry is focused on reaching the children, their parents and grandparents are not overlooked as long as there’s money in the general fund to cover the expense. RKI also provided a scholarship to a nursing student named Sovonra, in exchange for services which included regular checkups and medical treatment at the orphanage.
Because of malnutrition and a lifetime of eating tainted foods and drinking polluted water, all of the villages which RKC serves, have many sick children and adults as well. As funds are available, John & Sotey do their best to either invite medical teams or individual professionals to the villages and orphanage as often as possible. Sometimes it becomes necessary to take the kids to hospitals for emergency surgery.
Medical for All: Though their ministry is focused on reaching the children, their parents and grandparents are not overlooked as long as there’s money in the general fund to cover the expense. RKI also provided a scholarship to a nursing student named Sovonra, in exchange for services which included regular checkups and medical treatment at the orphanage.
Healing Prayer
Though they use medicine, hospitals, and first aid whenever it’s available, John and Sotey also believe strongly in the power of prayer for healing, and rarely leave a village outreach visit without asking if there is anyone who would like prayer for a sickness they’re struggling with.
Though they believe it is Christ who does the healing, through their obedience in laying hands on children and adults alike, and believing at that moment that a ‘healing’ will take place; they also believe strongly in seeking volunteers who have specific gifts of healing and intercessory prayer, to join their outreaches whenever possible.
Though they use medicine, hospitals, and first aid whenever it’s available, John and Sotey also believe strongly in the power of prayer for healing, and rarely leave a village outreach visit without asking if there is anyone who would like prayer for a sickness they’re struggling with.
Though they believe it is Christ who does the healing, through their obedience in laying hands on children and adults alike, and believing at that moment that a ‘healing’ will take place; they also believe strongly in seeking volunteers who have specific gifts of healing and intercessory prayer, to join their outreaches whenever possible.
Many miraculous healings, big and small, have occurred while carrying out this ministry in the villages RKC serves, including the following which brought glory to God in ways that nothing else they do for the people could:
- One man from the rock quarry village that RKC serves, was involved in a motorcycle accident and brought to a hospital in a coma, paralyzed, and near death. Brain scans showed he had a massive amount of blood on his brain and an American surgeon who looked at the scans said that he would likely die in a few days. Instead of taking him home to die, after gifted volunteers prayed for him at the hospital, RKC took him to a Christian rehabilitation place called: ‘Healing Home’ in Phnom Penh, where he received daily prayer and excellent care, and to everyone’s amazement; walked out of there three months after the accident and returned to his village.
- Another man from a different village which RKC serves, fell 40ft. out of a palm tree, breaking his back; causing him to have no feeling from the waist down and no control of his bowel functions. American surgeons who stabilized his back said he would never regain the feeling or bowel function, but should be able to sit up in a wheel chair someday at best. Four months after much prayer by RKC volunteers, feeling returned in both legs, he regained control of his bowel functions, and during an outreach to his village shortly after, they witnessed the man pulling himself up and standing on his own two feet in his house at the village.
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Education / School Supplies In Cambodia, most public schools are very poor, and offer nothing to the student except a shallow education and a desk to sit behind or share with other students. Because the teachers are paid so little, many times they resort to charging the students a small fee (or bribe) each day, or they will pay very little or no attention to the student at all. Uniforms: If a student has no uniform, he/she can’t attend school at all, and many families in rural Cambodia and its city slums have children who grow up with little or no education for that reason alone. Each year, RKC raises funds to provide school uniforms for the orphans and children in the villages they serve, along with notebooks, writing utensils, books, backpacks, and bicycles for students who’ve made it through primary school and have to travel farther to attend secondary and high schools. |
Gospel Teaching and Baptisms
Though RKC never requires a person or village to become Christian, read Christian materials they pass out, or sit through teaching and worship times in order to receive relief services, being the ‘hands and feet’ of Jesus in all that they do for the kids and grownups where they serve; John, Sotey, and RKC’s Khmer staff are not shy in proclaiming the gospel whenever possible, and welcoming many to Christ’s kingdom at their own behest.
Teaching: RKC does this through their own staff, as well as inviting specialized Khmer ‘children and youth’ ministry organizations, and Khmer pastors to join them in the villages they serve. Baptisms are always a joyous occasion and fortunately there are lots of ponds, rivers, lakes, and even the ocean to perform them in; after several give their lives to Christ.
Evangelism through Mascot Ministry
‘Bawng Beaver’: RKC’s official mascot, formerly ‘Bucky Beaver’: mascot for a contractor’s association in Prescott, AZ; which John once served as its president, appears in many provinces throughout Cambodia giving children his custom made Khmer notebooks which talk about beavers and his adventures in Cambodia on the front cover, and introduces Jesus Christ and Christianity on the back. Notebooks are used at school, brought home, and kept for years by kids of many ages.
These notebooks are even more special because they feature the one who is giving them out. ‘Bawng’ is a common title meaning a person older than you, and Bawng Beaver is always a hit with the kids wherever he appears.
Trash Collector's Village
One of the more difficult ministries of RKC in Cambodia, is their outreach to the families that live near and work at the Phnom Penh city dump, located in rural Cambodia near the ‘Killing Fields’ where mass graves of over 10,000 men, women, and children who were killed in the Khmer Rouge genocide of the 1970s were found.
Difficult because many of the residents there prefer to have their children work at the trash dump; collecting anything they can resell or recycle, than attend school and get a good education. If RKC or RKC hosted teams bring anything new; like toys or clothes for the kids, they trade them in for other things at the markets where they do business, because that’s what they do for a living, so most of the time; RKC brings food items and used clothing, and medical help when needed. RKC has not been able to provide better homes for these people like they have in the other villages they serve, because the residents rent the land they’re pitching their shacks on, and the land owner has turned down RKC’s request to help in this way.
One of the more difficult ministries of RKC in Cambodia, is their outreach to the families that live near and work at the Phnom Penh city dump, located in rural Cambodia near the ‘Killing Fields’ where mass graves of over 10,000 men, women, and children who were killed in the Khmer Rouge genocide of the 1970s were found.
Difficult because many of the residents there prefer to have their children work at the trash dump; collecting anything they can resell or recycle, than attend school and get a good education. If RKC or RKC hosted teams bring anything new; like toys or clothes for the kids, they trade them in for other things at the markets where they do business, because that’s what they do for a living, so most of the time; RKC brings food items and used clothing, and medical help when needed. RKC has not been able to provide better homes for these people like they have in the other villages they serve, because the residents rent the land they’re pitching their shacks on, and the land owner has turned down RKC’s request to help in this way.
Team Participation
As John was inspired to come back to Cambodia after traveling there with teams from his church in 2005 and 2006, RKC welcomes teams from churches, communities, and mission organizations to serve alongside them in villages from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap (home of the famous Angkor Temples) while experiencing Khmer culture at its best. Once their flights have been arranged by their own agents in the countries they’re coming from, John & Sotey take care of everything else: lodging, meals, travel, and sightseeing in between outreaches.
Before outreaches, team members experience markets that most tourists never see, as Sotey uses funds raised by the teams to buy items that the people they’ll be serving need most. At outreach sites, Sotey loves to have team members participate in the preparation of meals, playing games with the kids, and conducting ministry with the unique gifts that God has given each team member who we believe is there because they’ve been called; not only to serve the poor, but to be ministered to by Christ through the ‘poor’, who are rich in His eyes in so many ways that people from developed countries can’t relate to.
If you have a team that’s ready for the spiritual experience of a lifetime, contact RKC through the contact page on this site, and someone will be in touch with you about approximate costs, what to bring, and best times of the year to come.
Before outreaches, team members experience markets that most tourists never see, as Sotey uses funds raised by the teams to buy items that the people they’ll be serving need most. At outreach sites, Sotey loves to have team members participate in the preparation of meals, playing games with the kids, and conducting ministry with the unique gifts that God has given each team member who we believe is there because they’ve been called; not only to serve the poor, but to be ministered to by Christ through the ‘poor’, who are rich in His eyes in so many ways that people from developed countries can’t relate to.
If you have a team that’s ready for the spiritual experience of a lifetime, contact RKC through the contact page on this site, and someone will be in touch with you about approximate costs, what to bring, and best times of the year to come.