CRM - Empowering Leaders

<< Back to InnerCHANGE Films

<< Back to all Films

ON THE LIST

Ministry Group: InnerCHANGE, Cambodia

Team Members: Dave & Lisa Everitt, Mark & Susan Smith 

Location: Phnom Penh, Cambodia

People Group: Church leaders in Phnom Penh and in the countryside, teenagers

Story: The Everitt Family moved to Cambodia in 1994, helping to establish the InnerCHANGE Team here. Their initial focus was church planting. Subsequently, they shifted their focus to supporting the Khmer church leadership and expatriate youth. Dave also coordinates a medical clinic in a military hospital in Phnom Penh and goes on field trips with Cambodian pastors to help sustain isolated churches.

For decades, Cambodia was ravaged by civil war, culminating in the murderous regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. In 1989, the various combatants finally agreed to a peace process. The UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) took control of the country from 1991-93, and foreigners were allowed access to Cambodia. 

Several InnerCHANGE staff who had been ministering for a few years among Cambodians in California felt led to move to Cambodia. By the fall of 1994, the founding members of the InnerCHANGE team in Cambodia had moved to Phnom Penh.

Over the last decade, this team has faced its share of challenges and set-backs. Dave says, "Much of our unrealistic idealism and naiveté have been polished away. We’ve been sick. We've been through a military coup. We’ve wrestled with our own inadequate responses to the myriad needs around us and the corruption endemic to Cambodia. 

Being a team isn't always easy. We have bruised others and been bruised ourselves. But we've also been blessed tremendously with our spiritual growth as individuals, and with the growth of an increasingly healthy community of InnerCHANGE missionaries. We've learned how to better love and encourage each other. We've learned how to laugh at ourselves and to cry with those whom we have the privilege of serving.  We’ve learned to better recognize God’s fingerprints on our neighbors’ lives. And we persist to serve, to learn, to grow in a context of severe poverty in its many forms."