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LCMS involvement in Cambodia began as a result of two survey trips made by LCMS missionaries and Thai Lutherans in 1999. In 2006, two called career missionaries began work in the country, serving through LCMS World Mission. Currently, the team includes a career missionary family and a GEO missionary. Mission work includes leadership training, theological education opportunities to Cambodian church leaders, pastoral training for Hmong pastors and human care ministries through Concordia Welfare and Education Foundation.
Trinity Lutheran Church in Battambang is the only church in Cambodia that identifies itself as Lutheran. Its ministries, in addition to Sunday worship and weekly Bible studies, include an English school, which has about 100 children enrolled. The majority of its congregation consists of children. Outreach to the young people of the community is being extended by offering EFL classes aimed specifically at youth. In 2008, Trinity began a church plant in a nearby village.
LCMS World Relief and Human Care began supporting mercy ministries in Cambodia in 2000, with a grant to the Concordia Lutheran Association that funded the opening of a daycare, the Open Gate Center for Education, which cares for 40 disadvantaged children. More than 100 children were enrolled in 2008 and this ministry continues to grow. Grants since 2000 have funded daycare support, child nutrition projects, flood response, English programs, water wells, health classes, farming/gardening/composting projects and training future mercy/church workers.
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