Newsletter EDITORIAL

By Kate Fenn-Tye, Editor, Pray for Scotland.
In our Spring issue we reflected on our shared responsibility – as individuals, government and Church – to
bring about change in society, to be a catalyst for transformation. This can happen because God can use us all, as individuals, as small Lighthouses of Prayer in our local communities, as local churches, as national ministries, when we open up and make ourselves available to Him. This issue highlights some of these vehicles which God is using, as well as the qualities that allow us to be used as catalysts or agents for God’s change: hunger for God and His word, a commitment to show love and to impact the community, and of course the importance of prayer. . . . and forgiveness
A recent visitor to Scotland, Reaksa Himm, has a painful but inspiring story to tell of the power of forgiveness as a catalyst for change, not only in his life, but in the life of a nation . . .
The transforming power of hunger, love . . .

After the Rain

Reaksa Himm is a Pastor in Cambodia where he has a growing ministry in teaching, discipleship and planting churches. After surviving the ‘Killing Fields’ of the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s, when he lost almost all his family, Reaksa found faith in Christ and eventually a new life in Canada. He has now returned to work in the communities where he grew up and where he and many others experienced so much terror, suffering and loss. He has also embarked on a journey towards forgiveness and healing, seeking out those who killed his family in order to show them forgiveness, instead of the vengeance expected by the culture of honour in which he grew up.

Reaksa was recently in Scotland, meeting with intercessors who were immensely impressed by the depth of his forgiveness. He tells his story in two profoundly moving books, The Tears of My Soul, and After the Heavy Rain (published by Monarch, 2003 and 2007). In them he describes the process of learning to forgive, through finding release from ‘the bondage of bitterness’ , and explains why this was necessary to help him find life again, to enable him to glorify God, and to imitate Christ. For Reaksa this hugely difficult process
took many years, and there are no glib answers to the questions about suffering which are inevitable in the face of such personal and national tragedy. His vision and role is now to bless the people living in what were once the killing fields, and he remains convinced that the future wellbeing of the nation of Cambodia rests on its capacity to find healing for past traumas by accepting the supernatural and free gift of forgiveness offered by Jesus Christ.

Kate Fenn-Tye, Editor, Pray for Scotland.