Barnabas Mam - Church Behind the Wire: A Story of Faith in the Killing Fields

M OODY P UBLISHERS
CHICAGO

2012 by
A MBASSADORS FOR C HRIST I NTERNATIONAL

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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright 2000, 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved

Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the Holy Bible: New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked GNT are from the Good News TranslationSecond Edition. Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked THE MESSAGE are from The Message, copyright by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189, U.S.A. All rights reserved.

Edited by Andy Scheer
Interior design: Ragont Design
Cover design: DBA Lucas Art & Design
Cover images: Masterfile and SuperStock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mam, Barnabas, 1950

Church behind the wire : a story of faith in the killing fields / Barnabas Mam with Kitti Murray.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8024-0597-5 (alk. paper)
1. Mam, Barnabas, 1950- 2. Christian convertsCambodiaBiography. 3. ConversionChristianity Biography. I. Murray, Kitti. II. Title.
BV4935.M26A3 2012
275.960825092--dc23
[B]

2012000542

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1. On the Heels of Civil War
The Killing Fields

2. What Hope Sounds Like
Worshiping in Hell

3. I Spy
With Unexpected Results

4. Temple Boy Meets the True God
From Buddhism to Communism to Christ

5. A Tale of Three Kings
The Powerful and the Powerless

6. Three Mountains
But Only One Rock

7. In the Presence of My Enemies
A Table Prepared

8. The Intersection of Two Worlds
Living in the Yet

9. The Killing Fields
The Unspeakable Has a Name

10. Martyrs, Mentors, and Mainstays
The Bedrock of the Church

11. A Mosaic
The Broken Pieces Find Each Other

12. The Music Resounds
And It Carries Me Away

13. Surviving the Questions
Finding Gods Love in the Darkness

14. A Barbed-Wire Embrace
Family Reunions

15. The Value System of the Kingdom
Inside Out and Upside Down

16. What Lies behind the Open Door
A Reality Check

17. Camp Community
The Church Learns to Love Holistically

18. The March toward Peace
And the Long March Home

19. Homeward Bound
Fighting the Battle with Fear along the Way

For his anger is but for a moment,
and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
Psalm 30:5

A MOMENT may last longer and the night may be darker for some than for others. When you weep, the world stands still. And the dawn takes its own sweet time. But in Christ, a lifetime means forever. Measure the night against a lifetime and there is no comparison. Place a moment in the context of a lifetime and it all but disappears.

My life has been punctuated with dark moments. Darker than most. Oh yes, Ive lived in long seasons of night. Longer than most. But there has always been the dawn. And if you were to ask me today or tomorrow or even in the middle of that darkness, Barnabas, how would you describe the flavor of your lifetime? I would answer that my life has been defined by Gods favor.

How can you say such a thing? you might ask. You survived the Killing Fields in Cambodia. You witnessed the death of nearly one-fourth of the population of your homeland. You were often separated from your wife and children. You lived for eight years in the virtual prison of a refugee camp. You have known sickness, pain, and suffering that most of us in the West cannot fathom. Favor? Are you sure?

I am sure. In another psalm David says, In your light do we see light (Psalm 36:9). To know God is to know things as they really are, in the light. So while my story is one of tragedy and loss, it isoverallone of Gods favor. I want to tell it honestly. I want you to know what it was like to live under the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and 80s. I want you to understand what happenedand then to see the ongoing effects of those years on my country. There is no doubt we have sufferedand still do. Youll see that.

But I also want you to join me in seeing things as they really were, to see the light in all that darkness. To see that Gods favor directed me every step of the way: from the Buddhism of my childhood to the nave Communism of my youth to finding Christ at a time when that discovery placed my life in danger. From finding food when there was none to answering my interrogators when I was arrested. From planting a church underground in Phnom Penh and later fifteen churches in the refugee camps in Thailand to galvanizing those churches for the eventual return to a Cambodia we could barely recognize.

I have seen God demonstrate His favor to the sick, the wounded, the suicidal, the hungry, the defeated. I want you to see Him too. To taste the way He has flavored my life. His favordefined by Scripture not circumstances but in the context of a relationship with Himis the reason this story is ultimately one of hope and healing. Thats what I want you to see. Thats the joy that comes in the morning.