Buddhist in slums of Cambodia found Jesus after mother’s miraculous healing
By Mark Ellis, Special to ASSIST News
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (February
10, 2015) -- He survived the perils of life in the worst slum in Phnom
Penh only to see his home – and thousands of other shanty dwellers’
homes — ravaged by an arson fire. But through it all, God had a plan to
bring calm to a troubled young soul.
“My parents moved to the city to
find work,” says Makaram Lim, now a youth leader and worship pastor at
Church of Cambodia in Pnomh Penh. Makaram stayed with his grandmother a
few hours east of the capital city as his parents tried to make their
way in the bustling city – his mother selling vegetables and his father
driving a taxi.
His parents lived on a mattress outside the front gate of a relative’s home.
Makaram’s grandmother was a
strict Buddhist who prayed at dawn and dusk each day to her God — at
least an hour of prayer and worship in each session.
Due to the rigors of his
parents’ long work hours, with little time to rest, Makram’s father
contracted typhoid. Sadly, he succumbed to the disease in only three
months.
So at nine-years-old, Makaram
and his two sisters moved into a slum area with their mother near the
Russian embassy in Phnom Penh. “It was full of taxis, vegetable sellers,
drug addicts, prostitutes, robbers, and all the bad people lived
there,” he recounts.
A blackened river ran near the
slum known as “Hundred Directions Water” because it became the drainage
channel for every form of human waste and debris. “The water had a very
bad smell,” Makaram says.
Makaram’s mother began to get
sick from a mysterious ailment that no doctor could explain. “First they
thought it was her stomach, then her lungs, then her liver,” he
recalls. “She was getting weaker and weaker, losing her will to live.”
“The doctors gave up hope and
told her to go home. They said they had no way to help her.” Makaram’s
mother asked her sister if she would care for her three children when
she died.
One Saturday night a Christian
woman came to visit the family and spoke very directly to Makaram’s
mother: “Sister, Jesus is God,” she declared. “He is the Savior of the
world and the Savior of sinners. If you come to know the Lord Jesus –
even if you die today — you go to heaven.”
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