Preschool teacher Mary Joy Lomocso from Cebu, in the Philippines, was keen to join a ministry of OM. Dawn Greenfield of Mercy Teams International (MTI) invited her to consider Cambodia.

“It was the first time I’d even heard about Cambodia, and I wasn’t interested,” she recalls. “I didn’t even pray about it! I just worked the next two and a half years with street kids, as an OM volunteer. But all that time God was working in my heart. Once I turned on the TV and it was a National Geographic special about Pol Pot and Cambodia’s Killing Fields. I thought, I don’t want to go there!—It’s even poorer than the Philippines!

“I had applied to attend a bible school, which was free. In the blank for ‘target country’ the Cebu leader suggested that I write Cambodia. I said no. I spun the globe in the office and my finger landed on Cambodia. Then I picked up the ‘Windows on the World’ book and it opened to Cambodia! I still refused to put it on the application. Then the director interviewed me. I couldn’t believe it when he suddenly suggested, out of the blue, that Cambodia would be a good place for me !

“When I started to pray about it over the next months, God started to draw me to the country. My feelings changed. And everything came together. I went out from the Philippines without any support, only my passport and ticket. In Singapore [where MTI’s base is located] I shared my testimony in a church and then went on to Cambodia in June 2004 with only six months’ support. Once I was there, I didn’t want to leave. I felt like I was home! Then I was notified that a Singapore couple who had heard my testimony was going to support me for a further six months.”

Since MTI Cambodia’s focus is helping abused children, Mary Joy’s experience enabled her to fit right in. “Working with children is my gift.--There’s a sense of fulfilment, an inner happiness,” she says. “Where they live isn’t a surprise to me--I’ve seen squatters’ areas in the Philippines—but these places are worse. The children collect rubbish for recycling and many are abused. Some come to our programs with swollen eyes after someone has punched them. And when I clean their wounds I see questionable things, like cigarette burns.”

Mary Joy lives at the team house in Phnom Penh. She contributes to her own financial support by making and selling greeting cards—and often her fellow team members pitch in to help. “The Lord has really been faithful in providing for all my needs,” she affirms, “and I’m open to staying in Cambodia as long as the Lord wants me here. I remember once when I was sitting in a plane, flying back here after a break at home. I just wanted to say to that pilot, ‘Hurry!…Hurry!…Hurry!’” She smiles, reflecting. “There really is joy when you obey the will of God!”