Story
In the rural Philippines, Aide (pronounced EYE-dee) Rose Fernandez learned about Jesus and dedicated her life to following Him when she was 12 years old. She was very active in church and upon high school graduation went to the big city of Cebu to attend Bible college. She was preparing to be a Bible teacher and cross-cultural missionary. Aide Rose served among the Batak Tribal People as a missionary intern in 2006-07 on the remote island of Palawan. She learned to enjoy living in the rugged mountains but also worked in the coastal lowlands with a Badjao M*slim people group. “I personally witnessed how people were hopeless when they did not know Jesus and how God can bring hope to transform a community.”
Following graduation Aide served an upper class Filipino-Chinese church leading youth and doing administrative work. But God was calling her to go to unreached peoples who had little or no chance of hearing about Jesus and Christianity. She joined Bethlehem Star of Peace’s (BSOP) Team Cambodia in 2009.
Millions of Khmer people in Cambodia are doomed by poverty, corruption, human trafficking, illiteracy, and prostitution. Aide Rose has been bringing hope to the Khmer people in Battambang Province for the past decade. She has discipled a generation of youth to become involved in church planting and lifelong service to God through their local church.
In Battambang City, she encouraged a decades-old, plateaued church to plant its first outreach. Her youth group led the way with children’s classes. Now the mother church is guiding their rural daughter church and looking at other unreached villages for outreach opportunities.
Aide Rose, however, is following the call of God to relocate to one of the least reached districts of Cambodia—Anlong Veng (AV). Many AV villages have no public power or potable water system. The people are subsistence farmers. There are almost no churches in the entire region. Aide is joining with two other veteran church workers to plant and nurture a network of indigenous house churches across the AV region. They use holistic ministry addressing spiritual needs while helping communities develop. Aide will oversee educating children and youth so they will not become victims of human trafficking.
Two house churches are now established and growing. Three more villages are experiencing engagement with the good news every week. Many more communities will follow in the years to come.
Anlong Veng became the last holdout of the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot. The Khmer Rouge built bases in the mountain range along the border of Cambodia with Thailand. Anlong Veng became the main "capital" of the Khmer Rouge. In the late 1990s the Khmer Rouge still controlled Anlong Veng, where one of the "Killing Fields" was filled with the bones of thousands of victims. Nearly two million Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge for having become "corrupted" enemies of their vision for the nation.
Economic development has been almost nonexistent and outsiders have feared moving there to begin any kind of Christian outreach. No churches were being planted.
Today, however, the “killing fields” are becoming the “living fields” as a house church movement is starting in this neglected region of far northwestern Cambodia. Join Aide Rose Fernandez in this strategic mission.
