'Education is the key'

Posted: Thursday, March 31, 2011
by Tom and Susan Nelson

The Herald Journal

Editor's Note: This article is one of a series of readers' first-hand accounts as senior missionaries for the LDS Church, orginally appearing as part of The Herald Journal's LDS Living special section.

We served for 23 months in the Cambodian Phnom Penh Mission as welfare missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We were country directors of the Perpetual Education Fund (PEF), as well as the Employment Resources Services (ERS). We also served as advisors to the Church Educational System (CES) and were support missionaries to the humanitarian missionary couple who directed the LDS humanitarian efforts in Cambodia. Due to the lack of available missionary couples, our mission assignment was somewhat larger than most.

We would like to share one experience we had while working with the humanitarian missionary couple. The LDS church designates a good portion of Humanitarian donations to be used in providing clean, safe drinking water for under-developed countries throughout the world. This is a critical need in Cambodia. One day we accompanied the humanitarian missionary couple out to a “floating village” off the shores of a large lake in Northern Cambodia. This village had a population of approximately 11,000 people, very poor, and they all lived on boats. Their schools, shops, markets etc. all were floating structures. It was about a two hour boat ride to get out to the village and our purpose in going was to evaluate the need for safe drinking water. We met with the village leaders and quickly determined a critical need. They reported regular deaths due to water-borne diseases. Even while we were meeting with these leaders in the floating “community center” we observed some children in a boat house adjacent the center dipping murky water out of the lake and drinking it. We also observed that the bathroom facilities in the community center consisted of a hole in the floor where we could look down into the very water those little children were drinking.

This project received church approval and we are grateful to report that the humanitarian donations given by church members here in the U.S. provided the funding needed to construct a state-of-the-art floating water purification plant with sufficient capacity to provide pure drinking water to this entire village. Now, for about 2 cents per liter, little children daily row their boats up to the floating purification facility and fill their crocks with clean, clear drinking water of sufficient amounts to last their family for the day.

We would like to share some insights dealing with our Perpetual Education Fund missionary work. Without assistance of some kind the young, college age church members in Cambodia would never be able to afford post-High School education and without education they cannot escape out of the vicious cycle of poverty. Thus, our responsibility was to provide funding for potential university students. We not only provided zero-interest educational loans but also educational counseling and a list of quality universities from which they could choose a school tailored to their field of study.

During our mission we were able to provide loans to over 150 students. Upon graduation it is anticipated that these students will be able to make three to five times the amount they were making before they began school. As an example, one young man, Kong Phean, upon returning from his LDS mission acquired a job paying $30 a month. He recently graduated with a degree in banking and finance and was offered a job paying $350 a month. By U.S. standards $350 is not a large amount but by Cambodian standards it is a very good salary. While studying, the students are required to pay $5 a month on their loan. Upon graduation that monthly amount increases so the entire loan can be paid back within eight years. We witnessed the truth of the statement, “education is the key to opportunity”. PEF is funded by the donations of church members, mainly from the U.S. and Canada.