Tim and Grace Hatch met on the mis­sion field (Peo­ples’ Repub­lic of China, 1991) and have devoted their lives to build­ing bridges that will shine Christ’s light at home and abroad.

The call to ser­vice in Cam­bo­dia (Spring 2006) was pri­mar­ily to replace long-time Cross­World staff Ken and Donna Rudy as Advanced Eng­lish instruc­tors at the Royal Uni­ver­sity of Law & Eco­nom­ics. That they did, revis­ing the exist­ing TOEFL cur­ricu­lum to more ade­quately pre­pare stu­dents for computer-based test­ing, sup­ple­ment­ing Dynam­ics of Lead­er­ship with John Maxwell’s “21 Irrefutable Laws of Lead­er­ship”, and updat­ing Busi­ness Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, par­tic­u­larly as relat­ing to job inter­views. New exams were devel­oped and the 12-week pro­gram was divided into four-week mod­ules. Nearly 200 stu­dents enrolled in the pro­gram. Dur­ing Fall 2007, Dar­ryl Record joined the Advanced Eng­lish staff, stu­dent hand­books were devel­oped and pro­mo­tional mate­ri­als improved..

One means of tran­si­tion­ing into active min­istry was get­ting to know the Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity by host­ing a Sat­ur­day night Bible study and prayer fel­low­ship. The event, passed on to the Hatches by a Niger­ian neigh­bor forced to leave Phnom Penh, grew to include 35–50 indi­vid­u­als, many Khmer. Friend­ships devel­oped with sev­eral young teach­ers and invi­ta­tions were given to visit the countryside.

Dur­ing the first two years, Tim and Grace stud­ied at the Khmer Lan­guage Cen­ter and hired per­sonal tutors for home instruc­tion. Sig­nif­i­cant progress was made in read­ing, writ­ing, lis­ten­ing and speak­ing. Short trips were made to vil­lages in Kumpung Cham and Ban­teay Meanchey Provinces and to Mekong River vil­lages bor­der­ing Viet­nam. Tim attended wed­dings and funer­als, dis­trib­uted med­i­cines, read­ing glasses, food sup­plies and Bibles, pro­vided spir­i­tual sup­port for Chris­t­ian Khmer teach­ers, and taught a Sun­day after­noon children’s Bible club. In three vis­its to an un-evangelized region, peo­ple responded to the Gospel and home Bible stud­ies were begun by Khmer and Viet­namese speak­ing Christians.

Grace taught Eng­lish and Bible at HOPE Inter­na­tional School where Christi, Daniel & Josiah enrolled full-time for the 2006–2007 aca­d­e­mic year, before com­bin­ing home school­ing with lim­ited atten­dance at HOPE School in 2007–2008. Along with home school­ing, Grace taught Pre­cepts to women from Cam­bo­dia, Mada­gas­car and Sin­ga­pore. Tim devel­oped rela­tion­ships with five young Khmer teach­ers –Vutha, James Sothea, Sam­neang, Vuthuoen and Sinath — invest­ing con­sid­er­able time with each for future min­istry. Work­ing closely with these five and Luy Um from Cony­ers, GA, much progress was real­ized, par­tic­u­larly in the area of dis­ci­ple­ship. Mea­sures were taken to sup­port and resource a local house church, sup­ply­ing Bibles and chairs, and mobi­liz­ing Chris­tians for mis­sion­ary ser­vice within and with­out their community.

Return­ing to the States and Canada from June 2008 to July 2009, Tim, Grace and the chil­dren attended mis­sion con­fer­ences, vis­ited fam­ily and friends, and com­pleted a year of school­ing. Funds were raised for con­tin­u­ing their work.  When offered teach­ing posi­tions at HOPE Inter­na­tional School for the 2009–2011 school years (Tim in 5th grade, Grace in HS Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture), they accepted believ­ing that the invest­ment of them­selves in the lives of mis­sion­ary kids would enable their par­ents bet­ter to ful­fill God’s call­ing, thus extend­ing the light of God’s King­dom into places of darkness.

Although times have been tough, God is good! The Hatches and all of Cam­bo­dia depend upon His com­plete and timely provision.

Thank you in advance for your prayer­ful assis­tance! By God’s good grace, Tim, Grace, Christi, Daniel & Josiah Hatch,will con­tinue on mis­sion with Him to the peo­ple of Cambodia.

“A light to the nations so that His sal­va­tion may reach to the ends of the earth”

Isa­iah 49:6b