Asian Ministries:
An Interview with Bunthean Nhothsiri
Interviewed by Phillip
Hampton
September 18, 2000
Recently, Ninetyandnine.com’s Phillip Hampton sat down for an interview with
Bro. Bunthean Nhothsiri in Nashville. Bro.
Bunthean is the Asian Evangelism Ministry Coordinator for the United Pentecostal
Church International and is the pastor of the Asian United Pentecostal Church in
Nashville, TN.
This interview was conducted a week
before the 8th annual Asian Evangelism Ministry Conference held in Nashville,
TN. Bro. Bunthean, 38, has been
heavily involved in Asian evangelism both in America and overseas.
He came to Nashville from Stockton, California, where he served as the
youth pastor for the Asian United Pentecostal Church there.
In Nashville he, along with his
wife, Lamphang, and brand new baby boy, Jeremiah, is leading a growing
congregation reaching out to the city's significant Asian population.
His life story is a fascinating look at how God's will is accomplished
through the most unlikely circumstances and how God's grace knows no cultural or
racial bounds.
90&9:
When and where were you born?
BN: I was born in Cambodia in
1962.
90&9:
What was the government in Cambodia at that time?
BN:
Well, at that time, there was peace and everybody lived peaceably in the
village. I lived in a big village
surrounded by small villages. The
whole village was Buddhist. Nobody
had heard anything about Jesus. We
never heard the gospel.
90&9:
So you were brought up as a Buddhist?
BN:
My whole family was Buddhist.
90&9:
How many brothers and sisters do you have?
BN:
I have 4 brothers, 3 sisters.
90&9:
At some point did you live under a Communist regime?
BN:
Not until 1975 when the Communists took over.
I was 13 at that time.
90&9:
Tell us a little about that experience, the Communists taking over, and
how it affected your life.
BN: Well, first of all, before it
happened, we experienced robbers who came to the village.
That had never happened before. We
never had thieves in our village. We
never had any killings in our village until 1975.
We heard some guns, but we didn't think it was the Communists. Probably the Communists wanted some food and started to come
to some of the families and take some of the rice. And, finally, we found out that the Communists were coming
closer to us.
90&9:
And how did that affect your family?
BN:
Well, we didn't think much about it.
We had nowhere to go, so we had to live a normal life.
The people who lived on the other side of the country were forced to move
closer to the border. We didn't
know what happened, but there were a lot of killings and a lot of families moved
to our village and lived there, just like refugees.
At that time, we thought about the Communists getting closer and our
family tried to prepare to move, to take off, but we didn't know how or when or
where to go. The only place we
thought about was Thailand. It
would take a couple of days to walk there.
One night we heard the bombs
and the guns close to the village, and that night the whole family took off.
We had nowhere to go that night. And
we hid beside the river. That was
as far as we could go. Then, it was
peaceable.
90&9:
So did you escape to Thailand eventually?
BN:
Yes, when the Communists took over, during that time, they told us that
they wanted peace. We heard about peace and were so excited, after we heard the
bombs and guns. But suddenly we
heard about peace. And the
Communists would come to us and say, "We're your friends.
We don't need any guns. We don't need any killings.
We won't kill each other because now we're friends."
So the Communists would come over and say, “Let's get rid of all of our
guns and let's become friends.” So
everybody got excited. We didn't
need any guns, any weapons. The
people who owned guns, including the soldiers who lived in the village, brought
their guns to the communists. After
that, they took over the village. They
would force all the stores to give away food and their merchandise to all the
poor people. "You don't need to sell because you're friends."
That's their words. After
that, they would force us to leave our village in one day.
We would grab anything we could that night.
They used the speaker in the temple to announce that the next morning
everyone in the village would have to move.
The refugees who had moved to our village would have to stay. The
communists said these people could stay and take over anything that was left
there in the village.
So we moved and we didn't have
anything to load our stuff on. My
parents had a cart pulled by a cow. I
had a bicycle. I put my two
brothers on the top and I had to push.
90&9:
And where were you going?
BN:
We had no idea where we were going.
But somebody led us to the place where we could stay.
So we had to stay there to work a rice farm for the Communists.
So we pitched our tents there to live in that jungle. We had to go to work for them.
They would come in and would have meetings every day.
The communists would come to meet with the head of the household to tell
them what to do. Every night, after
work they would come.
90&9:
The Communist system almost seems like a religion.
BN:
Right. They would rule us by
telling us what to do for them and then they would tell us all kinds of rules.
You can't climb trees, you can't sing a song, you can't play music.
90&9:
This is even for the children?
BN:
For everybody. They would have a class for the children and they would teach
the children to hate their parents and to kill.
90&9:
To kill?
BN:
To kill. They would teach the children to report to them any problems.
If anyone is lazy, tell us. If
they don't work, tell us. If your
parents say something to you, tell us.
90&9:
Did you always doubt the Communists or were you a believer that they were
acting for your good?
BN:
At that time, I was 13. I
was always under my parent's guidance and they would tell me what to do.
They would hear something and they would tell us quietly. They would tell us not to say a word to anybody.
I didn't think much about what was going to happen to our family.
I had faith in my parents that they would take care of us, protect us,
and help us to grow there.
90&9:
Moving on, how did you get to America?
BN: Okay.
When we escaped to Thailand, the Thai government at first didn't know
that we were refugees because we looked like [the Thai people].
We lived in the country and worked there for two years.
Then the government called for everybody that were refugees from Cambodia
to go live in a camp. So we just
moved to the camp. They built the
camp for the refugees, supported by other countries.
We lived in the refugee camp for two
years. During that time, while we
were in the camp we would see Americans and other foreigners come to feed us and
to give the children milk. And we
saw some of the missionaries (I had no idea who they were because I didn't go to
church and did not believe in God at that time).
During that time, they would allow
us to fill out an application to go to a foreign country.
My parents decided to send our names to the United States.
A lot of people sent their names to the United States.
At first, we thought we would go to France.
I don't know how many countries my parents applied for, but finally the
answer came back to us that our names were brought up.
They called us to meet them and we saw our sponsor who was from the
United States, from Michigan. He
was a newsman. He came to meet us and tell us that he would sponsor us to
come to the United States. The main
person who sponsored us was Mr. Kola, who lived in Odenville, Michigan.
They sponsored us and prepared a place for us before we got there.
Our sponsor kind of got excited and
he wanted the whole village (it was a small village) to know, so he put us on
the front cover of the newspaper, because he was a newsman.
Interviewed by Phillip
Hampton
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