Lessons learnt recently from church speakers

The following list could actually be a few posts, but I shall choose to summarise them as one.  Here are a few things I got to learn from a few ministers of the gospel I have heard recently:

• It is expected that a church minister would have a car.  After all, many of the Khmer congregation he ministers to have cars also ... even if their cars are left parked at home most of the time and only used when attending weddings.
  
  (From my own observation, it seems that the Khmer people vary greatly in their economic disposition.  Many own motorcycles, and many ride with the public motor-dops or tuk-tuks.  Some own Lexus cars.  A few ride bicycles.  Fewer walk.)
  
  
• Many of my initial reading told me that the Khmer people are rather homogenous in the sense that almost everybody comes from the same racial background and speak the same language.  However, a visiting preacher last Sunday told me of a number of minority people groups out there waiting to hear the Gospel.  Ie. this country, by and large, seems to have not heard about Jesus: most of Phnom Penh's have not thought beyond the culture of Cambodian/Sri Lankan Buddhism; neither have many of their provincial cousins or other minority people groups.
  
  
• There is persecution towards many of those who forsake their ethnic culture and Buddhist heritage to follow Jesus.  A lot of this is through peer pressure and through family relations.  Family members would force Christian converts to marry partners who are strongly convicted into the Cambodian cultural roots or Buddhist roots; hence upsetting the married lives of the converts.