Media Missionary Focus

Evangelistic Movie Idea 1

Well, I wanted to get the actual story ideas we are playing with out there to see if anyone had any thoughts.

We have three ideas at the moment, all in various stages of development. All of them are meant to be used as illustrated stories that can represent some aspect of Christianity that can be used by people to help explain Christianity to their unsaved friends.

Here is the first. The story is intended to address the misconception that God is absent from our lives and either doesn’t care about us, and disinterested. Let me know what you think!

Story of Sopheap:

Sopheap is the only child of a poor farming couple. They live in a small farming community and are the poorest family in the village. Sopheap’s father is a kind hearted hard working man who loves his family. Sopheap’s mother is withdrawn and suffers bouts of depression, and after effect of watching her parents and all her 5 brothers and sisters killed before her eyes during the war. She never really recovered. There are rumours in the village that she must have been responsible for her family’s death, that she sold them out to the pol pot soldiers so they wouldn’t kill her. They say it is the guilt that has left her a little crazy. In some ways attribute the family’s poverty to her mental condition, and it is out of respect to Sopheap’s father that they are still accepted as part of the community at all. When Sopheap is almost five years old, his father decides to leave the village and go and work on a fishing trawler, so he can send back money for Sopheap to go to school. Sopheap is too young to really understand why his father is leaving. He loves his father and misses him badly. His mother does too, and retreats a little further into her own world. Sopheap finds himself sitting by the road watching and waiting for his father to return. On festivals and special holidays when his father is supposed to be coming home to visit, Sopheap waits and waits, but his father never comes... All that arrives is a letter a few days later explaining why. The story takes place during the late eighties when the country was still at war and travel was very difficult and dangerous. His father genuinely tried to come, but so often travel was made impossible by bandits and fighting in the provinces. He would send a letter and send when he could, send money. After several years of this, Sopheap began to doubt his father love and affection and the disappointment of the letters explaining his fathers absence became too much. He began to hate the sight of those letters that would bring such bad news. Then after several years, the letters stopped coming and so did his father. Sopheap was mad, and the rumours amongst the neighbours was that his father had finally left them. Sopheap’s mother began to panic and took sopheap on the dangerous road to the dock where his father’s boat landed each morning. There Sopheap stood watching the waves and the boats in the bay whilst his mother went and talked to Sopheap’s fathers work friend. The man handed Sopheap’s mother a briefcase and one final letter. Sopheaps’ mother broke down, crying hysterical. Sopheap unsure how to react stood silently watching. Sopheap’s father’s friend stood by his mother for a moment, and then went back to work unloading the fishing boat. It was a long time before his mother could regain her strength to even stand up. When she did, she never said a word, not that day, not from that point on. Her eyes had a glazed over look, like her soul had retreated to a far away place, and all that was left was her body dragging her from one day to the next. Sopheap asked his mother when his father would be coming home, and he got no reply. He ran to find the man who had given the briefcase to his mother and ask him too, when would his father be coming home? The man replied, “your father will not be coming home ever again son.” It took the trip home for that news to sink in. In his mind he understood that his father had left them. He saw the state his mother was in, and he began to hate his father intensely. He saw in his mother’s hand a final letter with his father’s writing on the front, and a single word- his name. He didn’t want to open it. He couldn’t stand to hear another excuse, a reason why his father wouldn’t come home, a reason why he had been abandoned, a reason why his mother had been left an empty shell. He didn’t care to know.

As the years went by his hate for his father was fed by the people in the village. When they returned that fateful day with his father’s briefcase in his mother’s arms, and her tear stained face and empty stare, all the villagers assumed that the rumours were true- he had left them. They began a source of gossip and finger pointing in the village. The other children teased him- the boy with a crazy mother and no father. The older people in the village said it was just a matter of time before he left, after all how long could he be expected to stay with a wife who was just an empty shell. Every event drove his anger and hurt deeper and deeper. He watched other families with a mother who was functional and a father who played with his sons, and he was jealous, and his heart ached, but he buried those feelings in the anger and resentment he held onto so tightly towards his father.

His mother would daily sit by the gate watching the road, as if perhaps today would be the day when this last few years would prove to be a bad dream and her husband would come home to her, walk through that gate and take her hand. Each night when that small piece of hope set with the sun, she would pick herself up and head into her room, to cry and rock herself to sleep holding that briefcase, that last unopened letter. Sometimes Sopheap would take food to his mother or clean up her room, and he would see the letter there, his name in his father’s writing, there was a sense of curiosity, but it was as if he thought opening that letter was like forgiving his father and accepting the excuse that lay within the words. He wouldn’t do it. He never picked it up. His mother could not read, perhaps she didn’t even know who’s name it was, but Sopheap did.

His mother’s health deteriorated little by little. She had lost the will to live the day they returned from the ocean, and her body was shutting down piece by piece ever since. She was bed ridden and thin, and so weak. Sopheap knew she would not live long. Deep in his heart he blamed his father, accused him of killing his mother by breaking her heart.
The final day came, when Sopheap knew his mother would leave him before the sun went to bed. He sat with her, and she picked up the letter. She motioned for him to read it to her, he refused at first, but upon her insistence as her dying request he opened the letter. He read the words.


Sopheap,

My beloved son,

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about you, wonder how your day was, what you learnt at school, wonder what you think about and dream about. I miss every minute I don’t get to spend around you, I miss watching you grow, and being a part of your life everyday. I want you to know how much I love you and why I can’t be there like other boys Dad’s. I had to leave you and your Mum to find work, so that I could pave a way for you to have a good future, so you could go to school, so you could grow up and get away from a life of poverty and suffering that you were born into. I hate that I can not be by your side, but as I work I dream about the man you will become one day and every second sacrificed seems worth it. I am so proud of you, and I love you more than anything in the whole world. There are so many things I want to tell you. I’ve kept a piece of paper in my pocket everyday, and I wrote down the things I want to share with you, little things that I learn about life along the way, little things that perhaps will help guide you along too.

Work hard son. No matter what it is that you put your hand to everyday, do it to the best of your ability. Take pride in your work, in your labour. No one looks down on a hard worker, no matter how humble the task.

Love others son, just as I love you, love them with your whole heart, unselfishly. A love like that will conquer all hurts and all sins. Never let your heart grow cold and void of love. Never let hatred and unforgiveness cloud your heart and rob you of the joy of loving others. Forgive people, don’t blame and don’t keep score. Your anger hurts no one as much as it hurts you, so forgive.

Always show respect to others. Respect people because each person has value, not because of status or wealth or other things the world counts as important. Show respect to your mother- when you are older and you are someone’s husband, someone’s son, you will realise what sacrifices a mother makes. Honour your mother now, even though you are young, and you don’t yet understand- one day you will.

I will not be coming home for a while Son, but I will send this letter ahead of me, when ever you doubt that I love you, whenever you need me to advise you, read this letter. I will come home to be with you and your mother as soon as I can.

I love you Sopheap

Your father.

Sopheap stared at the letter, the second last line for the longest time until the words blurred into his tears. His mother’s hand went limp in his, bringing him out of his daze. He looked up at her face. A single tear was falling down her cheek, and there was a smile on her face, a peace he had not seen in his mother for so many years. Her eyes were closed. The envelope fell out of her other hand and landed on the floor, a single small note stuck out of the top. Sopheap picked it up.

Sopheap, your father handed this letter to me moments before he died. We worked together on the boat for four years, and in that time he never stopped talking about you. His last words were to give this to you, and to make sure you knew how much he loved you. I am sorry for your loss. I hope this letter brings you comfort. Your father was a great man. He will be missed greatly.
Bo Sophal

Sopheap was speechless. His father had died? His father loved him? Everything he understood and felt towards his father was based on a mistake, a misunderstanding, and to think the truth had been sitting there inside an old briefcase all these years.

Sopheap fell to the floor on his knees and cried. Grief for the years he had spent hating his father, who loved him and sacrificed his life for him. Grief for his father’s death. Grief for his mother, whose heart had broken that day at the dock. So much pain. He cried out for forgiveness from his father, he cried until he fell asleep, his cheeks and shirt wet with his own tears, the letter held against his chest.

After his mother’s funeral was over Sopheap went in search of the rest of the story. He had discovered so much, but so much still remained unknown. He remembered the dock from all those years ago, where his mother fell to her knees and never again uttered a word, and he had the name at the bottom of the letter Bo Sophal, he would go and find Bo Sophal and find out what happened to his father.

posted by Troy In Cambodia @ 8:53 AM