Chris Brooks
Crusading in Cambodia
Story by Jennifer Dorozio
It was 40 degrees and the electricity cut out, killing the fan --one of the only reprieves from the sweltering humidity of the day. A tepid shower was the other alternative to cool off, but it seemed the water had stopped flowing too. It was going to be another one of those nights where sleep and keeping cool lingered just out of reach, and instead, sweat was your an ever-present companion.
There are many days when Chris Brooks asks himself why he is doing what he is, but he doesn’t allow those questions to linger too long. Becoming a full-time Christian missionary in Battambang, Cambodia was never something Brooks imagined for himself, yet it wasn’t long after graduating from high school in Calgary he found himself doing just that.
“Seeing just how much need there is here I honestly think that it’s a better life here than it is back in Canada,” says Brooks. “Even though we have less, the people help each other out here. There’s so much unity in everything.”
Now, he has recently married a Cambodian woman, Rachna Brooks, and plans on spending the rest of his life as a Christian Evangelist serving the people of Cambodia.
He credits his zeal for Christianity with an encounter he says he had with God during a church service where his brother was praying for him.“I could feel the love of God and I’d never felt that before, it’s hard [to explain] because it is a supernatural kind of thing,” Brooks says.
He says, after his “God encounter”, he wanted to share it with other people so they could feel the love of God too. “My life had changed in that moment.”
Brooks’ descent into missions was gradual, first taking a six-month Bible course in Sweden with the international Christian mission organization, Youth With A Mission (YWAM). As a part of his schooling, he took part in a short-term mission trip in Cambodia.
“When I was done with my two months in Cambodia I didn’t want to go back,” says Brooks. “I was very much someone who found it very uncomfortable, lots of mosquitos, and it was too hot. I got typhoid when I was there.”
Despite this, Brooks says, “I felt God saying ‘You need to go back to Cambodia and help this country’ and my personal opinion was ‘No I really don’t want to.’”
During a brief trip to Sweden with his short-term mission group, Brooks says he received direct confirmation to continue with his missions work.
Brooks describes an encounter with a lady from the Bible course who approached and told him he needed to go back to Cambodia and teach the Bible and to start praying about it.
Brooks had already been praying about the possibility of returning, and took what the woman said as the confirmation he needed before returning to serve with other Christian ministries in Cambodia.
He went home to Canada and began saving up for another intensive Bible study course offered in YWAM, Cambodia. “It was full-time studying the Bible, like 50-60 hours a week.” Brooks says it was very draining but he, “just held on to the idea that God told me to come here, there must be a reason for it.”
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After completing the Bible study course where he met his now wife, he was faced with a decision:what to do next.
Now, Brooks is involved in as many things as he is able: learning the Khmer language, teaching English, speaking in church services, praying with and mentoring new Christians and working with street kids. Really anything to spread the gospel around him.
Brooks doesn’t reject the label of missionary, despite the sometimes negative context the words brings. “We’re still missionaries. We’re on a mission to serve, specifically in a different country, and one that’s really not that well off.”
He says there are lessons to be learned from some of the damaging tactics previous missionaries used, for example, the approach of using free aid to get people to listen to missionaries. “If we just give away free things it actually destroys local industry and jobs,” says Brooks, which is the opposite of his desire to see Cambodian people and industry thriving.
One way Brooks’ approach is different is that he teaches English for a fee. He says he does this in order to teach his students responsibility, and in the long-run help them get jobs.
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​“When it comes to me helping people it still costs them something,” says Brooks. “Of course there are certain situations where I do give free help, I see nothing wrong with that depending on who you’re giving it to, and in what way.”
He says he often shares food with beggars, who, if they are genuinely in need, accept his gift, while those using begging as an industry reject him.
Brooks says he sees himself staying in Cambodia long-term, acknowledging traveling is not as simple for his new wife.
The hardest part about full-time missions, for Brooks, has been supporting himself financially. As he has not completed any traditional Bible school or seminary, Brooks says it was hard to find a church that will support him; he mainly relies on the goodwill of his family members, a few friends, his savings, and one-time donations.
“I’ve always been more of a self-funded person so whenever I go back to Canada I’d be there for a year or six months and I would work like crazy so that I could save money to work in Cambodia,” says Brooks, who acknowledges those savings do not last forever.
Recently, he has joined an NGO, called Crossing Cambodia, which works with street kids; this allows Brooks to get funding through a church as well as tax receipts for people’s donations.
In everything he does Brooks says he aims to “make relationships and share Christ,” with the Cambodian people. The task, he explains, “usually doesn’t have to be said, sometimes they just ask you ‘What do you believe in?’ They’re very open to spirituality here in Cambodia.”
Brooks admits life isn’t always the easiest for him in a totally different culture, climate, and way of life but he says he chooses not to complain. For him, “there is no other argument, I know 100 per cent that God is real.”
“[The task] usually doesn’t have to be said, sometimes they just ask you ‘What do you believe in?’ They’re very open to spirituality here in Cambodia.” - Chris Brooks