God Calls Another Angel Home

She had beautiful, brown, puppy dog eyes, long, straight silky black hair and golden brown skin. You’ve heard of a girl’s smile that could light up a room. This girl’s smile could light up Candlestick Park at midnight on a cloudy day. Her name was Chheng Ngeam, or more affectionately Srey Neang. She was about eight years old.

On November 30, 2009, this beautiful creature passed away from Japanese Encephalitis. Srey Neang passed away while in a hospital in Phnom Penh. Her pastor took her back to her home where they had a funeral for her on December 2. Her entire school showed up for her funeral, which was held only 24 hours after her death. With no funeral homes, embalming, or graveyards, the kids in the home helped wash her tiny body, and laid her to rest on their property.

Srey Neang spent the last years of her short life at the Tluk Yule Church Orphan Home located in the Kompong Chhnang province of Cambodia. It’s a ruggedly beautiful rural area of Cambodia that is unfortunately still beleaguered with landmines and also has one of the highest HIV infection rate in Asia. Death due to AIDS is one of the leading causes of death among orphans in Cambodia.

We can have consolation in the fact that she is in a better place now – her suffering is over – and also in the fact that someday her brothers and sisters in Christ will meet her again. Even at the tender age of eight she was one of the oldest children at her orphanage and had some responsibilities like cleaning and taking care of some of the younger children. She was also a dearly loved big sister for the kids (there are about a dozen kids at that home).

Many tears have been shed and she will be missed.

Ted Olbrich, creator and head of an organization that helps fund the Tluk Yule Church Orphan Home remembered her with these words:

I don’t cry much, but this one broke me. I still can’t look at the picture of her lying in her casket and not get emotional. She was so cheerful and full of life, always the first one through the gate to greet us; an orphan girl that the world forgot, but God remembered.