Ted & Sou Olbrich -
missionaries - Cambodia
Ted Olbrich’s passion in life has always been to take something that someone has discarded and make something of it. He did that when working in Laos during the Vietnam War by teaching irrigation of rice land to produce two crops instead of one, in the US Ted took farmland that was unproductive and through drainage and conservation techniques made it the most productive in the county, as a pastor he took a failing congregation and made it one of the largest churches in his district, as a missionary he took a country with one small 25 member church and built it into a nation changing mission with 3000+ congregations and 106 Church/Orphan homes caring for 3800 orphans and widows. He has established dozens of micro-enterprizes, agricultural innovations, a medical clinic, and a 480 person dormitory to provide a practical solutions to problems like “Human Trafficking”.
Ted met and married Sou 40 years ago while working for the U.S. Embassy in Laos for three years during the Vietnam War. Though Ted has a background in business and agriculture, they spent 12 years pastoring in Woodstock, Ill., before answering the call to the mission field. Foursquare ministry in Cambodia has rapidly grown under Ted's leadership. thousands of churches have been planted, and thousands of orphans are being cared for. The Olbrichs have four children who are living here in the U.S. (Tony, Emil, Chanta, and Hannah), and five grandchildren. The Olbrichs live in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
In a time when there has never been more good going on in the world, there is a perception that the critic is winning the day. In an effort to capture an audience politicians, news networks, television shows, movies, etc all seem to believe that their share of the market can only be captured with criticism, negativity and derogatory content. As a result, this flow of information tends to be compounded in everyday person to person conversation at home and work.
This needs to be challenged!
The truth is that never before in the history of mankind have more people been free to live the life of their choice.
This list will grow as more fruitful lives
are identified...
The Hope Collection interacts daily with people who have learned that old adage, "If someone helps you, the best way to repay the favor, is to help someone else!" A relatively recent movie, Pay It Forward repeats this same theme that the well loved Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life depicts so well. Unfortunately, we are inundated daily by repeated stories in the news that are driven by the slogan that, "The only 'Good News' is 'Bad News'!" The challenge here is that, all too often, "what goes around comes around!" Society begins to live out what it considers an accepted pattern of behavior. The seldom told truth is, however, that every day, people in every corner of the world reach out to help others with no thought of pay back of any kind. Just because it’s the right thing to do, "to treat others as you would like to be treated!" To help right this perception, we would like to enlist your help in telling a different story. We would love to have you send us examples of people’s stories that are or have reached out to others. These people can be kids or adults, a coach, teacher, pastor, neighbor, stranger, military person, family member etc. With their permission we would like to showcase them. Join us in telling a story of Hope!