Forty years ago, as the violent Khmer Rouge regime swept through Cambodia, Arun Sok Nhep made a promise.

Like hundreds of thousands of others, he’d been imprisoned during the Pol Pot regime, which began 40 years ago this year (17 April 1975).

He vowed that if God saved his life and got him out of prison, he would one day return to serve the ethnic minority people of South East Asia.

“I forgot this prayer for many years,” he says today. “But God never forgets. What I prayed that day in the prison is exactly what I’m doing here now.”

As chief executive of Bible Society in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, Arun is responsible for bringing Scripture to one of the fastest-growing churches in the world.

It was just five months after he’d become a Christian in 1975 that the Khmer Rouge came to power.

The Marxist leader, Pol Pot, aimed to take the country – renamed Kampuchea – back to the Middle Ages.

Hundreds of thousands of the educated middle classes were tortured and executed. Hundreds of thousands more died from disease and starvation. Up to 2 million people are thought to have died during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Arun, an Army officer, was forced to flee. He was caught in the attempt and spent four months in prison in neighbouring Vietnam and later 18 months in a so-called re-education camp in Laos.

During this time he met other Christians who had scraps of Bibles, which sustained his faith. But he lost touch with his family for decades.

It took two years, but eventually Arun escaped to France. There, he trained as a pastor, married and served in a Cambodian church.

He returned to Cambodia until 1993 to complete the translation of the Khmer Bible and fulfill his prayerful promise.

As Cambodia marks the 40^th anniversary of the rise of Pol Pot’s murderous regime he says, “I have learnt especially how God has used the circumstances of my life – how pain and suffering can turn to the benefit of his kingdom.

“The difficult time for me has become a personal opportunity – an opportunity now to supply Scripture.”

Bible Society Australia is supporting literacy, Bible distribution and translation work in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos in 2015-2016. Can you help as we spread God’s word throughout South East Asia?