Cambodian Mission
Dear Friends,
Today is my xxxxxx day in Cambodia. Some days, it feels like I’ve been here forever, but other days it seems that I am learning so much new information that I will never stop feeling like a newcomer here! Right now my glasses are broken and at a Cambodian optic shop (you can pray for that one! I might come back cross-eyed!), so forgive me if this email is full of typos. I am just punching at the keyboard from memory cuz I can’t really see what I am typing. So much has happened since my last update! I’ll do my best to put it into words here…
Last week I was reunited with Ms. Kay, a vietnamese woman who spent twenty years in Canada and speaks decent English.I first met here when I was here last summer; she runs the largest informal school for Vietnamese children in Cambodia. The schools are Christian schools, affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church. In school, the kids learn bible verses by rote memory, but are not being discipled. It’s much better than just sitting at home or working the streets, though, which is what most Vietnamese children do here.She has six different locations, packed with kids who aren’t allowed to attend the Khmer schools. She is fighting legislature and just had her very first student pass the Khmer literacy test. After a tremendous battle, the government allowed this kid to enter a Khmer high school, which was a huge breakthrough and a first for this country. However, most of Ms. Kay’s students drop out of school around age 12, and never make it through sixth grade. They are forced by their parents to work and raise money for the family; many of them are sold for sex.
At Christmas, Ms. Kay had a medical team from the US come in and work with her kids. They did physical exams of the children’s bodies, and found that in one place 37 girls had been violently raped. They had been sold by their moms or their relatives, and then sent back to school.
Next week, I begin working with these children, these ones who have been sold, and the ones who are at risk of being sold. They will be in my English classes twice a week. I’ll be going to their school and working with them when their classes are done in the afternoons. Lord, please give me words of hope for these precious ones. Please restore their lost innocence. Please make them whole again…
This past three days has been Chinese New Year, which the Vietnamese celebrate whole-heartedly. I have eaten more sugared coconut than I ever cared to eat, and said “Happy New Year!” a thousand times! On Monday we had forty to fifty people at our home for a big New Years celebration. I was in charge of games-we had a cake walk, and adding it up, I think our guests played about 41 times! Cassie, one of my teammates, commented afterward, “Älli, I think they loved the cake walk so much because it reminded them of gambling!” Ha!
Yesterday was a huge day in the life of our ministry. It was slam-packed from morning to night; we hit the bed completely exhausted, but I was unable to sleep cuz I was so excited! First, we visited families in the slums, going into their homes and down narrow little sewage-filled alleyways to reach them. The first home belonged to a toothless woman who looked to be about seventy years old, whom I will call Edna. She just lost her husband to alcoholism, and some “church” had come by the house to help her set up a shrine to the dead man. In front of his picture, they had placed bowls of fruit, incense, flowers, three cans of beer neatly stacked in a pyramid, and three full shot glasses. One of Edna’s daughters is a prostitute who ran off to Thailand after getting out of prison, leaving her with a naked, wild two-year old that I promptly dubbed “Chucky”. Chucky’s black hair was dyed red, or orange, really, and he took great delight in trying to pull the toenails and teeth out of the mangy dog that was trying to sleep next to us. I can’t go into any more detail about what Chucky did to the dog or my mother and other dog lovers will flip out, so let’s just say that I have never, ever seen a kid who was so young, so strong, and so violent! Sheez!
The tiny shack that Edna lives in with Chucky and various relatives is maybe the size of a small American bedroom. Maybe. It was built on stilts, so you had to climb a little ladder to get inside. The shrine to Edna’s husband took up most of one wall, and there was hardly room for us to sit with her on the floor and the bed. I was able to share what God has done in my own life and ways that he has given me hope, and we had a sweet time of prayer with her. Edna doesn’t know the Lord. I left the shack feeling very burdened and heavy for her. The whole time we were in the shack, a group of boys sat outside in the dirt, doing drugs. In this neighborhood, it’s common to for people to do heroin right in the open. I’ve seen a lot of high kids, snuffing gasoline out of plastic sacks or stumbling down the broken dirt road. Lord, please let Edna find your hope in this hopelessness…
The next home we went into was down a dank alleyway, and unbelievably smaller than the first. But this was a room filled with hope! It was literally that-a room only big enough for a bed-partitioned off from about ten other rooms. This was the “äpartment” shared by Sokha and her daughter, with the sounds of her neighbors blaring loud through the makeshift plywood walls, and dirt and grime covering every surface of the hallway and entrance. But Sokha knows the Lord! She quickly told us through our translator about her life-how she works day and night to keep her young teenage daughter off the streets, how she loves Jesus, how she wants to learn English…she was thrilled that we had come to visit and pray for her, and hopes to come to our English classes next week…I left Sokha’s house filling joyful. Thank you, God, for showing me your light in this dark place…
Then, the most exciting thing happened since our arrival in Phnom Penh! I got an email from Daughters Cambodia, an organization that we had not yet been introduced to. Cassie and I jumped on back of a motorcycle and road acoss town to meet with Ruth Elliot, the director of Daughters. This was our first time going into a real safe-house, as I have never asked to see one before. I despise the American tourist mentality that just wants to tour through the safe houses, take pictures of the poor pitiful victims, then go home and raise money for their next adventure overseas. Ugh. I make that clear up front with each partner I meet with: I am not here to exploit your girls even further than they have already been exploited.
Ruth asked us to meet her at the safe house. At the front door, we had to sign several forms saying that we would not use names or faces of any of the women or children there, and that we would follow all guidelines given to us. I appreciated the way they protected their girils. We had to wear passes around our necks at all times, another check-point to make sure that we were not part of the brothel world, trying to come and take the girls back.
Inside the safe house, we were introduced to seventy-seven girls, all of them full-time members of Daughters. Ruth believes in giving the girls jobs immediately upon entering the program so that they can pay off “debt” owed to the brothel owners and so that they can stay out of prostitution. When many of the girls are sold, they are sold to pay off debts that their families owe. Most of this debt is their father’s gambling debt, and the brothel owners keep strict track of these monies owed. If a girl leaves a brothel without paying off her debt, then the brothel owner will harrass or even kill the family of the girl. Thus, many rescued girls return to prostitution. They would rather be beaten and raped than have their families hurt.
So Daughters Cambodia gives the girls jobs, counseling, medical care, guidance, and love that they have never known. They have church on Sunday, but unlike many facilities, Ruth lets the girls decide if they want to attend and doesn’t force them. Also, Ruth doesn’t force the girls to stay at night. They are allowed to have their own rented rooms, similar to what Sokha lives in, if they choose. This freedom of choice is keeping the girls in treatment and out of the brothels; some of our other partners here are struggling because their facilities are lock-down. The girls, for their own protection, can’t even leave to buy a Coke. Ruth decided to try something different, and just started Daughters two years ago. She is a sweet, gentle British woman from Cambridge, England, who really is short-staffed right now. She welcomed me and Cassie with open arms, and gave us a tour of the whole facility. Some girls were making sugar flowers for wedding cakes and fancy desserts; others were sewing…Ruth says that due to the traumatic lives these girls have led, she can hardly get them to use the sewing machines…they would much rather sit on the floor and hand-crochet. It relaxes them and stands in stark contrast to the emotional frenzy of the brothel…The safe house is in a slum area, very close to the brothels. Mothers who are still sex workers can bring their babies and children to the center for day care, which is unheard of in this country. I am going to be doing some programs with the brothel children and learning all I can from Ruth. Cassie is going to be Ruth’s administrative assistant three full days a week. You can go to Daughterscambodia.org to read more about this organization.
So, our prayers are being answered: God is setting us up to LEARN here in Cambodia. He is opening our eyes to the heartbreak, and showing us how we can be used of Him to breathe hope into these hopeless ones.
As for me personally, I am fighting through my second head cold; it hasn’t wiped me out completely, it’s just irritating to be interrupted with a coughing fit in the middle of conversations or teaching! I love riding on the backs of “motos”, which is the standard form of transportation here and are simply old rattly motorcycles that will haul you across town for about $.50. I’m drinking lots of Diet Coke (usually warm), walking in the park every afternoon (where we have made great friends with a band of Indians from India:), soaking up the smells of sewage, rotting garbage, and moto pollution, and struggling to learn both Khmer and Vietnamese. I’ve found that if I talk with a Chicago accent then I do better with the Vietnamese. I wonder if any southerners have ever been great linguists?
Thanks for all of your prayers and support! It means the world to me…
________________
Update #1
It’s a hot, sweaty day here in Cambodia and I am walking around with a big, red tomato face! I keep waiting for some Cambodian to stop and ask me, “foreigner, why do you have such a red face?”
I have been here xxxxxxx days now, and am finally getting over jet lag. They say that for every hour you have between here and back home, it takes one day to fully feel like yourself. Seems like the older I get, the more trouble I have sleeping in these countries. I think it’s from years of sleeping next to the kids on my teams, getting woken up with one of the kids vomiting, getting woken up with thieves trying to break into our house, getting woken up with the street noise of 1.2 billion people in New Delhi…I sound like some of you parents! Before I had kids, I was a great sleeper! 
Anyway, the first nine nights here, I was up most of them.
Anyway, the first nine nights here, I was up most of them.I arrived a week before the rest of the team to do set up, and one kid met me here early. HIs name is Mxxx, and he and I had both had demonic dreams and thoughts in the middle of the night several nights. We felt a lot of attack, and thus had a lot of prayer. We battled hard against the strongholds in this place; we are surrounded by people who beat their kids, beat their wives, gamble ALL day and night, and sell their children for sex to buy a new cell phone or pay a bill. The people who lived in the house attached to us just moved out, and they were involved with a Nigerian group who sell guns and drugs between continents. A dark, dark business. The Africans here look scary and I get a chill when we pass them on the street. Finally, I feel peace in the house. Plus, the rest of our teammates arrived after we had been here for one week, and now the house is jammed full!
Our team is:
Me
Mxxx, age 20
Cxxxx, age 28
Txxxx, age 24
Jxxxx
Cxxxxx, age 26
Rxxx, age 28
The first four of us are members of xxxxxxxxxxx, and the other three went through training with us at xxxxxxxxx
To picture where we live, think of a street crammed with row houses, most of them attached on one or both sides. Cambodians and Vietnamese hang out of every doorway, selling clothes or
random food or noodles they’ve cooked on their mobile kitchen carts. There is trash piled up to the right of our doorway, waiting to be collected by the city. It is becoming a small mountain that reeks of waste and fish bones and rotten vegetables. The people are leery of throwing trash away; it’s the main source of income for Vietnamese and poor Khmer here, so they wait until things are rotten and picked through before they let the city haul it away.
There are two main types of people here, the Khmer, or ethnic Cambodians, and the Vietnamese refugee population. Many of the Vietnamese have lived here for three generations, and some have recently come, escaping abusive husbands or poverty back in Vietnam. The Vietnamese are not allowed to work, go to school, vote, or hold identification papers from the government of Cambodia. There are tons of them here, and their only source of income is to collect trash for recycling, or sell their children’s bodies. The men sit around and play cards for money all day long. Gambling is huge. When we walk into the slums to visit families, the men don’t even look up. Unlike India, these people are used to seeing foreigners. We are on the backpacking trail for European tourists, so there are plenty of white people to see. And, we are on the sex trail for Western peodophiles. Unfortunately, I see an average of 20 of these men a day. They sit in the bars and restaurants in between quenching their hunger for Asian women and children, some of them smoking and drinking, all of them looking lost…it really breaks my heart. The Lord has given me a growing passion to see these men saved. It won’t stop until these men come to know Him and are set free. As long as their are perpetrators, there are victims. Please pray that God opens the doors for good conversations here. Our house is not too far from one of the main back streets that they hang out on. We have lots of opportunities to talk with them.
So far, I’ve been in more meetings with people who are working in the anti-trafficking business, building relationships and gaining trust with these people who don’t have much trust for outsiders. I found out some of the reasons why: two of the largest areas that the peodophiles have been targeting are 1. the orphanages, and 2. the local churches here. I was sick when I heard this! At first, in my meeting, I thought that maybe the lady I was meeting with meant that it had happened in one or two churches. Then, she infomed me that it is a HUGE problem, and that Westerners literally come to Cambodia, volunteer to teach Sunday school in some rural church, and rape the little boys in the outhouse outside of the church. They have caught them in the act over and over. The rural pastors were not understanding why the men were there; they thought, “Westerners are safe. They have come here to love our children.” These pastors were letting the Western men take little groups of boys back to their hotel rooms ALONE at night for years. They had no idea.
The horrible reign of The Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979 wiped out almost every educated person in Cambodia. Since then, the people have tried to rebuild their lives with an uneducated society. It’s hard for us Americans to understand how the rural pastors could not have a clue about the Western men, but they have not been trained to look for these things. They don’t understand how a man can have sex with another man. Here, the men will tell you, “it’s not possible!”
After meeting with more Non-governmental organizations and more Christians who have been tolling for years here to end trafficking for sexual exploitation, my head has been spinning again, just like my last trip to Cambodia in July/August. The problem is even more overwhelming than I ever knew. The good thing is that God has confirmed over and over that we have heard Him correctly in regards to the Vietnamese. Their children are the most at-risk, and the NGOs here are just now catching on to that. We met with one huge organization that has over 300 employees (mostly Khmer people), and they told us that our group was a year ahead of them. They are spending the entire 2009 in doing research of Vietnamese families, trying to figure out how to reach them. I’ve learned that the statistics are worse than I thought as well: I knew that 90% of rescued children under 18 were Vietnamese. I have now learned that 80-90% of the Vietnamese here in Cambodia sell their children. That is a huge amount. Almost ALL of the Vietnamese are selling their children. It’s not just that the rescued ones were Vietnamese; think of how many have yet to be rescued.
So, we went into the slums and to as many Vietnamese pockets of people as we could find. We invited them to our home to learn xxxxxxxx. We have three rattly old computers that are not online, but most of these people have never even seen a keyboard. I was told not to get my hopes up, that maybe no one at all would come. Guess what? We had fifty people show up at our house for classes yesterday!!! Five of us taught classes three times that day, and Mxxx had to jump in at night because we had so many students! I absolutely loved it. I came alive, teaching my classes, many of whom did not even know the word “hello”. I am almost positive that one of my young girls has already been sold. She is hurting so bad, and her heart is like iron. Please pray that she will let me get close to her. Pray that God will reveal His love for her. I long to just hold her and tell her that He never meant for this to happen to her…It’s hard to look at these fifty students and realize that 40-45 of them either have already been sold for sex, or will be. Without Christ.
But Christ is with us, Christ is for us. I ache with the love He has for these children…please, please join our prayers for FREEDOM in this nation. We are hopeless without Him. We are overwhelmed without Him. We can do nothing without Him.
Please pray for this nation. Pray for favor with partnering organizations. Pray for continued unity and joy among our team as teammates. Pray for vision, direction, and the strength to not be afraid and carry it out.
Love to you all,
Axxxx