Trafficking After Care

***I am not going to post a picture for security reasons, and please do not re-publish this with any names you may hear me mention once I am home***

Today I visited the Trafficking after care ministry, it is a home where girls (12-18 yrs.) are rescued from the sex industry.  Many have been sold into slavery as children. One of the ways that they help the girls in their two year residency treatment program, is to teach them skills that they can use to gain a job and a future. The gut level American reaction is to almost condemn that a people would allow their women to be treated this way, but it is so much more complicated than that, and I would love to talk about it with you when I am home if you are interested.  When people are desperate they only think of survival.

    I really want to share my experience of what it was like to be there, but I am having a hard time putting it into words, as is the case with a lot of what I am seeing in Cambodia.  The people here are so desperate, I cannot help but see that this type of environment would have been my son’s life without adoption. 

    One of the things the house does is bring in short term missionary teams of women who are nail technicians and hair stylists, to teach the girls a trade.  The girls in the latter part of the program then use their skills in businesses that have a relationship with the NGO, or in the mini-spa run by the missionaries to benefit the girls.  It’s a wonderfully missional way to use the creativity of God’s people for healing and hope.  

    As part of today we women each received a spa service from one of the girls.  I got a pedicure from a 13 year old girl.  She likely left the industry at age 11, which means she was under 11 when she was sold or tricked into human trafficking. I have no idea how long she was involved. We learned today that 40% of trafficked girls are under 12 and 8% are under 5.

           She washed my feet, and I cannot describe what that felt like for me.  As you can imagine we have been walking through filth, and grime in 100 degree weather, and this little middle school age girl was washing it off.  I have no category for this.   Despite her past, she was such a little girl, I could see it in her eyes, and when she grew teeny bopper excited that I let her pick the polish color.  She grew even more excited when I told her that she picked my daughter’s favorite color, a very bright version of pink.  This girl looked at me with adoration, and was thrilled that I and my friend Kim were telling her about our kids.  (Kim has a very motherly instinct about her, twice this week I have seen the same woman try to give Kim her baby, which is a common way for women to try and give their kids a better life).  

             I wanted to take her home and give her a family, she has a family in the group life of the ministry, but I wanted to give her a mom and a Dad who can show her how God has called men to be.  Please pray for these girls, they are beautiful and made in the image of God, they need healing and people to walk through it with them.  I have had a lot of difficulty processing so much of what I am experiencing emotionally, which is weird because I am a social worker and deal with very, very similar issues on a regular basis.  Just because something horrid happens here, does not undo the horror or lessen the horror of kids abused at home.  It’s like two of us having a broken legs, with one of us with two fractures and one of us with only one.  It’s ridiculous to argue that one has a greater or lesser degree of pain, we will both have pain, but will need to take different paths of healing.  

            One last really neat thing…the “theme” song of the agency is the praise song “I will change your name,” which they have translated into Khmer.  If you know the song, you know how significant that is. 

We also visited a medical clinic which we’ll tell you about later, it’s exciting work. Please pray for us as we close out our trip, and we miss our kids and the weight of what we’re immersed in is weighing on our team.  Praise God also for the couple from the team who will be returning to Cambodia full-time in the near future.  It’s neat to watch how the group is a part of helping them plan and catch a vision with the Cambodian people. Thanks.

The Killing Fields Of Choeung Ek

This is going to be a hard one so I’ll put the pictures below so you don’t have to see them if you don’t want to.  Today I (Meade) visited the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek about 15 km outside Phnom Penh.  Amy visited an aftercare center for women who have left the sex trade.  

Choeung Ek is unlike anything fathomable.  There’s no interpretative center like in a holocaust museum.  There’s a “stupa” with thousands upon thousands of skulls classified by age and gender stacked on shelves.  As you walk around mass grave sites there are literally bones and old bits of clothing poking out of the path underneath your feet.  I could have picked one up like a pebble.  There are no tour guides.  Just signs that say how many people were found in this particular site.  There were 17,000 people buried there.  

These people were killed by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1978.  Anyone and everyone could be killed.  He wished to make a completely equal society of peasants so intellectuals, religious leaders anyone was killed.  They killed you if you wore glasses.  

God have mercy.  The people of Cambodia haven’t

Photos of Angkor Wat Temple Complex

This is Ta Phrom

Carvings depicting the “leper king.”

Monks

More roots at Ta Phrom.  This is where Tomb Raider and House of Flying Daggers was located. 

Notice the face carving hidden between the roots one foot to Amy’s left.  

Ankgor Wat, the biggest temple in the world.  

Another temple in the complex.  I can’t remember the name and you couldn’t pronounce it if I could. 

Whiplash

It’s been difficult to post lately because the internet is very slow and unreliable.  The past two days were dizzying with many contradictions and strange events. 

• Our hotel room was infested with fleas so we had to get a new one. 
• The new room had exposed electrical wires in the shower.  I’m talking bare metal that runs the AC on the other side of the wall. 
• We experienced some of the most spectacular temples in the world.  I’ll put up a separate picture post next Lord (and internet) willing. 
• You can’t wander even a few feet into the Jungle anywhere because there are land mines everywhere. 
• We saw 10 people piled high on a took took (motorcycle with cart).  
• We saw a dead body lying in the street.  A man had been hit by a passing car.  There were no ambulances or official people of any kind.  Just a pair of feet coming out from under a bloody white sheet.  
• It was Amy an I’s 7th anniversary. 
• We went out to an excellent Northern African Restaurant for our anniversary dinner. 
• While at dinner we saw a man in his late 50’s bring in a 20 year old prostitute.  
• The man was wearing a wedding band. 
• We learned that the way Cambodians make money on the side is to set up plastic tarps in such a way that bugs get caught in them and drown.  They sell the bugs to vendors who then sell them as snacks on the street.  

We’re not sure how to interpret all we see.  It’s overwhelming. 

Ankgor Wat with Food Poisoning :(

This is just a quick one, Meade will post more later. I have had a rough couple of days, I got very ill from food poisoning, and had to call a missionary doc, but I am now okay.  God was very gracious, and I was well enough to still go to Angkor Wat yesterday, which was the highlight for me so far. It is the 4th wonder of the world, and rightly deserves the title!! It was incredible!!     

Before we went into the temple complex, our guide took us into an active Hindu/buddhist temple.  We were allowed and encouraged to take video and pictures inside, so we will post that later on.  It was an experience to say the least, and crushed me spiritually to kneel next to women praying and bowing to an idol of gold.  I was so sobered and had difficulty with it.  We met a lot of interesting people yesterday, and several who had lost a lot of family to the Khmer Rouge.       

Angkor Wat is outrageously amazing, and we had a fantastic tour guide.  It was cool to visit at this time, b/c in all likelihood with the 2 million visitors a year, each year that passes, will greater restrict your freedom in the temple complex.  We also got to visit the temple where Tomb Raider (Angelina Jolie) was filmed, it was outrageously cool. A shout out to my friend Kelly…. I got you a rock from that site for your collection (it’s not a piece of history or anything don’t worry.

International Church & Begging in Cambodia

 

 Monks crossing in front of a Pagoda          

 

Today we had the privilege of worshipping with the Anglican church in Phnom Penh, that has a service in the local language, and a later one in English.  We attended the English service and it was so amazing, I always deeply enjoy worshiping with a diversity of people, it is a picture of what the church should and can be.  The church is made up of people from all over the world who have been called by God to serve in Cambodia as Bible translators, lawyers fighting child sex trafficking, church planters, english teachers,  orphanage workers, and many, many more.  Then, with our group, there was added a richness and diversity that you see in Meade’s Seminary class, with people from tons of different backgrounds and ethnicities.  It was very encouraging, and gives you hope for the church in Cambodia.  Seeing God move in another context that I a not used to deepens my faith in the goodness of God.  It is especially encouraging to see missionaries sent from other countries working with American missionaries and nationals. Sometimes as Americans, we grow so narrow in our focus and react almost as though we are the only senders.

          Phnom Penh kind of smacks you in the face with poverty, and it is not just equally distributed amongst everyone, it is an extreme contrast.  There is vast wealth literally sharing walls with extreme poverty (1/3 of Cambodians live on less than $1 per day).  Being accosted by beggars in the marketplace and along the Mekong river is uncomfortable, and some people can be very aggressive. If someone in the group even hands out a piece of gum, we are immediately swallowed by beggars.  A woman was holding her baby directly against the glass of the van where I was sitting in AC asking me for money and pointing at her child.  There is more to that than you see at first glance, and the  nationals and missionaries have guided us in whom to give to and explained a bit of why giving is sometimes a good idea and sometimes a bad idea.  Many of the kids who are begging for money do not get a benefit from it, they are “working” to give the money to an adult who has control of them in some way.  Sometimes it’s a family member, sometimes not.

 A family living on the Mekong River

     Food seems to be the recommendation as to what to give, with the exception of the disabled, so Meade & I walked to a supermarket today to buy things we could hand out.  Here is the irony though…. the supermarket was about 100 times nicer than any in my neighborhood.  If I saw a store like that near my home I would not even enter b/c I would assume that I could not afford the food.  Yet, here I was, purchasing food for beggars, and right next store was a family living in their small shop, and sleeping on a mattress behind the counter.  It’s hard b/c you just don’t know how to react, it’s all very strange.

     There is so much more, that is just a mini snap shot of what comes to mind this late at night (it’s 9:30 for me, and I am fighting jet lag), I am sure it will take long after the trip to process it. We head to Angkor Wat tomorrow for 3 days/ 2 nights, and I am incredibly excited, it’s one of the seven wonders of the world, and National Geographic ranks it as number 2 only behind Macchu Picchu, in their list of places to see before you die. It will be neat.  We may or may not have internet there, so you may not hear from us for a couple of days. 

 

Chasing Daylight to Cambodia

Today I had an experience I’ve never had before, I saw the same sunrise two times.  In our flight to Cambodia we left New York at midnight to fly to Anchorage Alaska.  There we saw the sunrise for the first time.  Shortly after we took off to fly to Taipei in Taiwan.  Over the pacific we caught back up to the night and then experienced the same day’s sunrise laer on that morning as we flew south west to Taipei.  

 

A few other (semi) interesting things:

1.  I saw a series of Hello Kitty Airplanes in Taipei.  2. The restroom in Anchorage was filled with lots and lots of people brushing their teeth.  3.  At the time I’m writing this we have now been traveling for 31 hours straight since leaving the kids in Scranton. 4. China Airlines has very spooky videos of people stretching that they run before you land.  They look like they’ve been brainwashed but that they’re pretty happy about it.  5.  We’re now on the 6th movie of the trip. 6. Amy’s already read two and a half books, I’ve read one and a half.  7. breakfast on china airlines consisted of something called “pork kunckles,” with some hardboiled/pickled egg and a roll with butter. (picture of that to come)

  Our first day in Cambodia was a bit of shocker, but amazing. Everything is so colorful and you can see the strong Buddhist influence in the architecture everywhere.  We went from downtown NYC, to Alaska, to Taipei (very nice & clean), to people begging for food in Phnom Penh, just a day and a half from leaving the comfort of home.  The capital is full of interesting people, pagoda’s (temples), and is a city beginning to become more globalized.  Tomorrow we go to worship with an international church, and today we took a tour of the Mekong river by boat.  We will post more later and upload some pictures once we find a USB cord!

Heading to Cambodia

Tomorrow, Meade & I are flying to Cambodia as the final leg of his MDIV degree from Biblical Theological Seminary. The MDIV program he completed was done in a cohort format, where you are with the same group of people for three years for all of your classes & two retreats. At the end, you are required to go on a trip with your cohort overseas, (spouses are encouraged to go) and our group was scheduled for Cambodia.

Our kids are staying with my family in Scranton, as we head from JFK to Alaska, to Taipei, to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. As we are traveling we will be posting periodically on what we are experiencing in Southeast Asia. As a preface to our trip, we wanted to share a bit about the history & climate of this place. Although it was the site of one of the worst genocides in modern history, we as westerner’s are frighteningly unaware of it. I have to admit, despite graduating from a great High School, the first time I learned of what happened in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, I was in Human and Cultural Diversity class at Philadelphia Biblical University.

We were having a class discussion regarding which Biblical principle prevails with illegal immigration: “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and God what is God’s,” or “any man who does not care for his family has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (paraphrase). Predictably, most of the students in the class were ardently arguing that no matter how horrid the situation in your home country, you need to follow the law. The professor let the discussion escalate, when suddenly a Cambodian girl sitting near me, began to exclaim loudly how most of her family was dead, slaughtered during the genocide, and her parents escaped to the US with her as a young child. As you can imagine, that changed the tone considerably. Following that class, I began to read about their painful past, and was shocked that I had heard nothing about it until that time.

Here is an excerpt from a book of required reading for the trip:

“Cambodia was once known as “The Land of Paradise.” Most of the Khmer people led a peaceful, harmonious existence cultivating rice in the countryside. In the past five decades, Cambodia has been turned upside down. In 1941 Prince Norodom Sihanouk became king, and managed to bring the country to full independence by 1953. One year after that he relinquished his throne to his father, and entered the political arena. During that time, he tried to keep Cambodia out of the war being fought in neighboring countries. He seemed reasonably successful in dealing with the external political pressure, but he failed to manage the internal political factor. Internally he was opposed by both the leftist Khmer Rouge (or Khmer Communist) led by Pol Pot, and by the rightists (his own govt.)

In early 1970 the king was overthrown and the monarchy abolished. B/w 1970 & 1975 civil war raged throughout Cambodia. The country was engulfed by the Khmer Rouge soldiers, and the govt. grew totally corrupt. Many who hated corruption were psychologically coerced into joining the Khmer Rouge to fight the govt. of the republic. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured the whole country.

Soon after the Khmer Rouge took over, they turned Cambodia into the “Land of Killing Fields.” People were evacuated from the cities to work in the countryside. Life under the Khmer Rouge’s merciless regime became meaningless and worthless. During the reign of the Khmer Rouge, it is estimated that two million Cambodian people were killed.”

Essentially what happened was that Pol Pot’s regime was that they forced all people of power or position & education into labor camps or executed them outright. The scary part is that as you learn more you wonder how they were able to wipe out an entire class of people, but what happened was that following the take over, they summoned all people of position to government buildings. The tag line was that the new regime wanted to negotiate peace & reassign govt. positions, so folks came unarmed in good faith, and were then captured.

So now, the country is rebuilding itself and is turning the corner, but is plagued by lingering effects of the genocide, human trafficking, and poverty. Although that is dark, I am super excited to see Cambodia. We will be visiting Angkor Wat,

the National Palace, and a number of other sites. I have heard nothing but great things about the people and the house churches we are visiting, so we are really excited.