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.
