The Lost Children of Cambodia

On Day 6 of our journey through Cambodia, my whole concept of ‘lost children’ completely changed. Prior to the trip, I envisioned children in need of food, shelter, medical care and education. We have witnessed all of that, but more.
We met children who have no family yet were blessed enough to be found by someone from Cambodian Hope Organization. The CHO-sponsored children are either in school or are being taught valuable vocational skills. They are given shelter, food and medical attention as well as being taught about Jesus Christ. The CHO staff is comprised of a group of men and women who are living examples of Jesus Christ. They work tirelessly to do what they can to show compassion, mercy and kindness to the children. I am inspired by their passion and encouraged by their work.

Numerous more children are literally lost. We have seen them walking down the road. They are alone, shoeless and dirty from the heavy dust that blankets the city of Poipet. Some look as young as 3. They appear to know where they are going. Perhaps their parents have sent them out to collect trash to sell for the family, preventing them from attending school. Some have been sold to brothel owners and stand in the doorway of the brothel, waiting to be violated by the next customer. Even more are kept in a back room of a brothel, waiting to be ‘selected.’ They may be locked up as if in a prison cell. Others get sent across the border into Thailand, to find work. Often they get arrested, are sent ‘home’ and the family sends them back to Thailand. The cycle continues and is horrific. I don’t know what part is worse, being sent away or coming back to a family that does not love you or care about you enough to treat you as a human being. We have learned that many young girls either try to or feel like taking their own lives. It is heartbreaking. They are in desperate need of hope, which is what CHO is all about.

America's Most Wanted

Watch the Saturday, November 13th episode of America's Most Wanted which was devoted to child sex trafficking and filmed in Cambodia.

What If?

What if God had decided that you would be born into a family living in Northeast Thailand? What if you were female, always a step below your brothers - - sometimes a huge step. What if your family existed in the midst of absolute poverty subsisting on minimal income and the food you could scratch out of the parched earth? What if your parents were beginning to age as a result of the rugged village life? It could have been that way. God could have made such a choice for each of us.

Had this been your lot in life, who you are would have been significantly impacted by your culture. Your brother, or brothers, would receive great favor from your parents. He would represent the future for your family, you would not. Most likely, he would spend some time earning merit as a Monk, bringing honor to your parents, and insuring their life beyond - you would not. You, instead, would assume your rightful place to care for your aging parents. You would do this out of great gratitude, inborn in a culture which has significant reverence for parental structure and authority. Brothers care for their parent’s afterlife through the merit they earn. Daughters are cast, or predestined by society, to care for the needs of their parent’s in the current age. One path leads to an extreme pressure and oppression of responsibility – the other – the male, a seemingly total abdication of responsibility for family – here on earth.

Half of the young girls in your village would abandon their village life to travel into the cities of Northern Thailand or even south to Bangkok. A “job broker” might visit your village and convince you and your parents that you would earn a good wage in the city and would be able to send home a sizable percentage. You would dream of the things you could buy, and believe that many of your friends are now living in luxury and pleasure. Your parents might be paid seven thousand baht ($210) as a finders fee, but you are indentured to pay it back to the “broker.”

Soon, you might find yourself doing jobs that many other Thai girls are unwilling to perform, earning only enough for one bowl of noodle soup at the end of the day. You could end up with little to send home. You are crushed in spirit. Eventually, men come by with money – they are willing to purchase your body. Why not - you ask. “I will have money for food and maybe some to send home to mother and father” you say. The cycle of sexual slavery begins – and continues until you have little self worth, not much money, and very possibly HIV/AIDS. You are only 17 years old.

Zero margins

Being a former police officer, I’m very familiar with even the most obscure traffic laws. So, when I come to Cambodia, its such a struggle for me when I ride in vehicles and see the way they drive here. It’s almost like an organized chaos. The traffic laws, if there even are any, seem to be just a suggestion on how to operate a motor vehicle. For example, if you go to pass a motodump (small scooter) and there’s an on-coming car, both the scooter being over-taken and the on-coming car simply ease over slightly onto the shoulder to allow you to pass down the middle of the road. No one gets mad. No one tries to cut you off. There’s no road-rage. It’s just sort of understood that you allow the over-taking vehicle back into its proper lane without any animosity from anyone. Everyone obeys the “you do for me, I’ll do for you” golden rule. You won't see that on your evening commute in Atlanta.

Another sight you won’t see in Atlanta are cows! Yes, cows own the road here! They go wherever they want and, like the local drivers, they seem to have no regard for the traffic laws. In fact, just yesterday we were driving out east of Banteay Meanchey to visit the “soldier camp” – a cluster of huts just outside one of the Cambodian Army bases where the soldiers who work on the base and their families live. As we were driving there from Poipet, we went to pass a scooter on the right carrying a couple of dead pigs on its rear rack. At the same time, another scooter was approaching in the on-coming lane and was attempting to over-take said cow walking on the opposite side of the highway. Even further behind the on-coming scooter, a green Toyota Camry was quickly approaching to over take the on-coming scooter. So, you have our van passing a scooter in the east bound lane and a Toyota Camry passing another scooter while its passing a cow in the westbound lane. As you might’ve guessed, all five “vehicles” arrived at the same point in the road at roughly the same time – and no one braked!! We came so close to the on-coming car and the scooter that, for the life of me, I still don’t know how we didn’t end up in one of the rice patties beside the road! I’m not exaggerating, there couldn’t have been more than an inch or two of space between both cars, both scooters and the cow. Talk about a small margin of error!!

That started me thinking. Not only do Cambodians have very little margin of error in overtaking passing motorists; they also live with very little margin in every other area of their lives. Andy did a series a while back called “Take It To The Limit” in which he talked about margins in your life - don’t buy a bigger house than you need, don’t buy a faster or more luxurious car than you absolutely have to have, don’t run up credit card debit, save for retirement, live within your means, etc. All of these things impact your margin in case of an unexpected financial set back.

Well, here in Cambodia, people are living at their limits every single day...with zero margins. In the U.S. we like to “save up for a rainy day” by opening a savings account. Here, the vast majority of Cambodians don’t even have a bank account. In fact, of the three times I’ve been here, I've never seen one bank. We also buy insurance (flood, fire, home-owner’s, auto, etc.). Here, one flood, one traffic accident, one fire can financially ruin an already desperate family in the blink of an eye. Our farmers have crop insurance in case we have a “bad year;” not so in Cambodia. A bad year here means even less food and more hunger. We have “disposable income” that we spend on movies, sporting events, entertainment, dining out, etc. In Cambodia, the concept of “disposable income” is about as foreign as the language they hear us speaking.

In America, we have food in our refrigerators; most Cambodians don’t have refrigerators much less any food to store in them. They live, not day-to-day, but meal-to-meal – they have absolutely zero margin. All of these things play a role in the human trafficking problem because, at the core, human trafficking is a by-product the poverty – after all, desperate people do desperate things. When you have no food to eat, no roof over your head, no means of supporting yourself, no education, then selling your child to a brothel or into slavery becomes less unconsciousable. Now, of course, I’m not saying that every parent who sells their child into slavery is on the brink of starvation. But I am saying that the mentality of Cambodia as a whole, thanks in large part to the Khmer Rouge regieme, is that “you do what you have to do to survive.” And until the poverty level improves significantlty and people begin to live with margins, we will continue to see desperate people feel they have no other option than to do reprehensible, dispicable, unimagable things like selling their children to survive.

From Darkness to Light

I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. - Acts 26:17-18


On Saturday we arrived in Poipet and met with Chomno, the director of Cambodian Hope Organization (CHO). While I’ve done a lot of research about CHO, I didn’t know much about Chomno and how he founded Cambodian Hope. His testimony is so powerful that it makes you wonder what you’ve been doing with your own life.

Chomno survived the genocide that occurred under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. When he was 14 years old he was forced to work in a labor camp. They had no roofs or walls, not even a pillow to lay their heads on. They slept on the ground and relied on the trees to provide them cover. The people that weren’t persecuted died of sleep deprivation, dehydration or starvation. Many felt that it was better to die than to survive such an awful existence.

Chomno was in the labor camp for nearly three years until a few of his friends at the camp decided to attempt an escape. How they saw it, if they stayed they only had one choice – death. If they tried to escape however, they had two choices – they would either survive or die trying. While some of Chomno’s friends were killed by either land mines or machine guns, Chomno managed to escape safely.

A School Without Walls

On Tuesday, November 8 we visited four different ‘schools on a mat.’ The CHO (Cambodian Hope Organization)-sponsored School on a Mat program is used as a way to educate children in small or remote villages where a traditional school building is either not available or is too far from their homes. Transportation is limited and often walking to a school building is either not feasible or not safe. Without an education, children are often sold and forced into prostitution or other slave labor until they escape, are rescued or are no longer needed- thrown out like trash. We met a little boy this week that was abandoned in a market area. We met another boy who was trafficked and purposely crippled so that he could not walk. The traffickers wanted to use him to beg as a way for the traffickers to make money.

Prior to our trip, the team had a basic idea of what we might expect. I know I had painted a mental picture in my head about what it might be like here in Cambodia. I had no idea just how deep poverty runs in this area. I had no grasp of the environmental conditions- dirt/dust filled air, trash overflowing into the streets, deplorable housing conditions- mainly thatched roof huts or shacks and  dangerous transportation if any transportation at all. We now have a much more vivid perspective of what it may be like to be a child in Cambodia. I know that God has broken my heart so that I may be molded for His purpose.

The outdoor classroom is created on a flat piece of land. A large mat is rolled out on the ground and an easel/whiteboard is used by the teacher. The children sit on the mat while the teacher puts the lessons on a whiteboard. The children are attentive, well disciplined and seem to eagerly enjoy school. When we arrived at each school they were ready to greet us with warm smiles and giggles. They worked hard to pronounce our names in English and they were excited we were there!

As we began speaking with them through our interpreter, we quickly realized how little it took to make them happy. Personally, it was a very humbling experience for me. I am guilty of wanting to buy things for my own children because it brings them joy. The reality is they mainly want us as parents or adult role models to just give them our time and focus. If I were to bring back only one task when returning home, it would be to spend more quality time with my family. I am sure the Lord has many more take-home assignments to help me grow as a Christian!

Connecting to Each Other through the Holy Spirit

Yesterday a group of four women from our team presented a women's seminar to 5 of CHO's female leaders. Our focus was how to grow in a relationship with God. Our seminar focused on intimacy with God, community with insiders, and community with outsiders. It was an intimate setting that allowed us to really connect with each other. It was amazing to see how different their lives are from our own on a day-to-day basis, but also how similar they are overall. All of us had come to have a personal relationship with Jesus later in life, we all have a passion that God had given us that we are trying to direct for God's purpose, we all struggle with how to share the gospel and all struggle to find time to spend with God.

What struck us is that we grew up in "Christian" families on the American side, and they grew up in Buddhist households, and their faith in Christ has now put them at odds with their families. One of the women told us that her parents do not want a relationship with her now that she is a Christian.

So, the women explained to us that they struggle with loving their families who don't understand their faith and being true to Christ at the same time. All of them had stories that their Buddhist friends and family believe that Christians do not honor and love their parents. So the women told us that try to overcome that objection by explaining what God says about honoring your parents in the Bible, and also by living their lives as examples.

They also had heartbreaking and inspiring stories that make our daily struggles pale in comparison. Our interpreter did not have the opporunity for education in her home village and had to work to help support her family. Her richer friends gave her their old textbooks, which she used to study on her own and teach herself. Eventually, she left her family and went to a larger city to pursue her studies, and worked to pay her way at school. She said that some days she would only eat one meal so that she would have enough money to buy school supplies. She "lucked into"working in a Christian household, and that is how she came to know Christ. Since then, she has worked at church planting and now is the supervisor for all the schools on a mat.

One other woman told us she had an abusive husband, and had babies who died. Her husband also died shortly thereafter, and she has lived on her own since she was 25 (now 40). She felt hopeless and that she did not have a reason to live. She came to know Christ in 2003 through CHO, the organization we are working with. She met Jesus there and God has now given her a job and a family through the people she works with. She teaches sewing to women who have been trafficked.

We really felt the Holy Spirit at work in our time with them.

-Stephanie and Ashley

Duck, Duck, Goose

On Monday, we split the team in two: one group gave a business seminar to the staff of Cambodian Hope Organization (CHO) to offer advice on ways to enhance their business practices, while the rest of us drove out into the countryside to visit the students of “school-on-a-mat.” Unbeknownst to us, however, it wasn’t a school-on-a-mat but rather four schools-on-four-mats.

We headed out after breakfast and drove down Hwy. 5 just out of town before turning north onto a dusty, dirt road. After several twists & turns along bumpy dirt roads lined with thatch-roofed houses, a few close calls with oncoming traffic and a building with a sign on the fence that read “Land Border Battalion 911,” we pulled up to a cluster of huts.

Moses, a young CHO staff member about twenty years old, was teaching about a dozen young children spread out on a tarp under a tree. On the fold-out easel behind him was a dry-erase board with characters of the Khmer alphabet. They gave us a very warm welcome and we introduced ourselves. Bonnie had the foresight to bring lots of games, toys, and activities. So, we played with them and in return they sang us a song in Khmer.

In addition to being their teacher, Moses is also a mentor of sorts to them. Every day as they arrive, he asks them questions about what’s going on in their lives at home, whether they need any medical attention and reminds them that Jesus, their Lord and Savior, died for them. Before leaving, we all prayed together and I wondered how many of them hear about Jesus from “school-on-a-mat” only to go back to their parents and participate in worshipping Buddha. But as Ashley said, “at least they know both so that later they can choose for themselves.”

The second school-on-a-mat was quite a bit larger, but just as fun. The kids were sitting on a large blanket under a canopy of trees, just finishing up their lessons for the day. We sang songs with them, played jump-rope, and introduced them to Twister. Looking on from a short distance away were several adults laying in hammocks and a mother nursing a new-born. When the ice-cream guy passed on a bicycle hauling a large, orange ice chest on the back, we couldn’t resist buying everyone an ice-cream cone. For 14.5¢ per cone, how could we resist? After a quick prayer from Bonnie, we departed for town for lunch.

After lunch, we made our way to “school” number three. This time they were learning math because I could recognize a few “+” ,“-” and “=” spread amoungst the Khmer alphabet symbols. The teacher called one boy to the board and I’m assuming he calculated correctly because the kids applauded when he wrote his answer. After their lesson was finished, the teacher introduced us and all at once the kids gave us a loud, warm, “Chumree-uhp Soo-uh!” (Hello!).

Over lunch, we decided to add the game duck, duck, goose to the curriculum which became an instant hit. We played Twister again and batted around inflatable beach balls. Since there was no ice-cream guy at this location, Bonnie passed out Blow-Pops along with Silly Bands, coloring books and other toys.

The fourth and last “school” was probably the hardest, at least for me. As we crossed back over Hwy. 5, Tea, our driver, took us down another bumpy dirt road through the tall elephant grass and into a cluster of make shift houses. Built from scrap wood and bamboo lattice-work covered with tar-paper, these dozen or so “homes” lined a bumpy, trash-littered, stretch of real estate criss-crossed by a network of streams or raw sewage.

The mat at this “school” was covered with about 30 kids who were as adorable as any we’d seen all day. From the tiny Meina whose eyes sparkled when she laughed…to the little boy running around buck naked…to Polan, who, for some reason, always over ran the vacant “spot” when being chased in duck, duck, goose.

As I looked at all the laughing, giggling, smiling faces I realized that these kids were all in roughly the same age bracket and trafficking typical victims. How in the world could anyone could sell one of these precious children like you would a head of cattle or piece of property? And not only that, to sell them knowing they’d be imprisoned in a brothel and beaten daily if they refused to allow themselves to be raped repeatedly night after night by stranger after stranger. But yet, statistically, that’s exactly what’s going to happen to some of these happy, laughing, giggling, smiling little girls if organizations like Chab-Dai, IJM or CHO don't intervene. One financial set-back to a family who already has nothing, could potentially cause them to consider selling their most valuable commodity – their daughter’s virginity.

As we drove back to the hotel late this evening, we passed a sign beside the road as you enter Poipet. It read “Help Protect Our National Treasure…” but it didn’t display a picture of the picturesque countryside nor the beautiful temples of Angkor Wat. Instead, there was a picture of a small, young child with sparkling eyes like Meina’s beneath which read “…OUR CHILDREN!” It was a public service announcement to report child-sex tourism. I can only pray that God will use us and these organizations to step in and save these kids from such a horrible fate.

God – Please Bring Your Grace to Cambodia We Pray -- and let us know what part of that ---- you designed us in advance to do.

We traveled from Siem Reap to the city of our primary focus yesterday afternoon. Poipet is a city of some 150,000 people on the border of Thailand. While most travel web sites say – don’t stop here – Keep going – Do not pass GO, we have again found the people to be very engaging and warm. Our hotel has upgraded since last March – the Internet is now working again (although a bit slow) the elevator now makes it to the 6^th floor (although a bit slow) and they now have a restaurant (although a bit slow) Maybe God is just saying that we Westerners try to hurry too much.

In the evening we had dinner at the Cambodian Hope Organization (CHO) – Restaurant and then met with Chomno In, the CEO of CHO. He told us his story of how he was separated from his family and placed into a Labor Camp by the Khmer Rouge when he was 14 years old. He witnessed many of his peers being shot or step on land mines as they would attempt to escape the camp. He did make a miraculous escape once, and later ended up in a Refugee camp in Thailand. By the time he was 24 he was out of the camp and seeking to work in a hospital – where he was paid $5 per month plus scraps of food left over from patient’s meals. With food in such short supply – you can only imagine what he was left with. The memory of these times obviously marked his heart as he recounted the difficulties. Chomno strikes me as a humble and kind man, full of the Compassion of Christ.

Later we toured the Hope Transformation Center Building. CHO recently purchased this four story building where they will move their offices, develop out an internet café business, bakery, sewing and weaving center, silk screening and pharmacy. These businesses will be both a profit center to fund the CHO ministry – plus a skills training center. One floor of the new facility will provide short term housing for women who have escaped the brothel industry. Funds from last year’s North Point Be Rich Campaign are being used to finish and remodel this women’s floor.

Sunday we participated in the CHO worship service, led by a small music team with a keyboard, small guitar and plenty of hand drums. We sang several songs, mostly Western with Khmer words. Ashley did a great job of telling her testimony of coming to and walking with the Lord, Tim drew the short straw and morphed into a Cambodian “Preacha”

In My Place

The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind to set the oppressed free to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Luke 4:18-19

When reading this verse before, I like many people, tended to spirtitualize it. I looked at it as uplifting the poor in spirit, helping those imprisoned to sin and being a light for those that have lost their way. While this is still true, being in Cambodia has helped show me how tangible this verse really can be.

There are a lot of atrocious things going on in our world today, but so often we don't step out of our comfort zone to take notice. Even if we do, we have yet to understand the depth and breadth of the darkness that surrounds us. Being in Siem Reap there are so many socioeconomic issues that human trafficking can almost fade into the background. Sure I've seen children begging, and several women walking the streets, but with so many brothels parading behind cafés, beer gardens and karaoke bars, its easy to overlook the scale of the issue here.

During our meeting with International Justice Mission (IJM) yesterday, we learned a lot more about the state of human trafficking in Siem Reap. There are so many things contributing to the commercial sex industry here that it can be frustrating as a volunteer or mission worker. Even Bonnie, one of the Social Work Advisors for IJM talked about this sense of "empowered helplessness," and she spoke of it as a good thing. She said when she first got here she thought she was going to make sweeping changes and see an immediate impact, but she quickly learned that wasn't the case. Considering I am only going to be in Cambodia for a number of days, I found this statement to be somewhat disheartening at first. But then she said it was "a blessing from God to remember your place," and I was just dumbfounded at the truth of her statement.

We all have hopes of making an impact and leaving an indelible (and hopefully positive) impression on the world. But sometimes we all need to be humbled and realize that it is not by our own strength. While we may not always understand the purpose or even see the fruits of our efforts, we must take heed and proceed faithfully, as God certainly does have a plan.