back from Cambodia

In the past, I felt that going on a mission trip makes one "holier" or "more close to God"; I was wrong then, and I still don't think it's true now. I hope my note does not make anyone feel that way! This trip put a human face on the stories I've read about the sex trade, and that was the most moving part of my experience.

The team that went to Cambodia was larger than expected (34 ppl!) so the team was split into two after the first three days: one team stayed in Phnom Penh (PP) for the whole week, and the other team went to Siem Reap (SR) for three days before rejoining us. I was with the PP team. The SR team partnered with one local organization, White Doves, while the PP team were introduced to many different organizations. The two experiences were quite different because the SR team managed to engage more deeply with one community while the PP team saw different kinds of work that are being done to combat the sex trade.

The breadth of sexual exploitation is horrific in Cambodia. We heard stories from workers inInt'l Justice Mission and Agape Int'l Missions about how they investigate and trail paedophiles who fly to Cambodia specifically to find children who are often prostituted by their fathers, mothers, or grandmothers.

We learned that some of the kids who go to Agape church's kid's club are also trafficked, and seeing the faces of these kids in the church was emotionally difficult. The church cannot stop it unless they abduct the kids and forcibly keep them apart from their families, so they focus on investigating paedophiles (usually foreigners) who come to their community and setting up social enterprises to provide well-paying work and discipleship. 

IJM and World Relief do prevention work like trying to change the country's laws and educating villagers about how traffickers lure their victims. We spent a whole day going about with different World Relief workers in the slum villages where children and their families live in and about garbage. I was very moved by one of our meetings with a cell church there because the women we met with had so little, but they wanted so much to bless us.  

Daughters of Cambodia, Sak Saum, and Precious Women provide care and restoration to survivors of the sex trade, and this includes intensive counseling as well as providing well-paying work in the social enterprises they have set up themselves. DC and Sak Saum were a hit with our team, and are definitely worth checking out online. The girls in our team could not stop shopping at their stores!

I loved touring their workshops and seeing some of the men and women survivors who work there help me remember that these are not just theoretical ideas. There are many, very real, human beings who have been deeply hurt and broken.

Agape Int'l Mission also has a workshop in Svay Pak (the village where they are situated) to provide work for survivors, and they would love it if you could order your church t-shirts from them! I've seen some of their bracelets and t-shirts, and they do very good work. In all these organizations, the survivors are paid a very good wage for Cambodia, so you can have peace of mind that these are fair-trade products.

This note is already too long, and I haven't even talked about Jumpah and Jehovah Jireh which are centers that focus on orphans and slum kids. This is where we "helped" the most and I could go on and on about the kids.....

During our trip, we heard not only success stories--and our God is a GREAT GOD who does mighty work!!--but also about how these ministries often fail. It is difficult for adults to leave the sex trade if they have been trafficked as children because they feel they are dirty, useless, and unwanted. The people who work in these ministries know that they can do the work they do only because of God's strength and we felt the Holy Spirit move with them while we were there.

Would I go on another mission trip? I don't know what the future holds. But I would certainly like to be with a smaller team and I will not feel guilty about taking care of myself when the schedule is designed for extroverts!

My home remedies are helping with the cold I started coming down with on the last day of the trip, but I do still have a bit of a nagging cough.