SOME OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS BLOG MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ALL, THIS IS DIFFICULT STUFF TO REPORT. YET CRITICAL THAT WORD GETS OUT.

Despair and Hope.

I sit in my airline seat and for the first time the emotion starts to overflow. Im listening (over and over again) to one of the songs that Scott and the band introduced on Easter … “Fallen from a Perfect Place (Finer Day)” by Kelly Minter. Im reflecting on my two days in Phnom Phen and all I have witnessed. Typically I experience hard things with calm and a measure of stoicism. But my eyes well and tears escape from under sunglasses, my chest tightens and my hand trembles almost uncontrollably as I try to sip my coffee … Im grateful to have a seat of my own because I feel like Im coming apart.

Fallen from an perfect place
Now The world in need of grace
Sin was crowned and death was born
Open fields now bitter thorns

Reaching out with blistered hands
Creation cried for God made man …

Phnom Phen is a world away from Bangkok. A developing city in the developing world. Many of the streets are only recently paved There are few if any traffic signs or rules of the road and it seems that all of the 1.5 million that live there are all attempting to navigate these streets at once. Cars, Tuk Tuks and a sea of motorbikes … sometimes a family of four including infants riding one moped. Its disconcerting at first and then you get used to it … until you actually have to cross a street.

More than a million ethnic Vietnamese live in Cambodia. Two generations … the first coming searching for a better life after the North Vietnamese pushed out the Khmer Rouge … only to become trapped by another corrupt regime made up of many former Khmer Rouge. Following the politics is tough (forgive me if I miss a little here) but the American imprint is unmistakeable. In the early 1970s American forces bombed Cambodia in hopes of wiping out North Vietnamese forces hiding there, which we did to an extent, along with a whole lot of Cambodian civilians. Fearing Communism would spread from Vietnam to Cambodia we then supported a dictator king … who as it turned out only to be a puppet of perhaps the most horrific Maoist/Communists of all time … the Khmer Rouge. Make no mistake, America has been a part of the problem here and that weighed heavily on me as I walked the Vietnamese slums and toured the Teol Sleng Genocide Museum.

For on the cross he bore my shame
My sin then led him to the grave…

The ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia are an unwanted people. The second generation born in Cambodia not considered Vietnamese by Vietnam and not considered even second class citizens by Cambodia. They live in any number of slums and refugee communities that surround the Phnom Phen. Because of their illegal status and some of their own cultural practices, it is these people who are at the highest risk of child trafficking and exploitation. We are here to meet three Love 146 “Prevention” partners in the communities most effected by trafficking and exploitation along with a group that networks forty different Christian agencies working on the ground here.

I know that Phil has been putting a warning on this blog. But one more time … here is your last chance to opt out … what you are about to read is rough.

The first slum we visited is ground zero for trafficking in Cambodia. Partners on the ground estimate that 80-90% of the families who live in this place have at one time sold their female children. The most typical version of this is called “virginity selling”. Apparently there is a Chinese notion of longevity that comes from taking a child’s virginity and this notion has spread outside of China into greater Asia. Add to this western pedophiles, a booming market in underground child pornography and people living in terrible poverty and you have conditions in which a parent will sell their daughters for a few days. This typically happens with girls 12-14 years of age who can be purchased for as little at $40. As if this isn’t enough to make you physically ill, girls as young as five can sell for as much as $4000. The girls, who are typically returned to their families, acted out of a desire to honor their parents … remember honor is important here … The irony being that their honor is now lost forever … the odds of marrying and starting their own family gone … These girls will likely continue to be abused and or end up in a club not unlike the ones we visited in Bangkok … if they don’t OD or die from HIV.

We are visiting what was the most notorious slum’s, most notorious brothel. Downstairs an open room in front of a long hall that at one time was lined on either side by 6-8 small rooms (roughly 8×8) Each room equipped with a wooden bed and nightstand. A single set of stairs led to another two upstairs rooms, formerly painted pink, where a large volume of Child pornography was filmed. Im blessed to speak in the past tense about these things because just about a year ago IJM (International Justice Mission) and local authorities raided and closed down the brothel. Through the work of the Love 146 partner network on the ground and Christian based mission organization took over the building and have converted it into a community center designed to prevent the exploitation of these children. The little rooms that lined the first floor were torn down with the exception of one in the back that serves as a reminder of what this place once was. In that room the bed and night table are still there and a child’s pen drawing of a young girl is still etched on the wall. The upstairs room where filming happened has been painted bright yellow and sunlight pours in from an open balcony. This room is under construction; being converted into an apartment for a Vietnamese Pastor and his family (only after CSI type units from a number of countries came to take pictures of the room for use in legal cases against the purveyors of child pornography).

We are met by a 27 year old American man who is one of two American staff on the mission team here. He gives us a tour of the building and tells us the story. He has lived with this community for two years and recently signed on for another. It is impossibly hot and a dozen children surround us and circle us on their bikes as he walks us around the slum. He proudly introduces us to the Vietnamese Pastor and other church leaders, whom he describes as heroes in their presence. The goal of all of the organizations we met with is to raise up local leaders. The change that is happening will have to come from within the community itself and everyone understands that. He shows us a weight room they have built a few doors down from the former brothel now Community Center. The purpose, to reach the young men, drug dealers, pimps and gang members. He and I spend some time talking in the street and he points to a ten year old boy sitting on a bike and describes him as one of his “trouble makers”. Naively I guess that means hyper active … or a bully. This ten year old boy is a meth dealer and a pimp of other children. Im stunned and in a pattern that seems to repeat itself for me here, I have to ask for clarification several times.

Change is coming to this area, but the work is very hard and happens slowly. Our support of Love 146 means that these agencies get money, training resources and are able to operate together as a network and thus amplify what they can do as individual agencies. There are more than Christian based agencies working on the ground here but it is clear that the Christian based groups are widely considered the most effective and the most excellent in the field. The young American we met was adamant about the fact that the role of Christ is critical in this process. I typically advocate for the church partnering with secular agencies. But as I look around here there is no way for me to process this problem and its solutions without the Gospel. There is no way to comprehend the evil here, but for the total depravity of man. There is no hope here but for the Love of Christ.

Please continue your support of the work being done. Force yourself to look at this. Tell your friends. Give your money. Pray. Pray for the children here. Pray for heroes; men and women both Vietnamese and western who left lives of comfort and security to come here and stand in the gap. The young American man we met spent the first year here walking to work every day with an open knife tucked in his pocket … just in case. The women who coordinates the network of forty agencies working on the ground here occasionally experiences health problems that after much testing was found to be post traumatic stress disorder … the kind combat veterans get. Otherwise a fit joyful woman in her late forties with a family of four, she occasionally loses the use of her arms, legs and mouth, becoming physically paralyzed when things start to feel overwhelming. And as I write this from the comfort of an air conditioned jet plane, and you read this from your own place of comfort, they will be in Phnom Penh with many others turning the tide.

Still creation waits for you
Crying for all things new
When every tear is wiped away
and Jesus shall forever reign