July 2010
3 posts
Just the Beginning
Last week. I can’t believe I have less than five full days left here. I keep telling God, “Hang on! Rewind! You still have so much more to teach me. I still have so much more growing and learning to do.” I don’t feel ready to go back. This place is my home…I feel like God has buried a piece of my heart here and a part of me will always stay in Cambodia. But I just...
Takeo
This past Sunday, I had the opportunity to visit a province about two hours outside of Phnom Penh called Takeo. It was my first time being in a village in Cambodia, as I’ve spent all my time here in the cities, and it was amazing. It was actually one of the housemoms who works at the shelter who asked me to go with her to visit her family, and I was so honored that she wanted me to go to her...
Jesus Freak
Wow, time is flying by…I can’t believe it’s already been a week since my last blog and that I have less than three weeks left here! The past week was pretty normal…I did my usual teaching and I still love it. This week I’ve been teaching the housemoms about music, showing them the different instruments. I realized that it was their first time seeing an orchestra (on...
June 2010
10 posts
Stung Meanchey
Yesterday, I went with two of my coworkers to Stung Meanchey. This is where most of the kids at the shelter call home. I was in shock as we drove through the dirt roads with potholes big enough to bury a small animal and arrived at the city garbage heap, with trash piled over thirty feet high and going on for over a mile, as far as the eye could see. It was huge and the smell was overwhelming. The...
Family of Hope
Yesterday, I went with my friend Annie to Family of Hope, the organization she works at. It’s Christian, and it was interesting to see the differences that come with a faith-based organization. We made salvation bracelets with the kids and they showed me their rendition of the Lifehouse “Everything” skit. If you haven’t seen this, look it up on youtube…I cry every...
New Beginnings
Praise God, I found a new home! I’m actually living with one of my co-workers, the one who invited me to attend her church with her. She’s living in a house with seven other people, all of whom are Christians. Right now we’re sharing a room. It’s only for a short amount of time, and I’m excited to see where God takes me from here. I feel like I’m facing a lot of...
Church!
Hey Everyone! It’s hard to believe that Week One is over of this part of my trip. Only five weeks left! I know that now I’m getting settled, it’s going to fly by. Yesterday I got to go to church! I hadn’t been to church in a while, since I’ve been on the move for the past month and a half. I was so happy to be in a church, I started crying during worship. The sermon...
Settling In
Five days here and I feel like I’ve already been hear a month. I’ve settled right into everything and I absolutely love it. I’m living in a guest house for five dollars a night, a twenty minute bike ride from the shelter. Doing anything on the roads here is super risky…you’re constantly watching out for cars, motos, bikes, pedestrians, people selling stuff from their...
Trust Walk
Today, the rest of the group went home. It’s hard t believe that I’m alone in Phnom Penh. I ran into a lot of trouble with the airline company and didn’t think things would work out for me to stay. I actually didn’t figure things out until about half an hour before the group was about to leave. This whole day has been a trust walk for me. I’ve been feeling more scared...
Been a while...
So, I realize that it’s been about five days since I last posted and I’m really sorry for that. We’ve been doing so much, I’ve had so little time to blog and so much to process and work through. So I have a lot of updating to do.
On Saturday we went to Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields. Tuol Sleng, also known as S-21, was an old high school that was converted to a prison...
My Future Home
Today we went to visit what used to be the city’s dump. Until a year ago, men, women, and children would work there picking garbage to try to find recyclable material to sell. They would earn less than a dollar a day to feed their families. They would work without proper protective materials, often walking barefoot through waste that contained syringes, broken glass, body parts, or dead...
Theary
Yesterday was spent in a bus. We drove for about eight hours from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. We took a short break for lunch in a town where deep fried tarantulas are the finest cuisine. I wasn’t brave enough to try those. Maybe another time. Today we went to visit AFESIP, or Agir Pour Les Femmes En Situation Precare, an organization started by Somaly Mam. This woman is incredible. She lived...
Two days have come and gone by in Siem Reap. Yesterday was spent visiting three of the hundreds of temples here. These places are eight hundred to a thousand years old, built during the Angkor empire, which lasted from the ninth century to the fifteenth century. Absolutely incredible. Today was spent going to the landmine museum. The man who started it, Aki Ra, was a child soldier in the Khmer...
May 2010
13 posts
Final Days in Thailand
Friday, the second to last day in Thailand, was spent revisiting the VCDF orphanage. As soon as the vans pulled up to the orphanage, the children came streaming out to greet us. The kids that rode in the truck with me the night before came and found me right away. We all went to play basketball together before the huge group met to play some Thai children’s games. Then we all stood in a...
The Kingdom of God belongs to such as these...
Today, we visited VCDF, or the Volunteer for Children’s Development Foundation, in Chiang Saen. We learned from Krunam and J.K. about the issue of street kids in northern Thailand along the border to Burma and Laos. These kids are born from the hilltribe descent and so none of the countries claims them, leaving them without birth certificates, social security, or any medicare. A lot of...
Dream
This is Dream. She is thirteen, loves to run and play sports, and absolutely dominates in tickle wars. Two of the girls in the group and I had the opportunity to live with her and her family for a couple of days and in that time she showed me the beauty of the Thai culture and of her own sweet and innocent spirit. She took us around her village and introduced us to her neighbors and family. She...
Transition
Saturday was spent as another day of much needed rest and relaxation. A group of us went to look around at the giant mall in Pattaya. While we were there we got garra rufa massages. That’s when little fishes eat the dead skin off of your feet. It was so funny, we were laughing really hard because it tickled a lot and people kept stopping to look at this group of screaming, giggling American...
Open Eyes
So much has happened since I last posted. I’m sorry that it’s been awhile…we’ve been keeping very busy and internet is always questionable. On Wednesday, we went to visit the Tamar Bakery and Restaurant. We met some of the ex-bar girls who left their lives as prostitutes to work with Tamar. All have given their lives to Christ and their stories of faith are absolutely...
Despair and Hope
Our first day in Pattaya was spent meeting with Jessica, who works with Bridges to the Nations and the Tamar Center. Her work here is inspiring. They do outreach in Pattaya, teach English, have events, set up safehouses where the women can be trained in alternative professions, and have worship outreach. Fifty years ago, Pattaya was a fishing town. Because of a nearby naval base during the war,...
Firsts
Today we arrived in Pattaya, Thailand. Praise God for a really smooth flight, for a safe journey, and for a really nice hotel room. Oh, and for air conditioning. Praise Him big time for that. Pattaya is a beach town that is known especially for sex tourism. We had all been knowing what to expect and preparing ourselves for it, but it was still a disgusting shock to see so many older white men with...
On our way!
Tonight, we’re leaving for Thailand. The plane takes off at 1:40am and we’ll arrive in Bangkok at 11am, Thailand time. Please be praying for a safe journey. There are a lot of people in our group that have quite a few health problems, and the trip will be really uncomfortable, even painful for some of them. I can’t believe this is actually happening. God’s plans are so...
Walk by Faith
Over the past couple of days, there have been a lot of changes to our trip. There has been a lot of political unrest in Bangkok lately, and Westmont College decided that that part of our trip would be too much of a risk, so we will be skipping Bangkok and going to Pattaya instead. Although we’ll be missing the Red Light Districts in Bangkok, we will encountering much of the same thing in...
God of Hope
Today we met David Batstone, the author of Not for Sale. He was such an inspiring man, making us fully aware of the immensity of the issue of human trafficking, while giving us a reason to hope and conviction to fight. So much of the ways of fighting this is through economics. We can boycott the companies that use slave labor in order to force them to change. You can check whether or not the...
Diving In
We are getting intense. Today we watched the documentary “Bangkok Girl” about a nineteen-year-old Thai girl named Pla. It was such a heart-breaking story, seeing her smile, hearing her stories, witnessing her journey as she went from a painful childhood to working as a bartender to finally falling into the trap of a life as a prostitute. By the end of the movie, she had died, probably...
And we begin...
Arrived in San Francisco today! I was up till 1am packing and got up at 5:30 to catch my 7:55 flight. I was the first one to arrive at the house about 3 hours ahead of schedule, so I decided to go to a coffee shop near the house to read. Little did I think of the other plans God had for me. I took a wrong turn and ended up walking past Mt. Hermon Baptist Church, an African-American church with the...