Redemption and the Sex Trade

One of the most heartbreaking things I learned about while in Asia is the sale of young women into the sex trade. Among one of the minority groups in Cambodia, for example, families sell their daughters to those who run this loathsome business. A fourteen year old girl brings $1000. For a poverty stricken family, this is a huge sum of money. The minimum wage for factory workers is $50 per month, so this represents nearly two years' wages.

How can parents do this? My friend, Susan Lucasse, who lives in that part of the world, helped me to figure this out. She explained that parents there have children with the expectation that the children will take care of their parents. The money received from the sale of a daughter is one way of supporting the parents.

Doesn't anyone care about the welfare of the girl involved? Yes. Several Christian ministries do. Phany, who ministers to children at risk, for example, is concerned enough to train pastors to help these young women. In one town that is a tourist center, they counted over 100 brothels and more than 70 of these use underage girls. How can they help these young girls?

Recently two pastors attended a conference in Phnom Penh. One evening they noticed that young men on motorbikes brought girls into a certain hotel near where they were staying and evidently collected them a while later. Curious, they went into the hotel and asked about it. The clerk at the desk asked if they would like to rent a room for an hour and they said, "Yes." What a huge risk for a pastor to take! Some time later they brought in a young girl and they explained that they did not want to have sex with her, that they were pastors and wondered how they could help her. As she wept out her story, one of them recorded it on his cell phone. The girl had been sold three months earlier and was now in intense pain, but her bosses wouldn't let her stop serving customers. They promised to try to help her and went about finding out where they could take her to a safe house and how to get her the help she needed.

The next night they went back and asked if they could have the same girl. "She's with another customer." They said that they would wait for her, but to no avail. Evidently the bosses don't let these girls form relationships either with customers or even with one another. They tend to move the girls around so that they don't go back to the same places.

So the pastors agreed to have two other girls. When the two girls arrived they explained once again that they didn't want to have sex with them, but that they are pastors and wanted to help them in any way possible. The pastors asked about the girl from the previous night and the girls thought that they knew who she is but had no idea where she might be. Would these girls like to get out of the trade? Absolutely. So the pastors, who by now had made all the necessary arrangements, took them out through the hotel lobby, explaining that they were taking these girls out to dinner, took them into a taxi and off to a safe house.

There are groups that help these girls in practical ways. For one thing they are taught to read. Often girls who have been sold into the sex trade have no more than a second grade education. And they are taught a new trade so that they can earn a living. Near where I stayed in Phnom Penh there is a restaurant, begun by an English woman to give some of these young women employment, but which has now been turned over to eight of them, who run it and are making quite a success of their business. Nearby there is a "pamering room" where some of these women give manicures, facials, neck and shoulder massages and are adding to their reperatoire of skills as they seek to earn their living in different ways.

Above all, these women have experienced a spiritual transformation as they have come to trust Christ as their Savior, and know that their past is forgiven and wiped clean. They are truly new people, transformed women, daughters of the King.

"This is my Father's world, Oh let me ne'er forget

That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet."

Visit to a Silk Making Village

While in Haoi visiting Susan Lucasse, we visited a village outside of town where all of the residents were involved in some way in the production or sale of silk. Evidently they have been involved in this trade for generations and work in the time honored ways of their craft.

Silk Village

Snapshots of Seoul

You've surely shopped at Sam's Club. What you probably didn't know is that Sam has a Korean cousin who also has a mega mart called Kim's Club.

That place with the golden arches, whose Korean name I can't even read, delivers here. However, I can read the name on the bright yellow box on the back of the red motorbike that does the deliveries: McDelivery.

And Korean chopsticks are flat and made of metal. It takes re-learning how use chopsticks, and I'm afraid I'm quite awkward with these.

Yesterday when I was out seeing the sights I realized something that I hadn't seen before: Seoul is in a valley surrounded by mountains. However, there are so many tall buildings that it's hard to see beyond them! It's all a matter of getting a different perspective.

Palm Sunday in Seoul

With all my travelling, I had quite forgotten that today is Palm Sunday. Having arrived in Seoul yesterday I really wanted to worship with Korean Christians today, Sunday. So Danya and I jumped into a taxi and although Danya had told the driver to take us to a nearby landmark, she asked if he knew where the Chung Yeon Presbyterian Church is located, and he said he would take us there. Evidently this church is well known. It is, in fact, a Korean mega church with 50,000 members. They have 5 services each Sunday , so although I would have estimated the number of people in the service differently, evidently there were 10,000 people in the service we attended.

We were met at the front door by the greeters, who spotted us right away as foreigners, and made sure that we were escorted upstairs to the balcony section for foreigners, where we were issued headsets and could choose from 6 different languages for simultaneous translation. We were also given a bilingual bulletin, which had the order of service listed in both Korean and English. Even the hymns were translated for us, complete with music.

It was indeed a glorious service. There were two children's choirs and at least 300 people in the adult choir. In addition there was a 20 piece orchestra and 4 maual organ. Singing with a large congregation is a glorious experience. The congregational singing included some selections usually reserved for soloists or concerts: The Holy City, which we sang at two different points in the service, and Palms, but the congreagation managed to cope well with the music, and as I said before, the service was glorious. The sermon was on Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, of course, and each time that the pastor read from Scripture, he had the congregation read it in unison. Now there's an interesting way to have the congregation participate in worship.

After the service, another man, Mr. Kim, shepherded us out of the sanctuary and over to the building where they served a dish of noodles with a dollop of kimchee to everyone. As you walk in the door, you pick up a dish of noodles (White noodles, that Mr. Kim called "wedding noodles") and proceeded to an area with lots of taps, from which you added broth to your bowl of noodles. I'd never seen a wall of taps for broth before! Evidently everyone who attends church is welcome to have a dish of noodles with the congregation after the service! Since they seem to do this every week, the kitchen staff is amazingly efficient at serving large numbers of people. Many years ago missionaries used to refer to people who professed to convert to Christianity in order to receive a handout from the church as "rice Christians". Today we were "noodle Christians."

Pray for Burma Day

Last Sunday at the Chiang Mai International Church in Thailand, they had "Pray for Burma Day". I was deeply touched that the Christians in Chiang Mai would set aside a day to pray for their neighbors to the north. Given the upheaval and violence that has been going on in Burma, prayer is a wonderful way in which to minister to people there.

In the church service, two Burmese choirs sang: one sang the National Anthem of Burma, which is a very majestic piece, and a choir of orphanas, all dressed in red and black, sang songs of praise to God in their language.

As part of the service, various church members who are working in Burma or with Burmese refugees in Thailand gave reports of their experiences and those of the people with whom they are working. There has been much bloodshed and killing. Many people are hiding in the jungle trying to avoid the soldiers. Others have been displaced as their villages have been destroyed. The more we heard the more evident it was that setting aside a day to pray for the country of Burma was a very important thing to do.

And so we did. We had time in the worship service to ask God to have mercy on the Burmese people and to bring the current troubles to and end.

Perhaps others ought to be praying for Burma,, too.

Elephant Camp in Thailand

While visiting Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, Shelagh Wynne and I spent a day at an Elephant Camp. We took a song tao, basically a red pick up truck with an enclosure on the back with two lengthwise benches ("song" means two and evidently "tao" means seats) up into the hills, which was an experience in itself.

The first event we attended was the elephant show, where the big beasts did lots of tricks, stacked wood, played soccer and basketball, danced and did lots of great tricks. The grand finale was the most amazing. They brought out their paint boxes, which they carried in with their trunks walked up their assigned easels and began to paint with brushes in their trunks. At first it looked like a lot of lines on the paper, but as the work progressed, it was obvious that these were becoming real pictures. Most of them painted flowers, but one elephant painted a picture of an elephant, which I think is quite extraordinary. Who ever would have thought that elephants could be arty?

Then we stocked up on bananas and sugar cane to feed the elephant we would ride, climbed the stairs to a raised platform and climbed into the wooden box on the elephant's back, the mahout came up to his place at the back of the elephant's neck as the elephant lifted him with his trunk and we were off. We started off downhill, forded a river and went uphill on the other side. This is not a ride for anyone who gets seasick, because with each step of the elephant you sway back and forth. It was fun, but if I were to do this on a long trip (Shelagh has elderly friends there, who went into Burma by elephant many years ago and it took them two months!) I would want much more padded seating.

After riding the elephant for about an hour we dismounted on another raised platform, and walked through the stalls of handicrafts made by the hill people, who greet dismounting passenger. Since they are all in traditional native dress, I felt as though I were in the middle of an article in National Geographic.

Next we got into a cart drawn by two white oxen, with a large sun umbrella over it, and rode through neatly cultivated fields to lunch. The oxcart is much less uncomfortable than the elephant's back.

After lunch we went down to the river and got onto a bamboo raft to float down the river. It was more of a "Crusing Down the River" kind of adventure than a Huck Finn kind of enterprise. In fact, it is one of the most relaxing things that anyone can do. Imagine floating down a smoothly flowing shallow river with tropical foliage and an occasional elephant on both river banks. We couldn't see the birds whose songs we heard but we did see a profusion of brilliantly colored butterflies flitting through the reeds along the banks. In case anyone was thirsty, a man in a boat paddled out to sell drinks. Shelagh and I had a coconut apiece, which he opened with a machete and inserted a straw. After finishing the drink, we scooped out the coconut flesh and ate it.

Shelagh mentioned that it would take a couple of months to go from there to Bangkok by elephant but only a couple of weeks to go by raft. Even without the time factor, for sheer comfort and pleasure I'd choose to go by bamboo raft!

Narin's Story

One of the significant people I've spent time with while in Cambodia is Pastor Narin Chey. He and his wife, Quenie, of whom I wrote early on in my blog, have planted a church in Phnom Penh and are having a fruitful ministry there.

It was only on my last day in Phnom Penh that I learned that he is a survivor of the killing fields. It was a horrible time in Cambodian history. Everyone lived in fear--or in terror--of being rounded up, taken to the killing fields and executed. This was done in an utterly random, capricious way and no one was exempt.

One day when Narin was about five year old, a truck pulled into their village, loaded up all the inhabitants, including Narin, his parents and all his siblings and took them off for several hours' drive to the killing fields. They arrived about mid afternoon and were told that they would be executed at sundown. So they waited for the end. You can well imagine the utter terror that they all experienced. It was not unusual for whole families to be executed and their bodies dumped into a mass grave. This wasn't as simple as being shot by a firing squad. People were bound and bludgeoned to death on the edge of a large pit that they would have helped to dig.

But obviously, Narin wasn't executed. Nor was his family. A few hours later, they were told that the general had changed his mind, that they would simply be resettled in another village. Resettling people in different places was routine in those days. The whole country was in constant upheaval.

Life in the new village was not easy. The parents worked long hours, probably before dawn until after sunset, and the children didn't get to see them very often. When they did, the parents were exhausted. The whole country was involved in the production of rice. The utopian dream was to become a wealthy nation through abundant production of rice. The workers and their families were fed very little food, perhaps a small can full of rice for the whole family. Hunger was constant. Life was lonely and bleak and difficult yet they survived.

I believe that the Lord spared Narin and his family for a reason. Years later when he came to Phnom Penh to go to university, someone shared the gospel with him and he came to faith in Christ. It took a long time for him to tell his parents, who are devout Buddhists. When he did tell them they disowned him, breaking off all communication. His faith cost him something. His relationship with Jesus Christ became the central thing in his life. He joined a Christian organization and shared the gospel with other students. Eventually he became a pastor. He has since reconciled with his parents, who are still devout Buddhists, and Narin continues to share the gospel with people in creataive ways as he shepherds his congregation.