The Trial

Before I left for this trip someone asked me if I was going to attend "The Trial" while in Cambodia. I replied that I didn't think that it was on the agenda for our group so probably not.

That statement was made without considering that we have a lawyer in our group. Of course, we would have to attend The Trial.

You may be wondering what trial I am talking about, or maybe you know and are thinking you might like to have the experience, too.

The United Nations has a special tribunal that is trying some of the Khmer Rouge honchos. They built a special court building in which to have these trials. It is called Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia, or ECCC. The person who is currently on trial is "Duch" the former head of the infamous prison, S-21 or Tuol Sleng. We visited Tuol Sleng last week and got to see the place where prisoners were held in incredibly tiny cells and tortured until they confessed and confessed and confessed to all manner of things before they were taken to the Killing Fields.

The things that went on in the prison of which he was in charge were horrible, gruesome, inhuman, monstrous. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge the leaders who were still alive (many of those tortured and killed were from their own ranks) went into hiding. A journalist who was appalled at what went on at Tuol Sleng went on a relentless search for Duch, whom he found out in the provinces, teaching math in a high school. Interestingly, in the interim he had come to faith in Christ and his life was transformed. God has promised to forgive the worst of sinners who repent and put their faith in Christ. But he owed a debt to society for the horrendous wrongs that he helped to perpetrate.

In the years of his incarceration he has has asked forgiveness of all those whose lives he has helped to ruin. When taken to the local killing fields as part of the pretrial preparation, he again asked forgiveness for all those he had sent to their death.

So the UN has gathered an international tribunal of seven judges: four Cambodian and three from other countries: New Zealand, Austria and France. There are ranks of lawyers for the prosecution, also an international team with a preponderance of Cambodians, and two for the defence: one Cambodian and one French.

The courtroom is built to accomodate this array of players. The back wall is curved and made of glass. Behind this wall is the gallery of very cushiony theatre style seats for the observers. Each person is given a set of wireless headphones as the trial is translated into English, French and Cambodian. It is an amazing set up.

We got to see the Swiss lawyer, who also studied at Columbia U. and spoke in heavily accented English, interview the expert witness, an American, who had studied the transcripts and documents from the Tuol Sleng prison. Evidently this was the second day of this interview. It was not really a cross examination. My lawyer teammate said that in America there would have been so many objections. Here the rules are different. The British lawyer asked for clarification, but no one objected to anything.

It was a painfully slow process. I fought hard not to fall asleep. And this trial will go on for the rest of the year. The UN is spending something like $30 million dollars on it. And when one thinks of what good they could do in Cambodia with $30 milliion dollars... There is no death penalty here, only life imprisonment, and he was already in prison for life.

Oh, yes, the defendant. He sat there with his headphones on, listening to the proceedings. Journalists (who were also there in force, in the gallery with the rest of us) have described him as "serene" during the proceedings. Yes, he is. Could this be the peace of God?

As we sat there I couldn't help thinking of the final judgment, what Eric Alexander calls, ":Gods Assizes". Every one of us will have to appear as the defendant. No escaping it. I expect that it won't go on for years though. The Scripture tells us that "Every mouth will be stopped before him." No objections. "Guilty, your honor". And our Advocate will say, "I paid the penalty for this sinner's sins. She is forgiven."

Stateless Persons

One source of great joy in my time in Cambodia has been to teach an English class for some Vietnamese teenagers at a local church. The kids are a real delight: bright eyed, eager to learn, conscientious about doing their homework, and when they talk about their faith in Christ, they radiate joy.

Their lives, however, are not so very happy. They are "stateless persons". The Cambodian government does not recognize them as Cambodian, and for reasons I cannot understand, they cannot return to Vietnam. There are about a million Vietnamese in Cambodia, some living in house boats along rivers and doing subsistence farming on the river banks, others who live in slum conditions in the cities. They have no passports, no birth certificates, receive no government services or health care, nor are their children permitted to attend school. They live in poverty, despised by the rest of the population. They are the garbage pickers, who eke out an existence on a very low level. In the midst of such crushing poverty, vices abound: alcoholism, gambling, other addictions. To survive, families often sell their daughters into prostitution, sometimes at a very young age. Brothels in this country are staffed by a great number of underage Vietnamese girls, many of whom have been sold by their parents in order to support the family.

The Christian Missionary Alliance, which has worked here for many generations, has been reaching out to these people, trapped in poverty, trapped without a state or identity. They are convinced that the answer to the situation is the gospel, applied to every area of life. They have established Vietnamese churches and the churches have established schools to educate the children so they have a chance of getting a better job than picking trash. In fact, we have been teaching at a CMA church school.

The other day I met one of the moving forces behind this ministry, a Vietnamese Canadian woman named Kim Bui, who was herself a stateless person who went to the United States, then to Canada as a refugee. Now that she has Canadian citizenship she is no longer stateless, and she has come back here to work to see that Vietnamese children in Cambodia get a chance for a better life. Kim is passionate about what she is doing. She told us about other schools that they have established, such as the floating school on a houseboat near one of the "floating villages" along the river.

So many times in this trip my heart has been broken for the children of this country, many of whom do not have an easy life or a hopeful future. I'm so encouraged to meet people who are willing to work to bring about change and give a reason for hope. What great sense it makes to deal with the conditions that cause poverty, applying the gospel to bring redemption to every area of life!

The Children's Prayer Network, 2009

The last time I was in Cambodia, probably the item that got the greatest response from people at home was the children's prayer network. My friend, Phany, who runs a ministry called Kone Kmeng, which reaches out to children at risk to share the gospel and disciple these kids, also gives kids with very little in the way of support, resources for survival, the main emphasis being prayer. Every so often he gets the children in a given area together to have a prayer meeting. He works through the local pastors, who bring the children in their congregation (and some congregations are largely children) together to pray for one another and for the problems in the country. These kids are serious prayers, and I rejoice that the Lord is raising up a generation of future church leaders who rely on prayer.


On Saturday we got to attend a children's prayer meeting out in Svay Rieng province, where we had been doing children's ministry for several days, going from village to village out among the rice fields, to hold meetings with the kids. Some of them came to the prayer meeting. After
a lot of singing and presentations and skits from various group, we got down to praying. The theme of this prayer meeting was domestic violence, with which these kids are all too familiar. they got into small groups and made lists of their requests, ("pray that the other children in my
school stop persecuting me." "Pray that the Lord will provide the money for me to continue to go to school" Pray that my father will stop drinking." "Pray that my parents will believe in Jesus, too."...) As is the custom here, they all prayed at once--and so did we.

At one point, the adults present got all the kids into the center of the room and all prayed
at once for them. Much more touching was having the kids surround all the adults in the room and pray for us. I feel especially blessed to have been prayed for fervently by these very special children. They mean business when they pray and I think that God honors the prayers of children in a special way.


All this praying against domestic violence brought some strong emotional response from some of the kids. One girl sobbed uncontrollably, while her friends surrounded her and cried, too. These children have known a lot of violence. Phany told me that most Cambodian children have been traumatized in one way or another. Since being with them I have prayed much for the Lord's protection of them. Won't you join me in praying for them, too?

Out Among the Rice Fields of Cambodia

This finds me and my team mates in southeastern Cambodia in the Svey Rieng province near the Vietnam border, out among the rice fields, where we are working for four days with a children's ministry called Kone Kmeng. Basically we have been to five villages, one the first day, and two yesterday, then another two today, to do a program, which includes a skit, some songs, Ken''s dramatic rendition of the story of Daniel, testimonies, Cora's teaching the sign language version of Jesus Loves me, etc.

One of the things we do before we close is to present a skit, which gets sillier each time we do it, about the benefits of brushing teeth, then we give each child a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste. Since they don't always know what to do with it--some have evidently eaten their toothpaste in the past--our friend, Alex, the lawyer from Washington DC--demonstrates how to brush teeth. He's done it twice already today so he must have the cleanest teeth in the province. Then we play with the kids. Some of my team mates are really good at running games, so they play with the kids at the end of the program, even though the temperature is outrageously hot. The kids don't seem to mind. Me? I plead being an old lady and find a shady place to chill out in--if one can be said to "chill" in intense heat. I tend to gravitate towards the older women in the village, who have wonderful faces, to ask if I can photograph them.

We have gone at the request of local pastors in these villages, and have travelled in a van over some incredibly rutted dirt roads, full of potholes and puddles. The terrain is flat and for as far as one can see, there are flooded rice fields, like a green quilt. Punctuating the flooded areas are sugar palm trees, and the effect is beautiful. Anyway, the churches in these villages are buildings generally about 15 x 20 feet, very open to allow for air flow. People evidently sit on the floor or on a wooden platform, and they can get quite a lot of people into the space available. The kids tend to be quite shy and reticent until they start playing games and then they let loose.


The kids have also given testimonies that have been very touching. Since Kone Kmeng runs the Children's prayer network, these kids have been taught to pray as a very valuable resource and they take it very seriously. Some have told of growing up in abusive homes, particularly when the father got drunk. After the kids became Christians they started to pray for their parents and they found that the violence has abated considerably. One boy told about being persecuted by the kids at school when he became a Christian, "Ïf you are going to be a Christian go somewhere else. Now he prays for those kids. Others have lost parents to AIDS and are living with their grandmothers. The grandmothers are amazing women, and are doing heroic work, although they can't always provide both food and school fees. Kone Kmeng has helped here, too. One boy told about having to drop out of school after his parents died and how he is now back in school because people have provided for his school fees.

After our afternoon meeting today several adults--who become quite enraptured by the children's programs--came up to us and asked us to pray for them. We are travelling with an evangelist from this area who directed this part of the program, and we were able to pray for people with health problems, and a mother and two daughters whose bicycle has worn out and broken, who need the bike to take their vegetables to market. (You would be amazed at what they can carry on a bicycle here! I have lots of photos of people riding bikes that carry enormous loads.)


Thanks for praying!

Singapore

I arrived in Singapore on Saturday morning, May 9, after a 21 hour flight from New York. For years I had been hearing about how wonderful Airlines is, and now I can attest to that from personal experience. They are a very efficient, we ll run organization with a real understanding of what service is all about.

Singapore Airport is a reflection of the airline. It is beautiful, well designed, well run, efficient, and a very welcoming place. There are indoor gardens and banks of orchids, the national flower.

We arrived at 6:00 am while it was still dark. Along the equator there are exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of dark and it doesn't get light until about 7:00 am. By the time I jumped into a taxi it was light, and as we drove along the road I was reminded why Singapore is one of my favorite places. Although the island is very densely populated, with tall apartment buildings all around, the roads are lined with trees and flowers, many of the exotic tropical variety. It's like driving through a park!

Currently the weather is very hot and incredibly humid. It has rained a good portion of each day since I've been here, so there is a reason that all those trees and flowers grow so lushly everywhere.

Singapore is a very multi cultural place, a combination of Chinese, Indian, Malasian and British culture and ethnic groups. It is also a model of cooperation, since these diverse groups all manage to get along with one another. I must confess that one of the reasons I enjoy this place is that everyone speaks English, so I don't feel illiterate or cut off from the local population.

On Sunday I attended a worship service at Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church, pastored by Christopher Seah, formerly of Tenth Presbyterian Church. The church meets in a school building, on the third floor in a suite of rooms that is particularly well suited for the congregation.
While talking to one of the elders after the service, a transplanted New Zealander named Brian, I became aware once again of the broad influence of Tenth Presbyterian Church. He told me that some years ago he was an athiest and teaching in a small village in Japan. Also teaching in that area was a young Japanese American man who was a Christian and who had long talks with Brian, with whom he shared recorded sermons and lectures. Brian said that the very first Christian sermon that he ever listened to was by James Montgomery Boice. He later listened to R.C.Sproul and others, but his first dose of biblical Christianity was our own JMB. He eventually came to faith and is now serving at Providence Church here, but he has a real sense of gratitude for Tenth Church and Jim Boice's teaching.