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 forgetThat though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet." draft 3/23/08 by Cora's Asian Oddyssey

Missionary Training Institute

While in Seoul, I stayed at the Missionary Training Institute, which was founded more than 20 years ago by my friend, Young Son, who sensed that God was calling him back to Korea to train Koreans to be missionaries. Young has since retired--actually he is in the upper midwest of the United States, pastoring a church in the Dakotas--but the work of MTI goes on and I was very much privileged to see it first hand. During the term when I visited, students were studying English quite intensively. On certain floors of the building only English is permitted. Basically the school day goes from breakfast at 7:30 a.m. through late homework help until about 9:00 at night. These students work hard and are quite serious about pursuing their calling. My friend, Danya Kelberg, teaches intermediate English and drilled the 8 or 9 students in her class on various things that they were learning. I sympathized with them because learning English as a foreign language is hard! English is such an irregular language and full of idiomatic expressions that a lot of just plain memorization is required. I'm so grateful to have learned it as my mother tongue! Students get exposure to a variety of accents. Their current teachers come from the United States, Australia and England and they have to learn to understand each of these accents. One of the young women I spoke with had spent some time in Uzbekestan and hoped to return there. I asked her about learning Uzbek and she assured me that it was much easier than learning English, since it was closer to the Korean language than is English. A man named Joshua was there with his wife and his 21 year old cerebal palsy daughter, who lives in a wheelchair and doesn't speak any language. Joshua and his family hope to go to Swaziland to do child evangelism. I expect that English will be very useful to him there, although I suspect that he will have to learn the local tribal language, too. Perhaps the most radiant of the people I met there was a young man who grew up in Japan, where his parents are missionaries. For Koreans to go to Japan as missionaries is a real work of grace. There is a centuries-old animosity between the two nations, since the Japanese have invaded and occupied the Korean peninsula many times over the years. This young man already speaks Japanese, having grown up there, but was working hard to learn English. Korean missionaries are everywhere in the world. In Cambodia alone, there were more than 600 of them, plus those who come for short stays of a couple of weeks to do specific projects. Koreans from a Christian univeristy have been invited to come and found a similar institution in Cambodia and have even been granted the land on which to build their school. They also blend in with the scenery much better than do we westerners! They are also the salt of the earth: they work hard, are focused, willing to make sacrifices and they stick with the task until it is completed. How much we have to learn from them! I got to speak to the student body about my own experience and invited questions afterward. Perhaps the most touching was from a young woman who asked "How about single women missionaries?" Right on! It seems that she had spent time in Jordan, where it is very hard for a woman to be alone. Not knowing her background, I gave a more generic answer. It seems that in God's providence, single women have been largely responsible for evangelising the world over the years. They have gone where men could not go--and still do. In China, girls in their early teens go off to remote regions to share the gospel with people who never had a chance to hear the good news. The government watches men more closely and tends to ignore the activities of women, so these girls are evidently quite free to travel. Anyway, being a single woman in a foreign land can be a lonely experience. I reminded them that we are not meant to be alone in our endeavors, and that we have a lot to learn from our Roman Catholic friends, for who singleness is also a vocation. Their single clergy live in community and we Protestants need to realize the wisdom of that. We all need support and companionship. As I read through the New Testament I am more and more convinced that community is God's norm for us.

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."