Can you guess what this city is best known for? I couldn't. Well, until I went there and saw for myself during my spring break. But before I start, I'll give you some background of what God had been doing in my life before my trip...
The very first time I had ever heard of Cambodia was about a year ago when a group of girls from my college ministry decided to go over the summer break to work alongside a missions organization in the town of Svay Pak. This organization was led by an American couple who had seen the unthinkable happening across the world: child sex trafficking.
If you're thinking what I was thinking "What is child sex trafficking and why's it happening?", don't worry about it. I'll make it simple by explaining that, for whatever reason, parents and other adults decide to get their income by selling their daughters (and sometimes others' children) to grown men for sex everyday. Typically, these men are Western tourists from Europe, America, and parts of Northern Asia. Westerners have managed to take the poverty going on in countries like Cambodia and exploit it for their own perversion by creating a demand for young girls as objects for sex.
So, two weeks ago, we took a group of 9 students/staff to Svay Pak, Cambodia to work with the same organization. Here's what happened when we were there:
Denver Thursday/Cambodia Friday: Midnight-After a 24+ hour trip across the Pacific, we land in Phnom Penh. The cab ride was nerve racking because our luggage was too much for one van. We had to separate from the group and put our trust in the cab driver to take us to the hotel in one piece. It didn't take long to realize that streets in Cambodia work much differently than in the US. No actual streetlights and tons of mo-peds and tuk tuks left the flow of traffic constant in all directions. All we heard around us were honking from the vehicles around us. And as we drove to the hotel, we saw how much dirt and debris collected on every corner. It looked like an airplane dumped all its trash over the city. Once we made it to the hotel, we met our first gecko in the lobby. Gross! And there were more where he came from that week. We all felt pretty warped with time because of how much of a difference we had gone through.
Saturday: It's my 21st birthday!! And we all went to the Cambodian genocide museum to better try and understand the history of the country. Not exactly a cheerful activity, but we had our worlds rocked when we walked through the actual rooms that were used to torture and interrogate people back in the 70's. It was absolutely heartbreaking seeing all of the faces of the people who were killed because of the Khmer Rouge just like Nazis did a few decades before! Afterwards, we all tried to get our minds off of it by getting coffee at a cute cake shop called Bloom. It's difficult though to go from being sad to happy though because of how exhausting it is. We spent the evening celebrating my birthday over a yummy italian dinner and a surprise cupcake dessert. :P
Sunday: We woke up and went to the Cambodian church where we met the Pastor and some of the kids that were being discipled. They performed songs and dances for the congregation and that's when it happened. They performed the Lifehouse Everything skit! We were all shocked at how well they did performing it. We got to have a translator for the entire sermon and it rocked hearing God's word in two languages! After church ended, we went to a burger place for lunch with our permanent driver, S. It was really entertaining watching our staff guy try and speak with him because S. didn't speak much english. Something we all noticed was how hot and humid the air was in Cambodia, we were used to dry mild weather. So we had to drink much much more water to stay hydrated, or else we'd sweat it off!!
Monday: We started our first day at the kid center! Meeting all of the kids was exciting and tough, because they were all so precious that we couldn't believe the hell they have to go through at home. We started our first full schedule that we'd follow for the rest of the week. Teach a class on music/tech, then bible study, lunch, and then kid's club. Kid's club was nuts-- 150 kids in one room. Since this was our first day, it was kinda difficult getting into the habit of what we were supposed to teach the kids and how things were organized. The disciples were between 14-25 and the kids were between around 3-15 years old! However, the disciples were so malnutritioned that they looked at least 3 years younger than their age. I remember thinking to myself that some of these kids are being sold every single day by their own mom and dad. This was real and in our faces. When it was finished, we said goodbye to the kids and went back to our hotel exhausted. First day was finished.
Tuesday: We did the same morning/afternoon routine as the day before and managed to split into two groups for kid's club. Three of us girls volunteered in the health clinic to help give medication to the people in the community. The overwhelming majority of cases were stomach related, which makes sense because the water is undrinkable. Once we got done, we went back to our hotel to grab dinner. As we were waiting in the lobby, we witnessed a horrifying reality: there was a man in our hotel trying to buy a little girl sitting not even 10 feet away from us! At first, we were all a little suspicious about what he was doing, but when one of us saw the guy pull out $50 and hand it to the mother along with a room key, we flipped out! Two of our guys on the team followed behind him upstairs to see where he was staying. The rest of us waited in the lobby, trying to process what was and would have been happening upstairs. One of our leaders took action and had already recorded a video of the situation and was heading down to report the incident. And there we were, a pedophile in our hotel and we couldn't touch or talk to him. I can't say I have ever been that angry at a man in my life. I hated him with every fiber of my being and I couldn't stop myself from crying because of how upset I was. All we could do was report him and pray for justice to be carried out. We still don't know what ever happened to that little girl.
Wednesday: We woke up and continued on our routine. Our devotional this morning was mine on forgiveness, how fitting right? Then we went to the community center again and started our morning classes like we had since Monday. But today, it was really hot and one of the women in our group had started to feel dizzy and we had to take her to the hospital. She got admitted and had to stay there overnight for observation. They gave her a CAT scan and didn't know what was wrong with her. We all tried to pray for her and that whatever she had wasn't serious enough that she'd have to fly back home early.
Thursday: We spent our morning devotional time in the hospital with our sick friend and praying for her to recover quickly. Then I volunteered to stay with her along with two of our guys (one of whom was also suffering a stomach bug) and we stayed there the entire day. Being an adult responsible for someone else was tough and challenging. I had to make decisions about things that I never had to before like health insurance. When we talked to the doctor, he said that they had to take a second CAT scan and then they'd know what was up. Turns out, she was suffering from heat exhaustion. But, it wasn't severe enough to keep her at the hospital another night. SO she came home!!
Friday: Friday, we woke up to another sad bit of news, our female leader had gotten sick and she and her husband were staying at the hotel that day. So, needless to say, the kids were sad they wouldn't get to say goodbye to them. But, we somehow managed to make it through all of the classes and kid's club alive and said our goodbyes to the group we've grown so close to. It was so sad, all of the kids and the disciples were so inspiring that we didn't wanna leave them. But after we said goodbye, we went home and started packing up and preparing for the party we were going to hold at a girl's restoring center.
Saturday: We all got to wake up an hour later that day and prepare the last touches for the girls at the center. This center was separate from where we'd been all week and consisted of only girls who have been rescued from sex trafficking and are hiding from their family/captors. So we threw them a party to show them how much they matter! And they performed some authentic Cambodian dances and worship songs. It was an experience I don't think I will ever forget seeing all of the beautiful girls of all ages there. We ate, danced, played music, and made bracelets together! Then we said goodbye to the girls and had our debriefing in a boat on the river near our hotel. It was a lot to process and take in so we tried to discuss what we experienced that week. I was so blessed to get to share this experience with my friends. We got to all bond on a level I've never been able to bond with anyone else on the planet! Then we ate dinner and shared some laughs and strange experiences we had and a few brave souls ate some questionable food (spiders). They got sick of course, but then we got on our plane and came back home. We got home Sunday evening just in time for dinner!
The only problem with a 10-day mission trip during Spring break, school the next day. *Sigh* having no time to recover has made me quite exhausted, but I came home with something that I would've lost sleep over anyway. I will always be praying for the people I met in Svay Pak, Cambodia. I hope God reveals His plan for me in the next steps I should take to process and figure out where I fit into helping end child sex trafficking. Who knows? I fell in love with the country, so maybe God wants me to live there someday as a missionary.
Please don't let this post be something you read and forget about as soon as you finish, pray for the young men and women who are being exploited and pray for the traffickers and john's too! Because Jesus came to save everybody! And they need him as much as we do!
