Horror and Hope

Yesterday we spent the day around the city of Phomn Penh getting to know a little more about the history of cambodia and the people that we would be working with. What we saw and experienced was horrific....but only a fraction of what the horror these people have experienced. For those who aren't aware Cambodia was part of a civil war between 1975-79 when Pol Pot leader of the rural Khmer Rouge forced all people out of Phomn Penh to the country side and followed this with years of torture and killing. We visited a local high school which was converted into a prison in which innocent Cambodian people were tortured to force them to confess that they CSI or KGB spyies in order to give the Khmer people a reason for killing them. Men, women and children were then taken to local "killing fields" and disposed of in the most inhuman ways before being dumped in mass graves.

The story was hard to stomach, but perhaps helped to explain in some part how we had experienced a lack of smiles and joyful expressions upon the Cambodians faces. This was until we headed in the afternoon to the daughters cafe to meet the people we are working for over the next few weeks. Daughters is an NGO which seeks to release and rehabilitate those caught up in prostitution and sex trafficking and to offer them a second chance in life. Yesterday we met some of these girls who are being taught hospitality and catering skills who serve food, make clothes to sell and have opened a spa for people to come to for massages. These girls had massive smiles on their faces. A second chance in life, a new job with promise, self fulfilment in what they were doing and a new relationship with Jesus...these girls were buzzing....I've never seen anyone so happy or proud to take an order for a cup of coffee....was so emotional.


Today we began to work in the daughters centre where much of the material which is sold in the cafe is made. We have been blown away by God and how he has reaffirmed to us that he has been in control the whole time and has called us to this work. Today I spent time teaching guitar and piano to some of the girls....I had to work through a translator so not sure if they fully understood it all, but we all had fun. I also spent a good bit of time working with some of the boys. Daughters was initially set up to work with girls, but have recently started a project called "sons". The two boys that I worked with were people who from an extremely young age had been forced into working as "Lady Boys" or "homosexuals". Boys who did not make this decision as a life choice but had it forced on them. They struggle to recognise themselves as men at all but are starting to live out a new life in the daughters centre. God is good.

The thing that blew me away the most however came with laura. Over the last year Laura has had a part time job making wedding jewellery for a designer (Helen Fitzpatrick) to sell in house of Frazer. Helen taught laura many amazing skills and so many times during the year I got frustrated at times as Laura sat to late hours in the night with her board making jewlery...It's now that I know why. Jewellery is one of the biggest sellers in the Daughters Cafe, providing a wage for the girls and freedom from their old way of life. For a while now the leaders of daughters have been praying for someone to come and continue to help with the jewellery....Laura began today to teach them some of the basic Jewellery which she and the girls taught in Uganda, but will begin over the next while to teach a lot of the more complicated skills she has learnt this year, something which will earn the project a lot more money. God is so good! I'm blown away by what he's doing here and humbled that He's allowed us to be part of it.

Matthew 24v42 "This is the Lords doing and it's wonderful to see".

(For those interested in finding out more about daughters visit http://www.daughterscambodia.org/)