His plan....her vision...my commitment

I wish that I could type out a precise detailed plan of what I have committed to, but at the moment I cannot.
Since my time in Thailand and Cambodia, God has only grown my heart for the women caught in sex trafficking and prostitution. Just last week I was sure that God wanted me to surrender my heart for them and so I committed seven weeks in Darwin instead of my selfish want to go to Thailand and Cambodia. Evidently God had it planned for me to take a team there this whole time. I guess in giving, we receive.
On this base I am not the only one who has a heart for the women caught in it all. Catrina Pennington (another staff on base), an advocate for Destiny Rescue, has been praying about what she could possibly do to take a step in seeing this trade stopped. God gave her a vision to start a clothing company. Since it was such a big vision, she wanted confirmation. She felt like she was supposed to make herself a dress (she doesn't even know how to sew) and if she succeeded than God wanted her to take a hold of this vision. There was success and so a new ministry has birthed here on the base.
Destiny Rescue already has a sewing factory In Thailand which employs women coming out of prostitution and so, currently, it would just be a matter of having patterns and samples to take over there to start a simple fair trade clothing line. Catrina would like to have a line out by 2010. Now it all sounds elementary, but the vision is much bigger than we can even dream and this is just the beginning. Eventually, she wants to see the clothing line have it's own factory in Thailand (possibly more than one location, or even different countries) where the women coming out of prostitution will be employed. This would mean the possibility of having housing for the women, restoration counselling, christian fellowship, and english lessons, and so much more. The plan is to open stores worldwide to sell the products, but also to create global awareness.
God had been working on our hearts separately, and now I am excited to say that I will be partnering with her vision. I had been asking God what I could do to see this trade demolished and the world to be aware of it. I had ideas of using business for missions (like Nightlight Ministry), but no specifics. I was just trusting that God would just reveal to me my direction. Then one day in lectures, Catrina shared her vision for the clothing line. I was so moved and excited about it I felt like I was going to be ill!
So now what? I will be returning to Thailand to work with some of the same ministries in December, but also to do some scouting for this ministry yet again in June (after my return from seeing my best friend get married). I will be studying fashion design here in Australia most likely beginning next year, and weeding through all the details with Catrina, and Natalie (student from Germany). It is a long term commitment, but I have such a peace and incredible excitement about it all.
God is faithful, and nothing goes without reason.

just when we think we have it all figured out...

Last week we announced the outreach locations to the DTS. I had planned on taking a team to Darwin, Australia to work with the aboriginals there for seven weeks. We gave a brief summary of all the outreach locations (Indonesia, Thailand/Cambodia, Vanuatu, Australia) and asked the students to pray for fifteen minutes as to where they wanted to go. Only two signed up for Darwin and I was so crushed! There was far too many people on the other teams, and so the idea was to approach students individually about joining the team over the next couple of days. Eventually, the outreach became the long running joke on the base and I was so incredibly discouraged. By the fourth day, taking into consideration a few situations, we went back to the drawing board. I decided that I would take an all girls team back to Thailand and Cambodia for the seven weeks. So the next day we pulled all the girls aside, and I shared my heart and vision for working with women caught in sex trafficking and asked them to consider joining the team. Yesterday, we finalized the teams, and the outreach drama was over.
There are five of us girls in total; Jacqueline (Canada), Amanda (USA), Maria T (Finland), Maria K (Denmark), and me! They are all such amazing girls and I know God already has been working in their hearts for this kind of ministry. I just pray that God will be already sppeaking to us exactly how He wants to use us there.
Now that I am more aware of what goes on in Thailand and Cambodia, I will be more careful in my planning, but I would love to be able to work with some of the same ministries as previously. It is never easy taking a team over there, but obviously it was God's will that I was to go once again. I thought I had it all sorted out and heard God in going to Darwin, but God had different plans. I do look forward to what He is going to do there this time around, and it will be amazing to see the same women again.

October 2008 DTS

Alright...so I know that I have skipped quite a bit of time, but I am trying to bring you all up to current time! Right now I am co-leading a DTS with Ryan Kirk. There are 29 students (from Norway, USA, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Canada) and twelve staff in total. We have just finished our first week of lectures and next week the speaker will speak on Hearing the Voice of God.
Yesterday everyone finished sharing their testimonies and I know that it has brought us a bit closer. I know we are all going to be growing a lot closer over the next eleven weeks as we journey through this course together. I was left with a heavy heart after hearing everyone's testimonies because it made me realize that it is getting harder and harder to be a kid (whatever that means) these days. To hear personal accounts of such cruelty, doubt, confusion, and heartache, makes it so much more real. I know for a fact that God is going to move in such a massive way this school through everyone's lives. I know that I know that I know that God will meet every single one of the students where they are at. So with all that said, even though there is a lot of brokenness, I am excited for all that He is going to do. Above all, I know that this school has nothing to do with me, nor the staff. I know that everything that happens from here on out is all Him, and to Him I give the glory.
So please pray for strength to continue to obey, for energy to choose to seek what He wants, for wisdom to know what is of the world versus what is Him, for patience in waiting expectantly for Him to move, for understanding that everything is about Him, and for restoration in times of rest.

Vanny's Orphanage

Vanny's Orphanage is located over an hour outside of Battambong and is one of the most incredible ministries I have seen. Vanny runs it with his wife, and they have a two year old girl (Rebekah). It is fully run by faith, meaning that all that they have has been donated to them, and they rely on God for all that they need. The kids interact as if they one large family. Their faith is incredible and makes me feel weak in comparison. They go to school either in the morning or afternoon, and worship and learn about God twice a day. Vanny asked us to run kids programs for the times when the kids were not in school. The girls and I loved those kids and I am sure that we learnt more from them than they did from us! We were also able to bless them financially.

Destiny Rescue: the women

I just finished reading the book "The Road of Lost Innocence" (Somaly Mam), and it left my heart so heavy. The book is about a Cambodian village women who was sold into prostitution as a child. The book tells in detail her personal experience of being sold from brothel to brothel, and her eventual freedom from it. Her past spurred her on to see a change, and so she founded a rescue home for battered women and children in prostitution seeking freedom.
The book put my time in Phnom Penh into perspective. It gave a first hand account of what the culture was, and is. It made me come to a better understanding of why the people are the way they are. Everyone is afraid, and hope has seemed to have lost it's way into the culture. Everyone lives, not for the sake of life itself, but just to get by. To look to the past means to relive the pain of the devastation, and there is no use in hoping in a better future. Therefore, it is obvious when you are there, that everyone is numb.
That brings me to the women we worked with in the slum villages. Not only have they had to deal with the genocide, they are known as trash. Beauty seems impossible, and they are so hard. They were incredibly shy and hard to approach at first, but it was amazing to see Pat Frost and how close she had grown to the women. Cambodians are such kind people, always willing to give, and I assume at one time they were so trusting. I say it was amazing to see Pat with the women, because they trusted her, they admired her.
We decided to do a worthy women's program with the women so that they may know that their worth in Christ. So in each village, we did their hair and make-up, washed their feet, painted their nails, dressed them in rented traditional Khmer dress, took their pictures, and shared a message. I was able to share with them the story of the Ragman (an analogy of the resurrection story, which I recommend to all of you reading). The women were so proud when we took their pictures, and some even cried when we put on their make-up.
The second program was simply to teach them a skill. We bought some supplies so that they could put together some simple hair accessories. Through it, Pat was able to assess their ability, and going to start teaching those who were skilled how to make paper jewelery to sell to a buyer in the UK.
We live in an incredibly cruel world, but I have hope in it's transformation.

Destiny Rescue: the kids

We ran three kids programs in three different villages. It was hot, and the days were long, but the kids were amazing. We shared the story of creation, and the full gospel message. We gave them the opportunity to draw pictures, sing songs, and play games. We presented the gospel in as many creative ways as possible: through dance, stories, games, songs, and even a puppet show. We had so much fun, and it was incredible to see the kids response to it all.

Destiny Rescue

When I was first determining what country to take an outreach team to, Destiny Rescue(DR) was one of the first ministries I had heard about in Cambodia. One of the staff members on base was a representative for them and was able to give me some contacts. I informed them that I would be going to Phnom Penh with an all girls team and we just wanted to be of service wherever they needed it. At the same time, Pat Frost (responsible for DR in three slum villages in Phnom Penh), had emailed a representative in Australia asking for a team to share the gospel in the villages. They had been working in the villages as a mercy ministry offering medical and financial help through a sponsorship program. In one of the villages they ran a daycare. They told us that most, if not all, the people we would be working with had never heard the gospel. Pat also shared with me that the women that she works with suffered from low self esteem. They are all trash collectors and each day they search the streets for trash yelling out the Khmer word for "trash". This is what everyone else calls them.
We decided that the best approach to get the message across would be to run kids programs sharing a simplified version of the gospel(which is actually incredibly hard to simplify). Our hope was that during the gospel presentation to the kids, their parents would want to come and find out what was going on as well. This was our ticket into building relationships with the women.
Destiny Rescue is known for it's efforts in stopping the trafficking of children into the sex trade, but also has supporting ministries throughout Southeast Asia. To find out more about this amazing ministry check out their website at:

www.destinyrescue.org

Cambodia

Cambodia was a bit of a shock to the system coming from the well-westernized parts of Thailand and all the comforts that come along with them. We arrived in Phnom Penh, which is a whole lot smaller than Bangkok or Pattaya, so much so that the taxi driver knew the exact guesthouse where we would be staying. The city is incredibly polluted, with twice the amount of mopeds covering the streets and garbage seeming to fill up the remaining space. It smelt bad, it was hot, and there was no escape from any of it.
It was obvious that the city was still recovering from it's loss. If some of you have no idea what happened in Cambodia, or need a bit of a refresher, I will give you a bit of a summary so that you may have a better understanding of the culture.
In 1975, the Khmer Rouge (KR0, in a matter of days, forced 2 million people out the city because of bomb threats coming from America. They were made to leave without taking anything more than they could carry. The Khmer Rouge were a hierarchy of communist leaders schooled in France on the principles of Karl Marx and Stalin. They recruited from poor villages where the promise of food and clothing would be provided in exchange for their loyalty. They brainwashed them and tortured them, as methods of training. It was their plan all along to develop an entire farming community so that the KR could use the rice as currency to buy weapons from Russia and China. Those who were not able to make it out of Phnom Penh, such as those in the hospitals, were killed. Also the KR came to the conclusion that those of any higher education or societal standing, would be a threat to the group. Therefore those who were doctors and teachers, those who spoke a second language, etc. were taken to the killing fields just outside the city. You could even lose your life for wearing a pair of glasses. The KR kept an account and picture of every person they killed, including the reasoning behind the execution. It was estimated that 1.5 million people were killed, in other words, an entire generation was wiped out.

Nightlight Ministry Bangkok

Annie Dieselberg founded the Nightlight Ministry that reaches to sexually exploited women and children in Bangkok. We were blessed to be able to see her vision and heart to see an end to the sex trade.
Nightlight is a ministry that offers women in prostitution a way out by making and selling jewelery, learning English, and offering business classes. They offer women housing and each nightlight employee is required to attend a church/worship service every morning. The people involved in the ministry visit the bars located in Nana Plaza (one of the red light districts in Bangkok) and build relationships with the women in the strip bars.
I have never been in a strip bar before, and so all of us received a bit of a shock when we first walked in! It was incredibly sad to see so many girls, and with such blank looks on their faces. I know that they must have thought completely wrong throughts of who we were when we walked in.
The amazing thing to see was the women from nightlight ministry knew a lot of these girls in the bars, and the girls immediately tranformed once they saw them. They were so receiving and exciting to meet us once they knew who we were with. I saw immediate hope, and that was a blessing. We shared with them about Nightlight and their options.
We wanted to do what would be the most help to them and their ministry and they asked us to run kids programs for the children of the employees at nightlight. So for a couple of weeks we shared the gospel with the kids, played with them, even joined in the nap time! A couple nights a week we would go into the strip bars with Annie and her crew and build relationships with the girls in the bars.
I love this ministry and so if you would like to check out more about it, read stories, or even buy some jewelery off their website:

www.nightlightbangkok.com

The Tamar Centre

One of the ministries we worked with was the Tamar Centre. It is a centre that offers prostitutes a way out of the trade by training them in card-making, coffee shop, hairdressing, bakery and English lessons. They run a bible study three times a week, and church on a Sunday. It also offers housing if the girl really is in need of shelter. Three times a week they offer free English lessons to the women from the bars- this is the open door. The women in the bars speak little or no English, and believe that if they are able to speak English they would have a better chance of getting a foreign "boyfriend."
So what did we do? We went with some of the people from the Tamar Centre on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays into the bars all around Pattaya creating relationship with the women and inviting them to the free English lessons. Three times a week we would sit with the women in the class and help them learn the language, but also build relationships. Thai women are incredibly beautiful and have such pure hearts. They are so sweet. I see why it is so easy to take advantage of them: they are such a giving people with a heart to please. We became good friends with the regulars, and the girls on the team loved it.
We were brainstorming as to how we could show the centre to more women, and we decided on an idea. We decided that we were going to each buy a girl (so six girls in total) for the evening from one of the local bars. So we did just that, and it took a while to convince the women to come with us (yes it was a bit awkward because they did not understand our intention). We each had a translator and we brought the six girls out to a BBQ buffet to just let them escape the trade for a few hours and to share with them their worth. It was incredibly fun to get to know them and they were so appreciative of what we were doing, they actually found it really hard to receive (which breaks my heart). Just listening to their stories was enough to break any one's heart. Some had husbands who had left them, and so it was their responsibility to care for their kids and their families back home. They wanted to send their kids to school. Some shared about the foreign boyfriends who broke their hearts. They shared about how they were waiting for their fairytale ending with a foreign rich man. One of the girls was engaged to a man from Chicago and yet she was still working in the bar. The most influential thing they said was that no one had ever done anything like that for them before. They called us "beams of light," and all we did was simply take them out to dinner. Some of them went straight home that night, but some of them returned to work.
Two of them came to the centre the next day, and on our last day there, those same two joined us in church. I do not know where they stand today, but I trust that God has already begun His work in their hearts.

"I saw the tears of the oppressed- and they had no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors- and they have no comforter. And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun." -Ecclesiastes 4:1-3

Pattaya: let me open your eyes a bit...

All the time people talk about how beautiful Thailand is, and one day I would like to believe that. I am sure at one stage in history, this country contained such beauty with it's mix of cultures and landscapes. However, now I fear that this is not what Thailand is mostly known for. Sex tourism makes up a large percentage of the economy in Thailand, pushing it out of it's third world country statis. Men from all over the world come for a couple of weeks at a time because the women are beautiful and cheap to buy.
Pattaya is not only famous for it's large population of Thai prostitutes, but has become a hot spot for sex traffiking of women from all over the world by people of higher influences (larger global crime circles). Women from poorer European countries (ie-Russia, Moldova), Vietnam, Cambodia, Africa, etc, can be seen on the streets with their pimps nearby. This trade has become the third largest global crime issue and is closely associated with the drug trade. Also, the local authorities support a lot of the trade by being paid for protection.
Why? I know, I asked myself many times as to why these women would sometimes willingly sell themselves to these men. No one simply choses to be used. I just could not understand how the whole thing became "okay."
Let me open your eyes a bit....
One of the ladies we did ministry with informed me that all of it has a lot to do with the culture and religious influence. Their culture holds family in the highest regard. In other words, to shame your family is the worst possible thing to do. Because the men are almost worshipped there, the women are responsible for caring for her intermediate family and her parents. Once a Thai (or Khmer) girl is married, she are now that man's property and he can do whatever he pleases with her. Men sometimes put their wives into prostitution because they know that this is the highest paying trade. A lot of the women we talked with in Pattaya came to the city with hopes of getting a highly paid job, and the only job that she can find that will support all of her family is prostitution. Of course most of the time, if the family knew that she prostituting herself, it would bring the family so much shame. A lot of the time, the employers would use this as blackmail to keep their girls employed. The girls are owing a debt to their employer as soon as they begin working for them and usually have to sleep with a certain amount of men each day in order to pay off the debt and support their families. The employer, then can threaten to tell her family if she wants to quit. Therefore, most of these women are just waiting for their foreign prince to fall for them and pay off their debts, support their family and offer them a "better" life. Those are the women that we met in Pattaya.
I did not know most of this information before going, and so I was completely naieve going into it all. I felt like we simply were tourists visiting a country in hopes of making a difference, and sharing a hope in which we hold. And although we did not see a nation change, or even a city, our eyes were opened to such a darkness in this world that most turn a blind eye to. I was completely overwhelmed with it, and every time I saw an old white man with a young Thai girl, I thought that I was going to be sick. Something I have learnt is that we cannot make a difference on this earth without starting with a single person. To see such a nation change we must recognize the individual.

Thailand: now that I have seen....

So what did we do there? I know that is the question everyone tends to ask first. I will go on to share with you the details, but I want everyone to be interested in knowing something. My heart is not to just have you pat us on the back and say "what a good job you guys did," "it must have been hard," or "I admire you more." If those are your thoughts as you come away from reading this, then you have missed the point. I want people to have a better understanding of what actually happens in this world, and to develop a heart to partner with me to see it change.
This post is most likely going to be the hardest one to talk about, so please just bare with me. I found that if you ask for God to break your heart for the nations, you have no idea what you are really asking for. I am grateful for prayers to be answered, but the answer to this one was overwhelming. With just one glimpse of the world through His eyes in Thailand and Cambodia, is enough to bring you to your knees. God did just that.
I had no idea of what I was getting myself into when I made the decision to work with prostitutes in Thailand. It sounds like a logical thing to do when you have a team of all girls, but the implications of it all were not quite thoroughly thought through. There is no way to prepare someone fully for what it looks like to walk right into the centre of the red light district in Pattaya knowing full well that these were the women we would be working with. Walking down a kilometre long strip of just bars, prostitutes, and male sex tourists, is enough to make your stomach churn. The first time we walked down into it, we all were wide eyed and did not say one word to eachother. To anyone else on that road that day, it must have been obvious that we had just stumbled into something we had never seen before and never thought even existed.
To see such blatent sin is enough to lose all confidence in seeing such a world change. Each night we would have to talk about all that we saw and understand that we are not called to hate the sinner, but the sin. However, when you sit at a bar with the intention to build a friendship with the woman behind it and a man sits beside you with the intention to buy that same girl for the night, it is incredibly hard not to hate him. God has since changed my heart to understand that these men are hurting, and their stories are to be heard as well.