The last six weeks have been a whirlwind of laughter, tears, dancing, songs and good food shared with dear friends. And as is usually the case, I’m struggling to wrap up our time in Asia with a succinct, blog-able summary.

I’ve written and rewritten this post about six times, and I can’t get a decent summary of our trip that’s less than a couple thousand words.

So I’m going to give up on all that and share just a few words — and a bunch of pictures. If you want to hear more, let’s connect back in the states. My email is john@asiashope.org.

For the past couple of years I’ve been working to discern, define and articulate our organization’s shared cultural values. On this trip, I spent a lot of time discussing these with our key staff and leaders on the ground.

Turns out we’re all on the same page. Which isn’t too surprising, because I learned all of these from them. Here are four key values that we’re focusing on in this season:

Hospitality

We take time to make sure that everyone in our care — guests, staff, kids, supporters — feel genuinely welcome. Shared meals aren’t just a perk, they’re something of a sacrament.

Our commitment to hospitality is an act of war against the Devil’s lie that God’s resources are finite and our empathy is weakness.

Simplicity

When presented with options, we usually choose the less complicated path, the one that can be achieved with fewer bureaucratic obstacles and is governed by principles and vision, rather than rules and regulations.

Our commitment to simplicity allows us to do more with less, to respond rapidly to new opportunities and challenges, and to empower local leaders to take real responsibility as stewards of our projects and parents to the children in our care.

Hope

We define hope as “the promise of positive transformation.” We believe that we are on God’s side in the war against child exploitation, generational poverty and spiritual brokenness.

We may be small, we may have budgetary restrictions, but we move forward in confidence, acting boldly in accordance with our belief that God wants to use us to transform individuals and communities – and models of orphan care.

Delight

We choose joy. We choose laughter. We choose delight. Our jobs are difficult. The children in our care come from some of the hardest places you could imagine. The work we do is serious, but we refuse to take ourselves too seriously.

We accept opportunities for delight as a gift from God to bind us together as a community of caregivers, to heal the hurts of orphaned and vulnerable kids, and to foster joy among the churches, businesses, families and individuals who give sacrificially so Asia’s Hope can thrive.

You’ll be hearing more about these values over the next couple of years. And many of you will have the chance to experience them first hand as you support Asia’s Hope and maybe even visit our office in Columbus or visit our projects in Cambodia, Thailand and India. But for now, I’ll leave you with some pictures from this trip that I think capture these values pretty well.

May God continue to bless you as you bless the kids and staff of Asia’s Hope.

John McCollumFebruary 12, 2025Comment

The Biggest Contrast

*Kids at Asia’s Hope in Prek Eng relaxing at home after school*

After an excruciatingly long day in transit – 26 hours to get just one-and-a-half time zones from India to Cambodia – we finally got back to where our Asia’s Hope journey began almost 25 years ago.

It would be difficult to overstate the contrasts between Kalimpong, a sleepy Himalayan hill station with near-freezing weather, and Phnom Penh, a bustling world capital with sunny skies and temperatures edging 90F.

Every road in Kalimpong is steep and composed of multiple hairpin curves. Phnom Penh is flat as a griddle. The tallest building in Kalimpong is probably seven stories. Skyscrapers with 30, 40, even 50 stories are sprouting like bamboo here in the Phen.

Even the smells are different: India’s mustard-oil-and-masala scents are largely unknown in Southeast Asia; the streets here are perfumed by pork fat crackling on charcoal grills. And the wats here are graced with gentle jasmine and sandlewood, not the rich, heady dhoop and myrrh of Hindu temples.

But the biggest contrast on this trip will be the pace of our interactions with the kids and staff at Asia’s Hope. In India, we have just six homes. The kids there were on school break for the entire two weeks we spent in Kalimpong. That meant that we could spend pretty much all day in the homes, interacting with the kids and connecting with each of them personally.

In Cambodia, we have 19 homes. And most of the kids are in class until late afternoon. Which means that we’re really blowing through. I make an effort to stop by every single home on every trip, greet every kid individually, enjoy a cup of tea and a game or two with every family. But that’s going to be a challenge this time around, especially in Battambang, where 13 of our homes are based.

I’m prioritizing the homes that need new or supplementary sponsorships and any of the others that don’t get annual visits from teams of international supporters. I’m taking care to get lots of pictures in each of those homes in hopes of introducing the staff and kids to new potential partners upon my return to the States.

So far, this has been a good trip to Cambodia. Kori and I were thrilled that our 26-year old son Pak could pop over from his home in Seoul, Korea to spend a few days with us. Despite having spent most of his childhood summers with us at Asia’s Hope, he hasn’t been to Cambodia in five years.

Almost all of the kids he remembers have graduated, or are soon to do so. Tonight we’re going to visit our student center where something like 40 of our university kids live, so he’ll definitely see some familiar faces before returning to his home tomorrow.

One dim spot has been Kori’s health – she caught bronchitis late in our India visit, and is only now starting to recover. So she’s really hoping to have full energy for our last week or so. Last night was her first decent night of sleep in about a week.

Oh, and one of the Riverside’s notoriously slick pickpockets stole my video camera last night. I’m not so worried about the gear itself, but I lost a significant amount of footage that I hadn’t had time to pull off the memory card. I was briefly infuriated, but quickly turned my attitude around. “Lord help me accept the things I cannot change” and whatnot.

I hope you’ll enjoy some of the pictures from our Cambodia journey, and I hope you’ll let others know about the work we’re doing here on behalf of the world’s most vulnerable kids.

John McCollumJanuary 31, 2025Comment

A Day to Remember

*The site of our picnic on the banks of the Relli River*

One of the benefits of traveling to India in January is that all the primary and secondary schools are closed for winter break. Which means that we can spend all day, every day, hanging out and connecting with our kids and staff.

So why not have a picnic on a Monday? Who’s gonna stop us?

Amber, Radha and Anita met us at our hotel after breakfast and we bundled into Amber’s trusty Mahindra Bolero and headed out of Kalimpong, down a steep and bumpy incline toward the banks of the nearby Relli River.

The kids in their rusty buses got a head start, but we caught up with them about halfway down the mountain. As we passed them on the narrow berm, they cheered and we continued on our way with squeals of “John Unclllllllle…” trailing behind. We finally crossed the old steel bridge spanning the Relli, its sheet metal driving surface thundering and bucking under our wheels.

We did proper off-roading for the final approach: boulders, gravel, mud: the whole nine. And when Radha indicated the picnic and cooking site, I had to stifle a laugh. Literally a field of rocks.

Totally India. Totally not like any picnic you’d ever see back home.

Some of the staff and older kids had already arrived, and were setting up the kitchen – washing the dented aluminum stock pots and giant copper wok in the river, chopping firewood with the same kukris we’d later use to cut meat, selecting rocks that could be used as makeshift mortars and pestles for grinding ginger and garlic.

We spread some blankets on a relatively flat section of ground covered in rocks that had been rounded by years of rising and falling water levels. When the kids’ buses arrived, the boys leapt out toward the nearly-freezing river, stripped to their shorts and dived in. Eventually a number of girls joined as well.

“John Uncle! Why aren’t you swimming with us?”

“Because I’m not…uh, what’s the Nepali word for ‘insane?’”

Kori made herself passably comfortable on the blankets with a group of high school girls. I tried my hand at chopping vegetables, but my 12-inch European chef’s knife was pretty useless with no cutting board. All of the local cooks are adept with paring knives, carefully – but with alarming speed – dismantling ingredients pulling the razor-sharp blades toward their hands, pulling back at the last instant to avoid cutting their fingers. So I surrendered the mise en place to the experts and spent the next hour or so carefully clambering over sharp boulders and slippery stepstones to take pictures of the kids swimming and those laughing at their shivering siblings from the shoreline.

Eventually I made my way back toward the blanket and eased myself to the lumpy ground, settling in to chat with the kids who had gathered. “John Uncle, do you have photos of little me?”

Thankful for decent cell service by the river, I pulled up Amazon Photos, where I have literally tens of thousands of images from my dozens of trips to Asia. One by one, I asked the kids what year they came to Asia’s Hope, and began searching for the earliest pic I could find. To my relief, I had already tagged some of the kids’ faces. For some of the girls – like Ruth and Samiksha – there were hundreds of photos, stretching back more than a decade. And I was able to find at least a few photos of each of the girls who had gathered.

Naturally, this exercise provoked a deep sense of reflection over the journeys that brought each child into our care.

One girl shared about her life before Asia’s Hope — a drunken, abusive father, now deceased, succeeded by a drunken, abusive stepfather who forced her out of the home as a tiny child. “I don’t miss my mother,” she said. “I have all of my family here.”

Another girl said, “I miss my mom every day. I love my sisters and brothers here, and I love my Asia’s Hope mom and dad, but I wish I could have seen my mom just one more time,” and she turned her back, and wiped away tears as her sisters leaned in to embrace her.

“We can stop,” I said. But they all wanted to continue. So I sat and listened. So many stories, so much heartbreak. And such deep healing, thanks to the love they’ve received at Asia’s Hope

Soon it was time for lunch. Kori and I and the most of the girls enjoyed a modest portion of dal, chicken and rice. The teenaged boys, however, fueled by youth and a couple of hours’ roughhousing in the river ate astonishing amounts – plates mounded high with rice, soaked in lentils, overflowing with meat. We laughed at them, and I gently teased Samuel — a round-headed boy with a shy-but-crafty smile and a truly prodigious appetite — as he ladled on what must have been his second kilo of rice.

As the day grew warm and the boys finished off the provisions, something like a sacred glow settled on various groups of kids scattered around the picnic site. Kids who had exhausted themselves swimming, huddled together as their hair dried messily. Boys walked together with arms around each others’ shoulders. Girls leaned into each other, fingers intertwined, smiling as the afternoon drew to a close.

I put my camera away and just watched. Listened. Tried to engrave on my heart the memories that my pictures could never capture.

The older boys and most of the staff tore down the kitchen, washed the dishes in the river, and loaded up the Boleros for the return home. “Reverend John,” Amber inquired, “Shall we move?”

Yeah, I guess we shall.

As the kids loaded the bus, we packed our backpacks into the Bolero and headed back to Kalimpong. As I sit on the bed in my hotel room, I’m still glowing just a little bit. I’m also aching – kind of like I sat on rocks for a couple of hours.

Truly a day to remember.

John McCollumJanuary 21, 2025 Comments

Difficult Roads and Beautiful Destinations

*National Highway 10 between Darjeeling and Kalimpong*

The road from Darjeeling to Kalimpong is famously winding, with numerous turns and bends as it traverses the Himalayan foothills. The NH10, which connects the two towns, is approximately 31 miles and has over 100 hairpin bends and sharp curves.

This winding nature adds to the scenic beauty of the route, offering stunning views of the surrounding tea gardens, rivers, and mountains, but it also requires skilled driving and can be challenging during foggy or rainy conditions.

As we drove this road, headed back from a two-day leaders’ retreat in Darjeeling to Kalimpong, our home in the India, I noticed a sign about 90 turns in:

“DIFFICULT ROADS OFTEN LEAD TO BEAUTIFUL DESTINATIONS”

Ain’t that the truth.

Our organization’s fifteen year journey in India has been, thus far, one with as many steep turns, unexpected obstacles, treacherous cliffs — and breathtaking vistas – as the NH10.

And as our beleaguered Mahindra Bolero creaked its axles into Kalimpong, I found myself once again overwhelmed by the beauty of what God has created in this remote town in the rolling foothills of the majestic HImalayas.

We arrived late afternoon, and after checking into our hotel, we all decided to take the rest of the day to relax. But about 15 minutes after arriving, Pastor Amber sent me a message: “Reverend John, can you please have dinner at the Kalimpong 1 home tonight? The kids are eager to see you.”

I mean, that’s a no brainer. So we unpacked a little and then headed over to the Kalimpong 1 home and enjoyed not only a delicious dinner, but hours and hours of games and songs with the KP1 boys and the parents from all six of our Kalimpong homes.

*Me and Susma, one of our first Asia’s Hope India graduates*

This morning after breakfast we got to spend a little time with Susma, one of our very first Asia’s Hope India kids. When she graduated from high school, we provided her a full-ride college scholarship, and she earned a degree in Hospitality Management. She now works at the prestigious Himalayan Resort in Kalimpong. We’ve known and loved this young woman for most of her life, and we are so proud of her.

We then spent the rest of the day — including lunch and dinner — with the kids and staff of our Kalimpong 2 and Kalimpong 3 homes. And I can’t tell you just what a difference a year makes.

On my last visit, we were still coping with recent, painful changes in the staffing of our KP2 home, and at some level it felt like the kids at that home were doing okay, but still in a bit of crisis mode. But today, they’re thriving. Navin and Yogita, the new parents, have built a remarkable rapport with the kids over the last year, and the home is really full of joy. Some of the older girls speak excellent English, and I was able to talk freely with them about their feelings about the staff transition and the new leadership in the home. It’s truly going better than any of us could have hoped for.

Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this update and the pictures I’ve included. I’m sure I’ll have more soon. Kori and I are heading out with some of the girls to the Gorkha Haat, a local farmers’ market. And we plan on eating and laughing our way through the whole day. And then it’s back to the homes for dinner, games and dancing.

Beautiful destinations indeed.

John McCollumJanuary 15, 2025Comment

From the Arabian Sea to the Himalayas: contrasts and contradictions

“India is a land of contradictions; whatever you can truthfully say about India, the opposite is also true.” — EM Forster

Kori and I woke up this morning in Mumbai, a roiling metropolis on the coast of the Arabian Sea with a population of nearly 30 million, and we’re going to bed in Darjeeling, a glittering hill station perched on a steep ridge in the foothills of the Himalayas.

What a contrast.

And while I love the energy of Mumbai, I have to admit that I find the city to be just a bit overwhelming – hot, dusty, crowded and loud. So I’m thrilled to be back in the cool weather and fresh air of India’s Northeast. And I’m so happy to be joined by Amber and Radha, our precious friends who lead the ministry of Asia’s Hope India.

On the way from Siliguri to Darjeeling, we stopped for tea with Amber and Radha at the Margaret’s Hope tasting room. Kori loves tea, so we’ll take any chance we can get to buy some leaves to take home and an enjoy a proper cup along the way.

Tomorrow we’re having an all-staff luncheon at the historic Glenary’s restaurant, and then we’ll celebrate Kori’s birthday with a visit to a nearby tea garden. We’ll spend a couple of days with Amber and Radha in Darjeeling and then head a bit further down the mountain to Kalimpong, where we’ll spend the next few days with the kids and staff of our six Indian children’s homes.

Internet access in the hills is notoriously fickle, but I”ll be posting as often as I can over the next few weeks as we connect with our Asia’s Hope family in India and then as we continue on to Cambodia.

Mumbai is more than a little chaotic, so I shot most of these photos in the early morning before the streets got too crowded.

Darjeeling, Queen of the Hills.

John McCollumJanuary 12, 2025Comment

The good life

Okay. So we’ve been in Thailand for almost two weeks and I haven’t written a single big post.

Sorry-not-sorry, we’ve been living the good life. Most mornings, we’ve gotten up and had breakfast by 8, and aside from a short mid-afternoon catnap, we’ve been hanging out with staff and kids — fishing, dancing, playing volleyball or pétanque, making meals, eating, visiting markets or playing music — until we crash into bed around 10.

And that’s pretty much what I “do” on these trips. Sure, I’m taking lots of photos and video, and I have some important business meetings. But the real purpose of my time here is to connect with the kids we serve, the staff with whom we work, and the communities our projects bless.

And it’s as tiring as it is rewarding. But it’s these connections that make us effective. By investing in these friendships — one meal at a time — we’re creating and reinforcing the mutual trust that allows us to run an organization that serves more than 800 kids without having to employ even one “foreigner” on the ground in Asia.

Cambodian staff run the whole show in Cambodia. From cook to country director, Thai hill tribe staff comprise our staff in Thailand. And in India’s Himalayas, all of our workers are from the local area, and speak the local language.

All of this adds up to better care for our kids. The people they look up to on a daily basis understand their culture because it’s theirs too.

So as we wrap up our time here in Thailand and prepare to return home, we do so with full hearts and bellies, confident that we’re leaving our projects in good hands, because those hands belong to our dear friends.

John McCollumFebruary 28, 2024Comment

Wrapping up our time in India

Our time in Kalimpong is over, and we’ve moved on to Seoul, for an extended layover. We’re taking the opportunity to hang out with our 25-year old son, Pak, who is working here as an English teacher.

As I look back at our time in India I’m struck with a sense of gratitude for all God has done through and for the staff and kids of Asia’s Hope in Kalimpong. They’ve been through so much over the past few months, but they’re holding together well. In fact, I haven’t felt so much warmth and camaraderie – especially among the older girls – for quite some time. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but I know we’re on the right track.

We hosted all the girls from our Kalimpong 2 and 3 homes at the house we were renting, and spent the whole day dancing, laughing and making momos – Nepali/Tibeten dumplings. These girls are smart, talented and funny. And they quite obviously love each other.

On another day, we spent probably six hours with the boys from the Kalimpong 1 and 4 homes playing carrom, an Indian game similar to billiards played with checker-sized discs on a wooden board. I’ve gotten pretty good at the games over the years, and at one point, my young partner and I went on a six game winning streak! I think I earned some credibility, especially with some of the new kids I hadn’t met before.

We also had a number of really productive, open and heartfelt meetings with our staff, all of whom have faced incredible pressures over the past few months. We prayed fervently for the health of our work here in India, and emerged feeling united and energized for the year ahead.

And we ate. Lots and lots. I’m sure I had more than 200 momos during my time in Kalimpong, and I certainly drank at least a couple gallons of masala chai. And despite on 24-hour period where both Kori and I were stuck in bed due to food poisoning that we got on our last day in Mumbai, our trip was an unalloyed success. Lots of work remains to be done, but I sure feel a lot better about where we are than where I thought we’d be a few months ago.

I hope to return soon. I can’t imagine being able to stay away for a year. So it’s possible you’ll be seeing more pictures and hearing more stories from a trip to Kalimpong, sooner rather than later.

John McCollumFebruary 10, 2024 Comment

"To Be Continued..."

Well, I said it was going to be a whirlwind.

Two weeks after arriving in Cambodia it’s just about time to leave. Last night, while thinking about writing this post, I asked Kori, “How on earth can I wrap up a trip like this?” She said, “To Be Continued…” That sounds about right ot me.

We’ve crammed a lot into our days here: we visited three cities, played games at 19 of our children’s homes, attended two churches, officiated two school commencements, been in one minor traffic accident, received hundreds of hugs – and consumed countless calories.

We really have been making up for lost time. Thanks to Covid and complicated school schedules, it’s been almost five years since Kori and I traveled to Asia together, and almost a decade since we have come here without any of our kids. And while we miss being here as a family, we’re ready to embark on this new stage of our life as (mostly) empty nesters.

John Reed, our travel companion for the first leg of our journey, returns home tomorrow as we head off to our next destination. We’re going to miss him – he’s been an absolute joy: curious, kind, and eager to take whatever we’ve thrown at him. I love coming here with first-timers, especially ones like John.

As a security precaution, I’ll probably post a little less frequently over the next couple of weeks, but I’ll be sure to catch everyone up when we move on again. In the meantime, enjoy these photos from the last couple weeks of our trip.

Our friend, John, tries balut — fertilized duck egg — on the streets of Phnom Penh.

John McCollumJanuary 23, 2024Comment

John McCollum is the Executive Director of Asia’s Hope.

He’s been to Asia almost 40 times in the last two decades. He likes to take lots of pictures. To get an “on the ground” sense of our people and places, his posts are a great place to start.

Hospitality

Simplicity

Hope

Delight

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