My health has returned, and we're doing well. I simply haven't had the time to blog. Sunup to sundown it's go, go, go. Will post more later.
As I sit on my bed at the Kalimpong, India Himalayan Hotel, I find myself once again at a loss for words. As I said to my wife last night, I feel very, very, very far from home. I can’t begin to adequately explain what I’ve seen and felt.
Yesterday morning we left Calcutta and traveled by plane to Bagdogra, and took a rented jeep through the mountains to Kalimpong. If all of that sounds exciting and exotic, let me assure you — it is. As the crow flies, Kalimpong is a very short distance from Bagdogra. In reality, it’s a grueling 3 and a half hours of hairpin turns, landslides and sheer cliffsides without guardrails.
I was already feeling sick in Calcutta. By the time we arrived in Kalimpong, I felt ready for hospital. We checked into our hotel, had dinner and, except for a short breakfast, I didn’t leave my bed until 3pm this afternoon, when Pastor Nandu came to take us to the Grace Children’s Home.
The Children’s home is attached to Nandu’s. As he told us tonight, “We have very little privacy. There are so many children.” When we arrived, the children were already dressed for the performance they had prepared to welcome us. All of the kids – the boys included – were wearing makeup. Many were in traditional Nepali garb.
A beautiful 10 year old girl, whose name sounds like “Elizabeth” introduced the songs in perfect English. Then all of the children, from three years old to thirteen, sang and dance and performed skits. I had just enough energy to take some photos, exchange some smiles and offer some words of thanks after the program.
The kids left the room, and Nandu’s wife brought out some snacks – samosas, puffed corn, some cashew creams. As I reached for my plate, I just about passed out. The room, it seemed, was spinning. And my arms seemed strangely distant, as if they were being controlled by some puppeteer’s strings. Not so good at all.
Over the next hour or so, I was only intermittently lucid. I remembered going into the room with the kids and showing them pictures of Cambodia and Thailand, and I remember playing the game where both contestants try to make the other one smile. I did unusually well, as my face felt as if it was connected to someone else’s head. I also remember having to concentrate with all my might to not drop the glass of water offered to me by one of the staff.
By about 7pm, dinner was served. It was delicious, and it helped to restore a portion of my strength. Now that I’m back in my hotel room, I feel once again like I’m going to pass out. I don’t know whether I’ve caught some bug, or I’ve somehow become dehydrated. Dr. John thinks it’s just mental, emotional and physical exhaustion from being “on” for three months straight.
Tomorrow morning, we’ll have church with the kids and with some of the local believers. I’ll be praying for some miraculous level of healing. We have a very busy week ahead of us. In fact, this next week will set the course for any future work we will do in India. Please join me in praying that I will fully recover, and soon.
I had heard that Indian flights are more lively, that the people are louder, more garrulous.
I had heard right.
The flight from Bangkok to Kolkata was markedly different from any other I've taken in Asia. Aside from the fact that 97 percent of the passengers were male, this was the most boisterous flight I've ever endured. The passengers pushed and jostled and shouted as we got onto the plane, and kept it up throughout the 2 hour flight.
Within the first ten minutes, the female flight attendant serving our section gave up all pretenses of smiling subservience and adopted a permanent grimace, enlivened by the occasional look of plaintive incredulity.
At one point a male flight attendant burst from the curtain separating business-class from, well, luggage-class and shouted, finger wagging, "Once is enough!" to the man who had been pushing on and off his in-flight service button for the last ten minutes.
A giant Sikh a few rows away jumped up and entered the discussion. Neither Seth nor I could tell whether he was on the side of the passenger or the steward. I wondered if there would be fisticuffs. There were not.
After a very long wait at the baggage carousel, we exited the airport, greeted by Pastor Nandu. He ushered us to a taxicab which looked, like much of the city, like it could have been made in the 1950s. The next 40 minutes felt -- and, in the dark, looked -- like the ride to the Lestrange family vault in the bowels of Gringott's Bank.
Or, as I reflected this morning, it was like experiencing Phnom Penh in fast forward. Everything here is bigger, faster and, somewhat incongruously, both dustier and more colorful. Though I can see how one could get overwhelmed here, I really think I'm going to love this city. Confirming that will have to wait.
It's almost 9am. We're heading down to enjoy the hotel's complimentary breakfast. If the condition and cleanliness of our room is any indication, I think I'll have a Clif bar instead. At about noon, we're heading to the airport, where we'll hop on a short flight to Bagdogra, and then take a car to Kalimpong. From what I can gather, Kalimpong is absolutely nothing like Kolkata. I'm sure I'll love it too.
Well, I’m now officially on the last leg of my three-and-a-half month journey. Seth and I are at the Phnom Penh airport getting ready to board our plane for India. After a stopover in Bangkok, we’ll arrive late this evening in Kolkata.
We will meet Executive Board member Dr. John Campbell and Pastor Nandu Gurung. We will travel tomorrow morning by plane — and then by car — to Kalimpong, where we will spend the next two weeks meeting with potential ministry partners and visiting villages with large orphan populations. We’ll then return to Kolkata for a few days of meetings with our Indian attorney, Mr. Biswajit Sarkar.
We hope to emerge with lots of stories, a greater understanding of the situation in India and a clear plan for Asia’s Hope’s immediate future on the subcontinent. To be honest, I’m already worn out. I’m downright exhausted. My stomach is feeling iffy and I have a rash that makes it painful to walk. But I know that I’m right in the center of God’s will, so I’m taking it all in (somewhat belabored) stride.
It’s been great to have Seth with me on this portion of the trip, and I believe that we will return to the States even better friends than before, with a renewed energy and heightened sensitivity for the work at hand.
Please pray for us. I’ll keep you posted, and I’ll start taking photos again soon. I promise.
Namaste.
It’s 4:30 in the morning. As much as I’d like to be able to go back to sleep, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Jeff, Ian, Seth and I all need to be up in an hour anyway, so I figure I’ll take a few minutes to update this here blog of ours.
My days here in Battambang have been more than chkoo-ut tik tik – a little crazy – but they’ve also been incredibly rewarding.
…As an aside, I’ve given up on crafting beautiful prose. I know, for instance, that most skilled writers excessive use of adverbs (and parenthetical asides), but this trip has been filled with so many amazing experiences that I can’t help peppering my paragraphs with words like incredibly, unbelievably, astonishingly and inexplicably. I’ll gladly accept a C+ for composition if you’ll grant me a B+ for content and an A for effort…
Well, if you can get out to Battambang, Cambodia in the next couple of hours you’ll see something pretty wonderful.
Take National Road 5 out of Battambang, over the bridge, past the giant statue of the man with the stick, further than the new Mormon church and the University of Battambang, about 4 minutes (depending on the number of cows, tractors, tuk-tuks and petrol trucks) beyond the statue of the dove and the globe, there’s a little dirt road that goes off to the right. It’s marked by a little blue sign.
No, not the one with the picture of the pig. The other one. It says “Asia’s Hope.” Turn there, but be careful. The rains have made the dirt road pretty treacherous. Yours wouldn’t be the first car to get stuck in the mud, and if you block the path, the buses, vans and tuk-tuks full of kids won’t be able to get through. About 300 meters to the right, there’s a gate. You won’t be able to miss it; it’s festooned with balloons.
Come on in – tell them you’re with me – and follow the music. It’ll be loud. Hang out near the back of the Hope Fellowship pavilion and just enjoy. Enjoy watching 250 teens – most of whom have experienced more loss than you or I can imagine – enjoy watching them sing and dance and shout. You probably won’t know the words to their songs, but if you ask around, someone will translate for you, and they’ll tell you that these kids are singing about how God has blessed them, and how they’re trusting him with their lives. Pretty great stuff.
If you’re there by 7:30, you’ll get a chance to hear my pastor Jeff Cannell speak. And if you can’t get there until the afternoon, you’ll still get to hear Darrell Evans, a Vineyard pastor from Salt Lake City teach. Sorry to say you’ve already missed Gwen and the guys from Australia. But we’re saving the very best for last: tonight we’re closing out the conference with a dance party and fireworks.
If you haven’t been to one of our dance parties, you’ve really never partied. John Dewit and his family will be there. So will Gwen and Vern Higaki from Western Reserve Grace Church. Ross, Loudy and Karen will be getting down with us, and you’ll get to meet Clarissa, a volunteer teacher from somewhere near Sydney. I’ll be there, but unless I get a nap at some point today, I probably won’t be dancing much. But I’ll be happy.
Okay. If you haven’t left yet, you probably won’t be able to make it in time, but I’ll take lots of pictures. And I’ll probably ask you for a donation so we can do this again next year.
Jeff, Ian and I left Phnom Penh for Battambang at about six this morning. That saved us about an hour’s worth of traffic. When I first came here a decade ago, the journey would have taken about 14 hours; driving on Road 5 had been, not long before, a war zone.
It’s nicely paved now, and with the exception of a close encounters with water buffalo or two, the trip was quick and without drama. We got here in a record-setting four and a half hours.
Pastor Jim Brown’s team was not so lucky going the other direction. Shortly after being dropped off at the Battambang bus station, they encountered a mob. Apparently, it was led by a group of thug police officers who were intent on disrupting service because the bus company had failed to pay the full amount of their bribe. Nice.
Unfortunately for the team from Goshen, Indiana, they were in a pretty major time crunch with a tight connection in Phnom Penh, leaving them very little time to spare. They were in danger of a very expensive set of missed flights to Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Fortunately for them, Savorn heard about the disruption, headed to the bus station, rescued the team and rented them a van to Phnom Penh. I just now heard that the team made it to the airport — just in time.
Anyway, it’s Jeff’s first time in Battambang (and Ian’s first time anywhere in Cambodia), and I’m really quite giddy. Most guys only watch movies about epic adventures with their buddies. I get to live it. Tonight, for instance, Jeff’s son Ian played pool with a Cambodian prostitute while Jeff and I talked to her “friend,” a 50-something Australian man with a wife and an adult son, about how sexual exploitation of poor Cambodian women forced into the sex trade by economic hardship is an unspeakable evil that is corroding Cambodia’s soul. We then got to explain to Ian that his new friend is going to be raped by that man tonight so she can provide food for her younger siblings…
Anyway. Deep breath…
After we arrived at our hotel this morning, I spent a couple of hours sending emails and Jeff and Ian worked on napping off their jet lag. I got restless and decided I couldn’t wait any longer to see the Battambang kids.
Well, “got restless” is probably not entirely accurate. I’ve been restless for the last few days. In fact, since my family left about a week ago, I’ve been fighting discouragement. I told Jeff on Sunday, “I really need a ‘reset.’ I have a lot of things left to do on this trip, but every day I wake up with less energy than the day before.”
On the drive from my hotel to our Battambang campus, I experienced a very real sense of the presence of God, and felt a fresh infusion of joy and anticipation for the days ahead. I can’t explain it, but I feel like God really did give me a “reset.” When I arrived at the Battambang 1 children’s home, it was pouring down rain, but I felt unusually light and refreshed.
Between then and now I’ve had a number of stressful emails to write and difficult logistical problems to address. I also found out that I had misunderstood the conference schedule – I’m giving a three-part, three hour talk, not giving the same one-hour talk three times as I had mistakenly believed. And right now, I’m dead tired. But I really do have high hopes for the next few days, and I feel encouraged, like I’ve gotten an extra infusion of mercy and grace.
Tomorrow all of the Asia’s Hope kids age 14 and older are gathering in Battambang for a youth conference. We’ve also invited some other Christian teens from the area. We expect more than 250 people to cram into Hope Fellowship Church to hear encouragement from Cambodian, Australian and American pastors. I’m speaking on false labels and true identity, borrowing more than a few themes from my friend Kary Oberbrunner’s book, “Your Secret Name.”
I’m tired. I’m not quite ready for tomorrow morning or for the weeks ahead. But I’m getting there.
I’m back.
I took a few days off from blogging – I even left my camera in its bag. I wanted to enjoy my family’s last few days in Asia without having to worry about documenting the journey.
Kori, Chien, Pak and Xiu Dan left late, late on the first. Thanks to layovers and delays, it took them more than 40 hours to get home. They’re exhausted, but they’re glad to be back in Ohio. After a very short period of intense sadness -- followed by periodic twinges of melancholy that will probably linger until I rejoin them in five weeks – I jumped back into my job with renewed enthusiasm.
Within hours of my family’s departure, I was driving around town with Canadian board member John Dewit and his family, trying to help them wring the most out of their two days in Phnom Penh. They’ve now headed to Battambang, where they will spend most of their two week trip.
Now I’m spending nearly all of my time with my pastor and best friend, Jeff Cannell, and his son Ian. It’s Jeff’s second visit to Cambodia and Ian’s first. What an amazing blessing to have them here. I’ve missed my church so much over the past few months, so I’m especially glad to have these guys traveling with me.
I concede that I am one who is often given to hyperbole. It is, however, no exaggeration to describe yesterday as a visit to both Heaven and Hell.
After breakfast, we drove to the Tuol Sleng genocide museum. I don’t really have the emotional energy to describe the impact this place has on me – it’s really awful. Tens of thousands of photos line the walls: men, women, children, babies -- all of them tortured and exterminated by the Khmer Rouge regime. Just a drop in the bloody bucket when you consider the millions who died during the brutal reign of terror that was known euphemistically as “Democratic Kampuchea.”
In contrast, our time at the Prek Eng 2 children’s home was like a visit to Heaven. The kids have been eagerly anticipating Jeff’s arrival for months. In fact, all of the older kids stayed up way past their bedtimes and came with Narun and Sophal to welcome Jeff and Ian at the airport at 11pm the night before. They were so excited, they simply couldn’t sleep.
We drove from Phnom Penh to Prek Eng through a hot, heavy rain that flooded the road and made me thankful for our car’s 4-wheel drive. When we arrived at 3:45 most of the kids were still at school. A handful of our older kids were at home, so we were able to spend about a half hour just hanging out and chatting with them. When the rest of the kids arrived home, they squealed in excitement when they saw our car, and rushed into the house to give us hugs. It was the first time many of them had seen Jeff since 2007.
The kids quickly changed out of their school uniforms and came back into the living room with puzzles, Uno cards and Twister. Jeff and I wisely opted out of the latter. After about an hour, the rains subsided and Narun swept as much water as he could off of the tiled area that serves as a front yard. The kids pulled out the takraw nets, and I joined Soktoun and Narun on a team that -- despite my presence – won five matches in a row as we listened to Beastie Boys on a pair of old computer speakers.
Around six o’clock we joined the kids and staff for dinner. We sat at the adults’ table and enjoyed a really nice home-cooked meal. Jeff asked Narun and Sophal about their life stories, and heard about Sophal’s childhood as an orphan. Her parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge, and she spent much of her childhood in an orphanage. She truly understands what her kids have gone through.
At about seven, an English tutor arrived and all of the older kids began their evening lessons. Jeff, Ian and I said good-bye and left for Phnom Penh exhilarated, but exhausted. It was an emotionally complex day. So much to see. So much to think about. Reminds me of a song by Rich Mullins:
Sometimes the night was beautiful
Sometimes the sky was so far away
Sometimes it seemed to stoop so close
You could touch it but your heart would break
Sometimes the morning came too soon
Sometimes the day could be so hot
There was so much work left to do
But so much You'd already done
Tonight, our church is throwing the kids a party. There will be cake, ice cream, dinner and – I hope – dancing.
Well, we’re back in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. My family will remain with me for three more days and then head home. Looking at my schedule, I don’t think I’ll have a single day to relax until some time in the middle of September, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m going to miss them quite a bit.
I thought I’d post quickly about our last day in Thailand before jumping back into Cambodia updates.
We got up, had breakfast and headed out with Tutu’s son David to the San Kamphaeng Hot Springs, the natural wonder from which our Hot Springs children’s home gets its name. The Hot Springs themselves were, well, I was going to say “cool,” but that’s not accurate. They were very, very hot.
There are a number of such springs – geysers and bubbling pools of mineral water reaching temperatures above 220F – all over Northern Thailand, but San Kampheang’s are the most famous. We spent the morning at a park/spa/campground where we boiled eggs in the geyser pool, soaked our feet in the slightly cooler stream, had a wonderful Thai massage and swam in a very, very warm pool. I can’t say that I experienced any of the much-touted health benefits, but I did have a good time.
In the afternoon, we headed out to our Hot Springs children’s home, and enjoyed a few vigorous games of takraw which, when played well, resembles a mix between soccer, volleyball and kung-fu. Pastor Suradet and a few of the older kids played very, very well. I spent most of my time apologizing to my teammates. I’m not very good, but I had a great time.
It’s always such a joy spending recreational time with the staff and kids. Often, we teach the kids things we know – they really enjoy learning new games and unfamiliar sports. But it’s especially fun doing things that they’re great at – like takraw and soccer. It gives us a chance to really just be competitive and even a little silly. I like us when we can be peers – just friends – not sponsors or benefactors or tourists or whatever other role we sometimes find ourselves playing.
After an hour or two of games, we sat with Suradet and shared a snack, and then joined the kids in a short time of songs and encouragement. We left tired and sweaty, but happy to have spent the day enjoying not only the beautiful natural surroundings but also a bunch of beautiful people we’re privileged to call our friends.
