As usual, the pace of activities is outstripping by far the pace of my posts. (Lingering effects of trans-global travel aren’t helping things either.) I started to write last night at about 8 p.m., but I kept falling asleep. It’s 5:30 a.m. now; I have hot water on for tea, and no one else is up. I think I’ll be able to manage a short update before things get crazy again.

Late Tuesday night, Pak and I picked up from the airport a very tired group of friends from Columbus. Jared Boyd is my friend and neighbor, and a pastor at my church, Central Vineyard. He brought his ten year old daughter, Rayli. I know they’ve dreamed about Cambodia for years. I’m so glad it’s finally happening. We’re also joined by Seth Earnest, Asia’s Hope project manager. I work with Seth every day at the Asia’s Hope office in Columbus, and I haven’t tired of him yet. He’ll be continuing on with me to Thailand, his first trip there.

Rayli with Sophal, one of the directors of our Prek Eng 2 home

It’s really great to have both Pak and Rayli on this trip. I’ve been to Cambodia something like 20 times, and it would be easy for me to lose my sense of wonder. Experiencing the country and the ministry through the eyes of children keeps me fresh, and reminds me of just how amazing it is to be able to do this kind of work.

I prepared Jared and Rayli in advance for some degree of hardship – unfamiliar foods, unreliable utilities, unbearable heat – but to be honest, we’re living quite well. Savorn booked us a small apartment managed by a long-time friend and colleague of ours, Pastor Narin Chey, and we have everything we could ask for. There’s A/C, hot showers, internet access and even a TV that gets the BBC. And when we visit our staff and kids, we get fresh mangoes and bananas (grown on the premises!) and more hugs than we can handle.

A delicious bowl of soup at our favorite breakfast place

On the team’s first full day in Cambodia, they got another unexpected treat. The manager of a cinema in town offered free tickets to all of our Prek Eng staff and kids to watch Madagascar — in 3D, no less. So, yesterday morning we got up early, grabbed a bowl of phở and hustled off to the theater with 150 Asia’s Hope kids and staff. Everyone, including jaded movie critics like me, had a fantastic time. Rayli and Pak got commandeered by Asia’s Hope kids an hour before the movie started, and emerged from the theater slightly giddy and already exhausted by the non-stop hugs, hand-holding and hair tousling.

Hanging out with the kids from Prek Eng 2 before the movie

After the movie, I chatted with the theater manager, distribution director and a couple of other staff members. They’re eager to partner with Asia’s Hope in the future, and we’re already tossing around some ideas for a fundraiser in the near future. What a cool answer to prayer. Partnering with local businesses and donors is a key component of my long-term strategy for our ministry’s sustainability. Along with a few other contacts we’ve been cultivating, this could be the start of something great.

After the movie, the kids and staff returned to Prek Eng to finish out the school day, and I took the team to a local tailor. Shirts and trousers are incredibly cheap here, so Pak, Jared and I decided to get a few made. (I swear, if I had to wear suits every day for work, I could pay for my tickets to Cambodia with the savings over buying in the U.S.).

We then grabbed a bite to eat and drove out to Prek Eng for a staff meeting and a (literal) field trip to look at some plots of land. We desperately need to get out of the renting cycle in Prek Eng and move on the purchase of land. But as I shared with the staff from Psalm 127, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor at it do so in vain.” So, we’re praying. And trusting. And planning. And, for now, waiting.

The same chapter in Psalms also says “Children are a heritage from the Lord…blessed is he whose quiver is full.” Well, we’ve been blessed. Our quiver is full.

Hence the need to build the house.

Today we’ll see some more land. It’s exciting to look out over a jungley rectangle — nothing but fruit trees, rice paddies and dirt — and to imagine a beautiful campus with five homes, a church, a school, playgrounds and gardens filled with sound of kids singing and laughing, of food being prepared and school lessons being recited… If I hadn’t seen it before at our campuses in Doi Saket, Thailand and Battambang, Cambodia, I’m not sure I’d have the faith to believe we could do it in Prek Eng. But I am 100% convinced that God loves these kids even more than we do, and will work through his people once again to provide the resources we need.

Now the rest of the house is starting to wake up. Jared’s up and checking emails and Seth is rustling around in his room. I should make tea for them and help them start day two in Cambodia.

More from me soon.

Peace.

Okay. That title is actually a pretty egregious exaggeration. Perhaps it should read “Through many airports, subways and transit delays.”

At any rate, after a ridiculously long day of travel, Pak and I arrived only semi-conscious in Phnom Penh yesterday at 2 in the morning. This was the only time I’ve ever been glad to have not been greeted by a large group of staff and kids at Pochentong International Airport. Mercifully, Savorn and Sony met us there alone to take us to our guesthouse.

Pak and I finally got to bed at around 3:00 a.m. and tried to salvage something of a night’s sleep. We got up around 10:00 and headed out to our favorite breakfast place, a little phở joint across the street from a Pakistani-Cambodian mosque a hundred meters or so off of Mao Tse Toung Boulevard, named for the gigantic Chinese embassy that takes up an entire city block in the center of Phnom Penh. The street our restaurant sits on is now paved, reducing slightly the amount of dust in one’s soup.

Perhaps it is something in the air. Or more likely, it’s the ancient family recipe, the years of experience and the ingredients that can only be found in Southeast Asia. But whenever we’re not in Phnom Penh, we can’t stop thinking about this soup. The beefy broth, the tender rice noodles, the fresh herbs that perfume the air as they hit the hot, oily surface of the phở – of course we don’t come here for the food, but it’d be something bordering criminal if we didn’t enjoy it while we were here! (And don’t get me started about the café sua da, the Vietnamese iced coffee that absolutely must accompany the meal…)

After enjoying our breakfast with a level of gusto that either a) amused; b) gratified; or c) frightened the proprietors, we ran a few errands, lost track of time and forgot entirely to eat lunch. At about 1:30, we headed out of town to Prek Eng, where all five of our Phnom Penh-area children’s home lie scattered about in rented houses.

Prek Eng, like most of Phnom Penh, has grown considerably in the last seven years. When we opened our first home there, the road was unpaved, and the five mile journey from the city was a bone-rattling trek that could take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on the number of cattle, petrol trucks, motorbikes, pushcarts and cyclos battling for turf and marginal advancement along a narrow stretch of dirt and gravel that could have only with a degree of optimism been described as having two lanes.

Today, the road has been paved, widened and in all ways greatly improved. A new and much wider set of bridges have been built over the Mekong; new hotels, casinos, restaurants and nightcubs line the road, serving countless new residents living in the thousands of condos and apartments that have infested like concrete kudzu the rice fields that once opened up to a vast, green horizon. The sky itself seems much smaller in Prek Eng these days.

All of this development is grand in its own way. But it’s also problematic for us. Prek Eng is an ideal location for our homes, providing our kids access to universities, to utilities, to activities. But it’s getting harder and harder to find affordable places to rent, and no landlord is willing to give us more than a year on a contract, just in case there’s a profit to be taken with another lessor in a few months’ time. Some of our homes have already moved 4 or 5 times over the past few years — you can imagine the inconvenience and expense. Plus, if there’s anything a kid who was once an orphan needs, it’s a sense of stability. And the constant shuffling of homes has left us with an inequality across our facilities that is far less than ideal – some of our homes are spacious and in great condition, others less so. But we’re not eager to invest heavily in a property that we may lose in four months. So we make do.

Clearly, it’s time to build and buy. More on that later…

Anyway, Pak and I drove out to the Asia’s Hope Christian School and visited with the kids, interrupting their studies for a few hugs. It was clear that most of the kids – and some of the staff – did not recognize me in a beard. Once they heard my voice, they laughed and pointed and shouted my name. (It would be very easy for a white dude to go incognito around here. Change your hair, put on a pair of sunglasses, adjust your accent and you could live hidden in plain sight for years).

Asia's Hope Christian School, Prek Eng, Phnom Penh

After hanging out at the school for a while, we called Narun, the director of Prek Eng 2, and he told us that the senior staff were enjoying some ping pong at Prek Eng 1. I hopped in my car, drove to Prek Eng 1 and then remembered… the home had moved since my last visit, victim of another non-renewable lease. I drove back to the school, and met Sopang, director of Prek Eng 3, whom we followed back to the new (and, in this case, nicer) Prek Eng 1.

For the next couple of hours, Pak and I played ping pong with the staff, causing each of our extremely patient doubles’ partners no end of bad luck. It was very bad ping pong, but it was a very nice time. How wonderful to be able to fellowship as friends and as family with these men and women who dedicate their lives to the difficult work of raising so many children so very well.

After a couple of hours, the kids from Prek Eng 1 came home from school, and the staff returned to their homes to greet their own kids and get dinner started. It’s amazing how much the kids have grown in the past few months. I did a couple of doubletakes as  the adolescent boys, squeaky-voiced and scrawny on my last visit, now pumped my hands muscularly and greeted me with a deep, teenagery, “Hello, Daddy!” And so many of the girls have become beautiful young women. Before long, they’ll be all grown up and off to college. (Pak has also changed a lot since his last visit. He now towers over most of our staff, and is quite a handsome young man. I sense that this has not gone unnoticed by some of the girls at Asia’s Hope, but I’m choosing to pretend it’s just my imagination). 

 

Relaxing with the kids and staff at Prek Eng 1 Children's Home

Around 5:00, we headed to Prek Eng 2, where we were treated to an hour or so of games and a delicious dinner of fish, beef, rice and French fries. By 7:00, we were completely exhausted, and I knew we’d have to head home. Despite the road improvements, driving at night in Cambodia can be hazardous, especially for exhausted foreigners.

Prek Eng 2 Children's Home

After a good night’s sleep, we’re ready to do it all over again. Some delicious phở, a few hours of errands and then off to see the kids. Asia’s Hope project manager Seth Earnest is arriving late tonight, as are my good friend and ministry colleague Jared Boyd and his daughter Rayli. This is Jared and Rayli’s first trip, and I couldn’t be more excited to show them around. Jared’s family has supported Asia’s Hope financially, strategically and morally for many, many years. I’m thrilled that they now get to experience it first hand. I’m certain they will have an amazing time, and I look forward to creating lifelong memories with them.

After a few days of relative rest with Jared and Rayli, the trip will begin to pick up steam as other teams which will need my attention arrive over the next few weeks. I can’t wait. I’m so encouraged about what God is doing with Asia’s Hope, and I am eager to share it with you as time and internet access allows.

Thank you for your prayers, your encouragement and your support!

P.S. Apologies for the marginal quality of the photos -- by the time I got around to editing them last night, I was so tired I could literally not keep my eyes open for more than a few minutes at a time. Hope to do better next time.

For years, I've passed through Seoul on my way to Cambodia. I've enjoyed the excellent food and hot showers at the Seoul-Incheon airport, but I've never ventured any further into the country.

For this trip, however, I decided to extend my layover from a couple of hours to a couple of days. I figured it'd be a great way for my son Pak to connect with his Korean heritage, and for us both to get a head start on working past our jetlag before we start the "work" portion of our trip.

Well, we've had an amazing time. Seoul is just an enormous city -- 25 million if you include the surrounding areas. As I joked yesterday, "There are a lot of Koreans in this town." Lots of Korean restaurants, too, and we've tried to sample all of the classics -- bibimbap, kimbap, bulgoki, galbi, mandoo and lots and lots of kimchee. I even found a cool little coffee shop that roasts its own beans. (It's late, and I want to sleep, so I've decided to schedule our remainign few hours in Seoul tomorrow morning around grabbing a cup or two when it opens at 10am).

As much as we've enjoyed our time here, both Pak and I are restless. At dinner tonight, Pak seemed to be distracted. He's a voracious eater, but he wasn't going after the food with as much vigor as usual. I asked him what was on his mind, and he said, "I just can't wait to see the kids."

I'm with you, buddy.

I logged onto Dropbox (free and fast wifi is almost always just a click away in Seoul) and pulled up some of the bios of the kids from the Prek Eng 2 home, sponsored by our church in Columbus: Sitha, Sreyka, Vilaiy, Soktol, Sokthoun... so many famliar faces we miss and love.

And suddenly Seoul seems like a layover again. A nice place to grab a bite to eat, but not what we came here for.

Tomorrow, we head to Cambodia via Guangzhou, China, a city we haven't seen since we adopted our daughter Xiu Dan in 2009. But this time, we're not leaving the airport. After that, Cambodia, which has now become a home away from home. This promises to be one of our most exciting trips ever. I hope you'll follow along.

“Aww,” said Pak sadly. “I just saw a little girl who reminds me of Dan Dan.” “I suspect you’ll see a lot of that on this trip,” I said.

Less than an hour into our journey, we hadn’t left Port Columbus, and we certainly hadn’t yet passed from the melancholy of departure into the excitement of travel. But now, with one very short leg (toe, perhaps?) of our journey out of the way, as we sit waiting in the international departure terminal in Detroit, it’s starting to feel like we’re really on our way.

Airports are strange places. In some ways, they don’t even feel like real places at all. Here at gate A56, we’re clearly still in America: the signs are all comprehensible, the shopkeepers all speak relatively standard versions of English, and the fast food is still plentiful, mediocre and expensive. But the announcements are in Korean and Mandarin, not just in English. People of all different ages, shapes, colors and agendas rush by, each with as little claim to this city and this place as the next person. 

We’re really in between two worlds. We’re on our way to Asia, but we’re not in Asia. We’re leaving our family, but we’re traveling across the globe for a joyful reunion with our brothers and sisters. We’ve left, but we haven’t arrived.

Such is life, though, isn’t it? We live in both the now and the not yet. We experience the kingdom of God every time we see a child rescued, but it’s abundantly clear that we haven’t passed fully into that reality — there are still 143 million orphans in the world today.

We spend months and years forging relationships that promise to save another 20 kids from exploitation, knowing well that pedophiles like Alexader Trofimov will probably rape three times as many children before we can manage to open the doors of another children’s home.

But we go on. Our tickets are paid for. Our bags are checked through to our destination. Our boarding pass is clearly marked — we know we’re going to get there. Delays, setbacks, misplaced luggage aside, there’s no going back.

I hope you’ll join us on the journey. It’s long, tiring and occasionally disorienting, but it’s a trip of a lifetime.

You know about senioritis, don't you? It's a case of unease, distraction and diminished productivity -- experienced most acutely by seniors in high school in the days immediately preceding graduation -- that afflicts those eagerly awaiting the completion of one stage of life in anticipation of an imminent future event.

My kids, whose school ends for the summer tomorrow, have had it for a couple of weeks.

And I've got it bad.

I leave for Asia in less than a week, and though I'm going to badly miss my friends and the family I'm leaving behind, I almost literally can't wait to get to the airport and get on my way.

This trip promises to be one of my most significant in years. We will, among other things, be:

• looking at plots of land in Phnom Penh and praying that God will give us the land we need to build a new, unified campus (complete with church and school!) for all five of our Prek Eng homes
• meeting with potential donors who may choose to participate in a campaign to raise money for that land and those houses
• introducing Asia's Hope for the first time in person to Pastor Jared Boyd and his daughter Rayli, who are among my dearest friends in this world
• meeting with some potential church partners who may play a role in the future of Asia's Hope
• thanking in person the pastor of a Korean church that has given generously to Asia's Hope recently
• casting a vision among our staff and visiting church teams for significant investment in the future of our kids post-high school
• working with our staff to craft a comprehensive plan for college scholarship funding and career counseling
• Meeting for the first time the new kids and staff from our Battambang 8 home
• Introducing Seth Earnest, Asia's Hope Project Manager, to Asia's Hope Thailand for the first time

And, of course, I'll be celebrating God's goodnesss and his love for humankind, incarnate in every single child He's rescued and placed in our care. I miss desperately my friends and family in Asia, and I can't wait to be reunited with them.

My handsome and kind son Pak pictured with one of his friends from Asia's Hope in Battambang.

I'm also looking forward to spending a couple of days in Seoul with my son Pak so we can both get a chance to absorb some of his Korean heritage. Pak is one of the most interesting and compassionate people I know. I can't think of a better travel companion.

Until then, I'll be in and out of the office, scurrying around, trying to tie up last minute details and working hard to not open any new cans of worms that I can't close in the next few days.

And I'll be trying to enjoy the last few days at home with Kori, Xiu Dan and Chien without driving them nuts with my pacing and racing.

I read recently that 71% of Americans report feeling trapped in their current job.

There are, of course, a multitude of reasons people feel that way. “My boss doesn’t value my contributions.” “I’m not adequately compensated.” “I don’t have room for advancement.” “My employer doesn’t offer health coverage.”

Having had a number of lousy jobs in my day, I can certainly identify with some of these sentiments. Can you?

Unfortunately, for more than 200 million child slaves and underage indentured servants in this world, being “trapped” is more than a metaphor. They are, often quite literally, locked into occupations that most adults would find appalling.

Orphaned children are among the populations at highest risk for this type of exploitation. In the communities that we serve in Cambodia, Thailand and India, kids who don’t have parents that can care for or protect them face daily the threat of being trafficked as farm hands, domestic servants, factory workers and prostitutes.

For all of you who support Asia’s Hope or one of our partnering churches with your prayers and your financial gifts, thank you. You are on the front lines of a battle between hope and despair. You are heroes to the hundreds of kids we serve every day. 

It's hard to believe that in just over four weeks, I'll be heading back to Cambodia and Thailand to visit the staff and kids of Asia's Hope. I'll be joined by my son Pak and by Seth Earnest, our project manager. 

I'll also be spending lots of time with pastors and guests from our partnering churches. Many of the people coming this summer will be visiting our projects for the very first time. I'm excited about what God will do on this trip and as a result of the trip.

Please bookmark this blog, and also join us on Facebook and Twitter to get daily updates from me and from Seth. And tell your friends! This will be a fun ride, and we'll take all the prayer and moral support we can get.

I recently did an interview with friend and author Marla Taviano, addressing some of common criticisms and concerns facing organizations like ours. Eventually this may become part of a large FAQ we'll publish on the site, but for now, I think this will make some useful reading for anyone interested in the kind of work we do. Please feel free to ask questions in the comments section here or contact me if you want to chat further.

Before diving into the first set of questions, I wanted to point out that although there are some universal concerns to address – and even some misconceptions to clear up – I can only speak with authority for Asia’s Hope. That having been said, many of the criticisms I hear about residential orphan care ring true to me, especially for organizations that provide care in a traditional institutional framework.

I would agree, for instance, that large institutional orphanages staffed with shift-workers – as opposed to family-style children’s homes with full-time moms and dads – tend to exacerbate rather than alleviate many problems facing orphaned or poor kids. Unfortunately, many people who rightly criticize poorly conceived and badly run institutions paint with an overly broad brush, ignoring the complexity of the issues facing orphaned kids, their communities and the organizations trying to serve them, and obscuring the differences between good and bad strategies for care.

I hope that this dialogue will provide some helpful perspective for your readers who wish to understand the issues at hand and advocate for best practices in orphan care.

Question: "Three out of four children living in orphanages are not orphans; they still have at least one parent alive." Is this true of Asia's Hope orphanages?

First of all, I think that we have to clarify what we mean when we say “orphan.” Colloquially, most people think of an orphan as a child whose mother and father have both died. For our purposes at Asia’s Hope, however, we define an orphan as any child who has no parents who can or will care for them. So, while we do prioritize for admission kids whose parents have both died, we also provide care for kids who may have, for instance, a mother who has died and a father who is in prison or who has abandoned them.

Just yesterday we admitted a sibling group – two boys and a little girl – whose father had committed suicide, and whose mother had abandoned them. The kids had no food, no access to healthcare, no shelter and no education. Neither the villagers nor their extended family could or would take them in. Do these kids fit the popular definition of orphans? Maybe not. But they fit ours. So, offhand, I can’t quote you stats on how many of the 600 kids in our care have one parent living, but I can say that we only admit children for whom no other credible options exist.

We wholeheartedly support the organizations out there that provide different kinds of care – village-level education, preventative and emergency health services for poor families, well-baby care, advocacy for safe and humane working conditions for destitute laborers – these are all essential! But for a small percentage of poor children – those who have no one else to care for them, especially those who are at high risk for sexual and economic exploitation – we provide essential, lifesaving help.

Question: "Orphanages tend to separate children from their parents and from family life which is paramount for a healthy adulthood. Nothing is done to reunite children with their families and little is done to maintain strong relationships between children and their parents." Is this true?

Well, as I explained in my previous answer, most of the kids in our care have already been separated from their parents, and have received little or no help from their extended families, either because the families do not have the resources to provide that care, or because the families have simply abandoned them. So, for many kids, a reunion with a biological family is impossible. And in many other cases, it is the remaining family members – aunts, uncles, cousins -- who have been exploiting the kids, forcing them to work as on the streets as beggars, or in the fields as farm laborers. To reintegrate the kids into this kind of situation would be unwise and unsafe. But where possible, we facilitate continued contact with extended families. Often family members will come to visit, and occasionally, our staff will accompany kids back to their villages to help maintain contact between the child and their community of origin.

On the other side of the equation, we work hard to provide a real family for the children in our care. We don’t have huge, institutional facilities; we build or rent single-family dwellings. We don’t hire shift-workers, who come and go; we recruit full-time, long-term moms and dads who become parents to the kids in their care. And we work to keep the homes small.

We’ve seen huge orphanages – sometimes with hundreds of kids. Every study we’ve read and every piece of anecdotal knowledge we’ve accumulated indicates that kids from those types of institutions fare poorly as adults. That’s why we try to admit only 20 to 25 kids per home, and we generally maintain a high 1:5 staff-to-child ratio. The kids in our care develop stable, lifelong relationships with real mothers and fathers, real brothers and sisters. We believe that this will provide our kids with the kind of loving family environment that all experts agree works best for kids, especially kids who have suffered the trauma of loss and extreme poverty.

Question: "Most orphanages do not have reintegration programs for their youth. Youth who have spent years in orphanages are not adapted to community life and struggle to find their place in society when they become adults." What's going to happen to these kids as they prepare to finish high school?

Great question. We’re committed to providing every child in our care with the education and training they need to succeed as independent adults. Our kids are adapted to community life – they attend local schools, they visit the markets, the learn chores and skills they’ll need to integrate into the larger population. And they receive the best education available. We hire tutors to help them stay ahead in school, and we provide many options for educational advancement and enrichment. Our kids learn musical instruments, foreign languages, computer skills and recreational sports – all things we in the West would want for our own children.

When our kids graduate, we will provide scholarships and loans so that they can attend college or vocational training programs if they choose. And although most of our kids are still in elementary and middle schools, we’re making our Scholarship Fund a big priority over the next few years, soliciting private donations and encouraging our church partners and other sponsors to set aside funds to provide a high-quality post-secondary education for the kids they’re currently supporting.

Question: UNICEF is concerned about the emotional loss that the children may feel from exposure to a revolving door of volunteers. "While at the orphanage most volunteers seek to build emotional bonds with the children so they can feel they made a difference. Though well intended, this leads to a never-ending round of abandonment." Do you think this is something you need to be concerned about at Asia's Hope? How can you know that visits from mission teams are helping more than hurting?

This is certainly something to be concerned about. And this type of issue is one that we’ve addressed a multiple levels in our organization. A bit of context, first. There are a number of orphanages in Cambodia and across the developing world who rely on donations from “voluntourists” to fund their operations. This is a very risky model that opens the kids up to all kinds of potential dangers.

Aside from the very real attachment-related issues identified by UNICEF in the article you mention, children at these types of institutions are subject to wild fluctuations in the level of care they receive – when they get lots of visitors, they have enough food and medicine and money for schools. When they don’t, they don’t.

Also, this type of an arrangement is a child-protection nightmare. By inviting a never-ending stream of strangers, you drastically increase the chances of giving pedophiles access to vulnerable children who may be abused at the institution due to poor oversight by the staff or enticed away from the institution by offers of money or promises of other favors. As a result, many people who walk away from these types of visits feeling like they’ve done something good for the kids, actually end up propagating a model that can be harmful. 

Although we at Asia’s Hope do host visitors from abroad at our children’s homes, our model is philosophically, strategically and tactically very different from that critiqued by UNICEF and others as “orphanage tourism.”

Asia’s Hope is not a volunteer placement organization, nor are we a short term missions oriented ministry. We exist to provide high-quality, family-style residential care for orphaned children at high risk of sexual and economic exploitation. The good of the children is always our top priority. All of our homes enjoy stable, ample funding from Asia’s Hope International, which recruits church partners in North America into long-term relationships with individual homes. We work hard to foster real, respectful relationships between the staff and kids at our homes and the leadership and selected congregants at the partnering churches. To maintain that relationship, we facilitate visits from the partnering churches, usually one or two times a year. Each visit operates under the authority of a partnering church, and within strict guidelines detailed in our child protection policy. We also occasionally host “vision trips,” designed to recruit churches and key donors into long-term funding relationships with Asia’s Hope. On a very limited basis, we also permit families who have supported Asia’s Hope in the context of a church partnership to visit the homes.

We work hard to respect the needs and wishes of our indigenous staff when we plan these visits; we try to schedule them at times that are conveniently aligned with the kids’ school calendar, and we work with our staff to make sure that visitors engage in activities that promote, rather than detract from family cohesion. In short, our homes are not tourist attractions. We welcome family and family friends, but like your home and mine, we do not have an unmediated, “open door” policy.

Question: I have lots of friends (online and in real life) who have a real heart for orphans. What advice would you give for those who want to be involved in a hands-on way (besides just giving money)? And beyond Asia's Hope, what kinds of things do they need to find out before giving their time/money/resources to an orphanage (or organization that supports orphanages)?

First of all, I want to offer a word of encouragement and affirmation. Caring for orphans is one of the highest, noblest aspirations I can think of. As a Christian, I believe that God’s spirit dwells in a very real way among the poor, the oppressed, the orphaned and the abandoned. There is a special blessing for all who give sacrificially to help orphans, a deep communion with Jesus that is impossible to attain from mere church attendance, formal worship or even Bible study. That having been said, some strategies and some motivations for serving orphans are more helpful than others.

I think that the first step toward hands-on involvement is one of deep and often painful self-examination. Think and pray long and hard and commit to doing what’s best for the orphaned kids and not what seems most rewarding to you. Ask yourself if you’re willing to work in anonymity, willing to work in submission to those with spiritual authority in the communities in which you wish to serve, and willing to work for little or no discernable reward if doing so will provide the greatest benefit for orphaned children. If you’re willing, then I believe you’re on the right path.

After my first trip to Cambodia, I wanted with all of my heart to move to the country, and to just immerse myself and my family into daily, hands-on interaction with the people there. I’ll admit, I believed that I was uniquely called and equipped to make a difference with my presence ‘on the ground.’ I was challenged – and saddened, at first – by a Cambodian pastor who said to me, “John, we do not need you here. We have experienced, skilled workers here. We need you to help us provide financial resources that we cannot get here, and to tell our brothers and sisters in America about what God is doing in Cambodia and ask them to help.” I had to do a real gut check. Was I in this for me or for the people I was claiming to serve? It was only after I decided that I would continue to work for the good of the Cambodian people even if I never received any of the warm feelings and personal affirmation that I really got confirmation from God that this was the right path for me and my family. I don’t mean to suggest that there is no role for hands-on involvement for Westerners in international ministry; I just mean that we all need to check our own priorities at the door and focus on what really is best for the people we’ve been called to serve.

Second, you need to take personal inventory of your skills, your talents and your spiritual gifts and determine which of these are most useful in meeting the needs of orphaned kids. Do you have money or access to money through your church or circle of friends? Mobilize those resources. Talk to your boss; approach your pastor. Encourage them to make orphan care a priority.

Are you a skilled communicator? A photographer? A graphic designer? Do you have logistical, technical or accounting skills? There are dozens – maybe hundreds – of existing organizations doing great work that could use your services. Get involved. Volunteer.

Some of these opportunities might even lead you to in-country involvement. If you’re a nurse, doctor or dentist, or if you are certified to teach English as a second language, you might be uniquely equipped to go short- or long-term to minister overseas.

Third, you need to figure out which organizations you align with philosophically, strategically – even theologically. This may take some time and some research. But it’s a really important step. If you’re going to pour your heart and soul and your money into a cause, it’s worth making sure that the cause is well-run and well-conceived.

Here are some key questions you should ask to determine whether or not an orphan care organization is worth supporting:

• Does the organization align with my ethical and theological world view?
• Is the organization legally registered with the government?
• Does the organization meet or exceed the government’s minimal standards for child care?
• Does the organization have long-term, trained and well-supervised staff?
• Does the organization have a child protection policy that covers all staff and visitors?
• Are sibling groups kept together?
• Does the organization attempt to replicate family living?
• Does the organization have workable strategies for stable, long-term funding?
• Does the organization have strategies in place to transition the children into successful, independent adults?
• Does the organization respect and empower indigenous staff?
• Is the organization and its staff financially transparent and accountable?

If you can answer “yes” to all of these questions, then I’d say you’re working with an organization that is trying its best to do what’s best for the kids in its care. If not, then you should exercise real caution about getting involved. No organization is perfect, but you should expect to see progress toward all of these goals.

Question: Tell me a little about you and your family. How did you get involved with orphan care and with Cambodia?

Well, my wife Kori and I were high school sweethearts. We’ve been married for 18 years. We live in Columbus, Ohio with our three kids, all of whom were adopted. Chien, 14, is from Vietnam. Pak, 13, is Korean and Xiu Dan, 6, is from China.

We adopted Chien in 1998 while Kori was working as a mechanical engineer, and I was working at a small graphic design and marketing firm I had just started. Our trip to Vietnam changed our lives for a lot of reasons. First, it introduced Chien to our family. Also, it planted the seed in our hearts that would eventually grow into full-time, vocational orphan care and advocacy.

To be honest, neither of us had any specific interest in Asia prior to Chien’s adoption. We knew we wanted to adopt (we’re not infertile, as far as we know), and at the time, Vietnam was a relatively easy program to apply for. So, we did it. But during the adoption process God really drew our hearts to Asia, and then sealed the deal when we went to pick up six-month-old Chien.

After Chien’s adoption, we couldn’t stop thinking about Vietnam. We couldn’t forget the people we met, especially the orphans and street kids. We began to believe that God might be calling us to full-time vocational missions work in Vietnam. We spoke with our church, we approached various missions people in our denomination, and none of it really panned out. It seemed like the doors just weren’t going to open for us.

Meanwhile, God had plans to bring our son Pak into our lives. He was born in the U.S. to a young Korean woman, and came rather suddenly into our lives. In fact, he was born the day after Chien’s first birthday, and was in our family the day after that. Later, in 2006, we would travel to China to adopt Xiu Dan.

So, anyway, in 2000 the youth pastor at the church we were attending approached me and said, “John, I know that you and Kori are really in love with Vietnam. Would you ever be interested in Cambodia?” To be honest, I didn’t know much about Cambodia, except that it was next door to Vietnam, and that it was desperately poor, having been beat to shreds by a brutal civil war. I said, “Well, sure. Why?” He told me about a pastor from a church in our denomination about an hour away from Columbus. “He does something in Cambodia. Not sure what it is – you should call him.”

I called the pastor, and basically invited myself along on his next trip. He graciously allowed me to come along on what was pretty much a run-of-the-mill short term missions trip. But while we were there, God gave us a vision to move beyond a once-a-year visit evangelism and teaching gig. We met so many amazing Christians in Cambodia – they had everything they needed for successful ministry – the organization, the passion, the gifting, the spiritual authority – everything but money. And we as American Christians had the converse – money, and a willingness to help, but very little else to bring to the table.

It seemed pretty easy at first. Let’s make a commitment to fund a small project, and then we’ll go back to America and ask our friends to donate. So, that’s what we did. We agreed to help a church in Phnom Penh rent a building for ministry to college students. It was something like $700 per month. Not a very big commitment. So, we set about raising funds, and before long, enough people had given that we had to start thinking about get serious. We incorporated as a non-profit in 2001.

For the first few years, we had a bit of a scattershot approach to our work, funding everything from medical clinics to outreach to military officials. When the opportunity came to start our first orphan home in 2004, I knew I’d found what I’d been looking for. Over the next few years, we narrowed our focus to residential orphan care, and expanded to Thailand, opening our first home there in 2005. Today, we operate 23 homes in Cambodia, Thailand and India, providing comprehensive care for about 600 kids. We have about 150 indigenous staff – moms and dads, teachers, nurses, cooks and administrators.

The co-founding pastor served as our full-time Executive Director until February 2009. After he left the organization, I took the directorship, and I closed my design business shortly thereafter. I love what I do, and can’t wait to see what God does with this ministry over the next few years.