After yesterday's all-day extravaganza, I was too tired to post. Today I'm too busy: another full day.
I will let Seth Earnest's great post serve as my update for now. When I have the time I will do my best to write a suitable entry.
After church on Sunday, we drove directly from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, a five hour and 5,000 cow journey through the Cambodian countryside. Since my first trip in 2000, the road has improved dramatically, but it was still basic enough in areas to keep my attention fully at the task of delivering our team of five without incident or injury to the 12th Century capital of the Khmer empire.
My friend and colleague Seth Earnest has done an excellent job describing the vast temple complex of Angkor; it’s a joy to read the observations of such an enthusiastic first-time visitor to what is indisputably one of the world’s most impressive monuments to ancient man’s architectural ingenuity and artistic expertise.
After a long and exhausting Monday exploring the rocky ruins of temples and tombs, we drove yesterday another three hours to Battambang. After visiting our nearly-completed Battambang campus and joining the team from Crossroads Church (Mansfield, Ohio) at an appreciation banquet for our Cambodian staff, my head has been filled with thoughts about what man builds and for whom.
Certainly the modern-day ministry of Asia’s Hope is almost entirely dissimilar to the medieval-era kingdom of Angkor. That hasn’t stopped me from drawing comparisons in my mind, though.
The former was built for the wealthy and the powerful and for the glory of earthly kings. Thousands of years after its construction, the great city of Angkor remains a powerful symbol of the rise and decline of a great human empire. The Cambodian monarchs that designed and demanded the amazing feats of engineering have long since died, their names mere legends, shrouded in the mists of history.
Asia’s Hope, on the other hand, is being built for the benefit of the poor upon the command and under the authority of a Monarch whose kingdom will never pass away. Our buildings will probably not last nearly as long as those of the Angkorian kings; certainly no one will be naming architectural styles or historical epochs after them. But the work we’re doing is eternal. The lives of the hundreds of kids currently in our care and those of the thousands of orphaned kids who will be served by the land and houses we’re investing in today are worth far more than the wealth of all world’s ruling families combined.
It’s late now. We’ve been running around and playing with kids for the last nine hours. Tomorrow holds more of the same. I’m tired, but encouraged by the words in Matthew that I’ll paraphrase here: “And Jesus said, ‘If you have not played Steal the Bacon with the least of these my brethren, you have not played Steal the Bacon with me.”
Looking at the dates, I suppose I can’t deny it, but it seems hard to believe that it’s been six days since I last posted. We’ve been beyond busy, going non-stop from about 6am to 11pm for the past week, traveling from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap and then to Battambang, where I find myself early this morning, rushing to put a post together before scrambling out the door for breakfast.
This morning, Jared and Rayli are heading heading out into some of the rural areas surrounding Battambang to meet with some pastors supported by Central Vineyard Church in Columbus, Ohio. Seth, Pak and I will be staying in town, and have no further plans until lunch time. Now that I think of it, I could probably use a shower. I’ll try to put a better post together after breakfast.
I have so many thoughts, so much I’d like to write about. Perhaps a cup of tea and some banana pancakes from Sunrise Café will help me focus. Who knows? It might be my best post yet. Stay tuned.
For now, however, I’ll leave you with some photos of some of the beautiful kids from Asia’s Hope in Battambang.
It's going to be a short blog post today -- in just a few minutes we'll be heading out to take all the kids from Prek Eng (except for an unfortunate few who have exams this morning) to the Santapheap Water park. The kids are thrilled. It's always a great time.
Later this afternoon, we'll be taking all the older boys out to a see a kickboxing match. Somewhere in between, Pak, Seth and I need to get to our travel agent and purchase our tickets to Thailand. It's going to be a big, crazy day. And then tomorrow after church? We're hitting the road for a week in Battambang. Busy. We're hitting the deep end of this trip: nothing but packed days from here on out.
The last couple of days have been intense. We've visited the horrific Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (sometimes called the Asian Auschwitz) and the National Museum. We've spent time at all five homes, playing and chasing and singing and dancing. We've visited four plots of land and discussed the relative merits of each. We've had devotions with the kids and played ping pong with the staff.
I hope we've been a blessing to the kids and the staff. I know for sure they've blessed us immeasurably.
Will write more when I get a second to breathe. Keep praying for us!
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.
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.
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.
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).
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).
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.
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.