Girls at Asia's Hope in Battambang, Cambodia get ready for school.

It's 6:00 on a Wednesday morning, and I haven't slept much at all. Even though my transit schedule is relatively light  today -- a couple of hours in airports, and a two very short flights -- I always have trouble sleeping the night before I travel. Kori is going home -- back to work -- and I'm taking the kids to Thailand. 

We've said our goodbyes in Cambodia, and this morning my heart is full. Our ministry in Cambodia is absolutely flourishing. Our ten homes in Battambang and five in Prek Eng are overflowing with life and love and potential. As one first-time visitor told me this week, "We've supported orphan care projects in other places in the world, and we've seen a lot of different models. But Asia's Hope is so amazing; it's hard to imagine until you've seen it first-hand." 

This morning a story from The Guardian hit the Phnom Penh Post. Virginity for sale: inside Cambodia's shocking trade details a practice well known to those of us who work among the country's poor and vulnerable kids. And it's not just a practice, it's a single facet of a vast system of injustice wherein children are neglected, abandoned, raped, sold, exploited and trafficked -- often by their own family members. 

In the same edition, The Post featured an article about a four-year old girl who had been chained to a post all day for half her young life. Her mother had given her to her captor as collateral for a loan. The situation isn't unique. For Cambodia, it's not even exceptional. 

It's not just Cambodia. This kind of abuse and neglect happens all around the world. It's why we're also working in India and in Thailand. And it's why Asia's Hope must succeed. 

There are some in the aid and development world who are skeptical of the value of residential orphan care. They say things like, "An orphanage is a 19th Century solution to a 21st Century problem." Some even downplay the magnitude of the global human trafficking and orphan crises, insisting that "sex work" can be empowering for poor children and that orphaned and abandoned kids should always be kept in their communities and families of origin. 

As someone who personally reviews every single biography of every single child admitted to an Asia's Hope home, I can tell you that there is still a desperate need for high-quality, family-style residential orphan care for children who cannot be safely placed in their original families or communities. 

Today in Cambodia, you'll find both heaven and hell, often on the same street. In a place like Phnom Penh, you'll meet the very best and the very worst people imaginable. There is a real war between good and evil in places like Cambodia and as in all wars, the children suffer the most. 

Thank you for your support of Cambodian, Thai and Indian indigenous workers who, with the help of ministries like Asia's Hope, are fighting on the front lines -- fighting for the lives of children who cannot fight for themselves.

If you, your church or your business are looking for ways to directly support the vitally important work of Asia's Hope, please contact me today.

We are safe and sound in Phnom Penh, though you wouldn't know it from my blog posts, which have been non-existent over the last few days.

It's not that there's nothing to say, it's just that I've been going pretty much non-stop for 14 hours a day. Whereas it's usually just my family with me, this year I've also had staff from Asia's Hope in the U.S., a video team from Scarlet City Church and supporters from Columbus, Ohio to lead, guide and chauffer. It's been tiring, but also really exciting; I love introducing Asia's Hope and the countries in which we serve to "newbies." I helps keep my love for the people and places fresh.

Yesterday was an especially exhausting one. We got up, packed 9 of us in the 15-passenger mini-bus I've been driving around Cambodia and picked up the Biehn family from their hotel a few blocks away. 

I should stop here and point out that, even in the best of traffic conditions, conveying such a vehicle around Phnom Penh is stressful. It's enormous. The steering is imprecise. The shifter feels like a plunger in a bowl full of rocks. And the other people on the road -- drivers, cyclist, kamikaze motorbikers, pedestrians, stray animals and food carts -- don't really care that you don't know exactly what you're doing or where you're going. They dart in and out on all sides, swarming like a school of fish in a reef.

Yesterday, we didn't experience anything like "the best of traffic conditions." The neighborhood between our hotel and the Biehns' is apparently the site of some week-long royal birthday celebration, so most of the streets are closed, clogged with revelers or both. What should be an easy drive -- straight down this street, turn left on that one -- is always an adventure. But we made it. 

We picked the Biehn's up, and brought them to breakfast, after which they returned to their hotel on foot (rational choice on their part), my boys and one Scarlet City guy headed to the market via tuk-tuk, my wife and daughter returned to their hotel by some means unknown to me. I took the Scarlet City guys -- Danny and Janelle Jackson, Pastor Gabe DeGarneaux and his daughter Lilly -- to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

I've been to Tuol Sleng many times. I don't have the mental or emotional energy to process it again here on this blog, but it's a terrible place. 30 years ago, it was quite literally hell on earth: what the entire planet would look like if Satan was given free rein to twist the planet into his hateful image. Torture, dismemberment, murder, lies, violence, injustice -- all at a level that, even after hearing the testimonies, looking at the photos and reading the stories, is unfathomable.

I spent the morning trying to explain it all to 8-year-old Lilly. 

Explain it to an 8 year old? I can't even understand it myself. But I did my best. 

I talked about the American bombings that killed more than 100,000 Cambodian civilians, the U.S.-Soviet proxy war that used Southeast Asia as its gory chessboard and its government and peoples as its hapless, doomed pawns, the various internal power factions scrambling to take advantage of the chaos. And the evil. Behind it all was capital-E-Evil, Satan's greasy maw and bloody claws tearing, killing and consuming men women and children by the thousands.

We saw the actual instruments of torture -- whips, knives, ropes, flails, shackles, bedframes, buckets, pliers, wires -- all used to beat, maim, rip, shock, crush, drown and hang. We saw the skulls, the bones, the teeth, the clothes the hair. We stared into the eyes of the victims, meticulously photogrpahed and matched to forced, false confessions before being murdered.

And then we left. 

We grabbed a quick lunch at the cafe near our hotel, picked up the Biehn's and headed out of the city, over the Mekong to our beautiful new campus at Prek Eng. When we arrived, school was just letting out. The Asia's Hope School hosts about 140 kids, Kindergarten through 6th grade. Because many of our kids now attend public middle and high schools, about 90 of the Asia's Hope School students are "community kids" from the surrounding area. The rest are children who live at our five Prek Eng homes.

Shortly after we arrived, the rain started, scuppering our video shoot agenda for the afternoon. It came down in sheets. In buckets. In torrents. It rained so hard that our homes' front yards became ponds, our sidewalks turned into rivers. I think we may have actually had white water rapids in our school parking lot for a few minutes. It was beautiful; the rain knocked about 20 degrees farenheit off the scorching afternoon heat. It was also loud. Our homes all have metal roofs, so for a while there, it was like being inside a Tom Grosset drum solo. When it was all over and the water receded, the kids ran outside and picked up the fish that had failed to retreat to the safety of the nearby lakes, and the rest of us continued playing with the kids, transitioning from inside to out as the water drained.

At dusk, we piled into the van, exhausted, and headed back to the city. Once we got over the Mekong bridge, we saw that the city hadn't drained very well at all. Major intersections were flooded, and traffic was grinding itself into a maddening knot: thousands of vehicles honking, lurching, stopping and stalling at each crossroads, people driving on sidewalks, through yards, into around and over one another. What should have taken 10 minutes too more than two hours. When we finally got within walking distance of a restaurant, I gave up on driving entirely. Although it took me ten minutes to move 20 feet across two lanes of traffic (one 'official,' the other on the sidewalk), I forced my way onto the front lot of a store, gave the parking lot guard a handful of dollars, went to the counter, bought a moderately priced bottle of hooch that I didn't really want and asked the proprietress if I could park there for a couple of hours. She scowled at me. And then she smiled, shook her head in something like amusement and said, "okay."

We fought our way across the road on foot and collapsed into a Chinese restaurant where we proceeded to order way too much food. After two hours of eating, laughing, talking and drinking tea, we saw that the traffic had subsided, and we made our way back to our respective hotels.

This morning, we're taking it easy. For me that means that I actually get a shower, and don't have to meet anyone for any reason before 9:00am. We will probably take a walk this morning, maybe visit a couple of shops. After lunch, we're heading back out to the campus, hopefully to get some video interviews with Savorn, some of the kids and with me.

Please pray for our productivity and health. So far, none of us has prolapsed a colon, and I haven't hit anyone with my ungainly land yacht. Despite the challenges, we're having a great time. I can't wait to share some of the video with you. If it captures even half of the goodness that is Asia's Hope, my job of funding this beast should become a whole lot easier.

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The dancing starts at dusk and ends when you're too tired to stand up.

It's 6:30 in the morning, an unreasonable time for me to be blogging, today especially, since I danced for 4 hours last night with about 350 of my favorite people. But our days here in Battambang have been so full, it's been nearly impossible for me to find any time to write. 

Between video shoots, staff and partnering org meetings and visits to our homes, we've been going something close to full speed, full time. So we're tired. But it's a good tired, and is probably the emotional and social-interaction equivalent to the exhausted, achy euphoria one feels after competing in some sort of white water rafting marathon. If I wasn't so old, I could do this more than once a year.

I have so many photos I could show you -- I think I'll make this post more pictorial and less narrative. The faces of the kids and staff say more than I could anyway. Suffice it to say, this is the closest to heaven I may ever see on earth. No, these kids don't have perfect lives. All have suffered loss, and many will continue to struggle with the resulting trauma. But there's no better place in the world to recover than a loving, supportive family. And these kids all have one.

Over the last 48 hours, we've driven through mountains, walked in the pouring rain, flown across both the Bay of Bengal and the Gulf of Thailand, ridden in buses, vans and tuk-tuks -- and we're finally unpacked and rested at our hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

All of us are tired, most of us have flirted with some kind of sickness, and two of us are on the powerful antibiotic Cipro. We miss our friends and family in India, but we're thrilled to be back in Cambodia, which has become a real home-away-from-home for my family over the past few years.

We were greeted at the modest but tidy Pochentong Airport by Savorn, our National Director, his wife Sony and all of our Phnom Penh house parents. The Asia's Hope kids were all in school when we arrived, so our reunion with them will have to wait until tomorrow, but it was great to be hugged warmly and welcomed heartily by these people we've grown to love so much.

It's Addison and Jared's first time here, and I think they're just taking everything in: Cambodia can be a bit overwhelming to first time visitors, but heck, we just came from India. This place actually feels a bit serene compared to Mumbai, Kolkata and some of the other places we've passed through. 

By the time we got to our hotel, we were all ready for a nap, but I had promised Addison and Jared we'd go out to a tailor to get measured for some shirts (about 1/6th of the price we'd pay in the U.S.), so we left the girls behind and headed out via tuk-tuk to the Khmer Independent Tailor on Sihanouk Boulevard. We placed our orders, grabbed a SIM card for my phone and picked up some necessities (and a couple ice-cream bars) at Lucky Market.

Tonight we're going to have dinner with the staff, get a good night sleep and then spend the morning intoducing Addison and Jared to Phnom Penh. We'll grab a bowl of noodle soup, visit a tea shop and then spend some time at the ever-sobering Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. After lunch, I think we're heading out to Prek Eng to see the kids and visit the new campus for the first time since its completion!

The only things that could put a damper on our great times would be sickness...and traffic. I'm driving a huge van -- a mini-bus, really -- to accommodate our family, the guys and the team from Scarlet City that will be joining us next week. I've never driven anything this big anywhere, and driving in Cambodia can be zooey even in a small vehicle. Oh, and I don't have a Cambodia license. So, I'm praying for traveling mercies, and would invite you to do so as well.

I'll be keeping a few loose dollars on hand in case the coppers pull us over and trying to concentrate on the road and remembering how to drive stick. Here goes nothing!

We arrived at the Kalimpong Home 2 early yesterday, and got to see the kids eating their breakfast and getting ready for school. We're shooting a lot of video this year, and one of the four videos we're producing is focused on education, so we wanted to capture some of the "day in the life" kinds of images we'll need for that project.

For a home with 25 kids, two parents and "aunties," things went really quite smoothly. The children all enjoyed their breakfast together in the main living area, and then the aunties and parents helped the girls comb their hair, braiding it or putting it in ponytails. The aunties and mom, Punam, slicked back the boys' hair, and helped them straighten their ties Dad, Sunil, touched up all of the shoes with polish and a brush. The kids then piled into vans and headed off to school.

We then went with Nandu and Kumal, a driver from the church, and visited Jubilee High School, where 16 of our kids, mostly from the Kalimpong 1 home, attend. I was impressed by the school -- it's semi-public, and all of the courses are taught in English. The headmaster and the teachers seem highly qualified and treat the children firmly, but with respect. 

After hanging at Jubilee and taking videos and photos in our kids' classes, we headed to the Asia's Hope school for more footage, but also some fun and games. The school is in a rented building (we'd love to have our own building some day -- more on that later...), but is very well suited to the needs of the nearly 100 Asia's Hope elementary-age students who study there. 

We have a large concrete playground, about the size of a basketball court. This is extremely unusual in this part of India, where everything is built into the side of a mountain, and flat land is at a premium. We enter the campus as road-level, and then descend along a steep, curving driveway. The property consists of the playground, two wooden outbuildings and a large, three-story brick building. The school occupies the ground floor of the large building and one of the smaller wooden structures. Our Kalimpong 2 home occupies the second story, and the landlord's family lives on the top floor. (Whereas all of our homes in Cambodia and Thailand are single-family structures, I think that in Kalimpong's land-scarce and expensive real estate mountainside real estate market, building in this town will mean stacking our homes in the fashion of the locals.)

Even though Asia's Hope is primarily dedicated  to providing family-style homes for orphaned children, I really love this school. Our headmistress, Mrs. Wang Lamu, is an experienced educational administrator whose firm, yet grandmotherly bearing earns the respect and affection of our kids and staff alike. Our teachers are young and energetic, and so patient with our kids. 

And patience is definitely required in this job. As Mrs. Wang Lamu told us yesterday, when these kids first come to Asia's Hope, they come in as orphans. Some have lived on the street, some have been abused. Some have lived in bus stations, others have lived in brothels. Many of the children have no idea how to sit in a chair on their first day of school, some have only received their first-ever pair of shoes only days before. At first, reading, writing and 'rithmatic are simply out of the question. In some cases, they don't even know how to use a toilet -- they'll just wander outside to go potty; sometimes they'll even do it in the classroom.

But in a matter of months, the new kids learn from their peers, and from loving teachers and parents, and before long, they're actually learning. Our kids stay at the Asia's Hope school until they're ready to transition into local schools. And when they do, they're poised for success. Some of our kids at Jubilee High School are among the top in their class! It's amazing what progress a child can make when they're in a school and a home that is designed around their needs. 

So while politicians in the States claim to leave no child behind, that's a reality at Asia's Hope. Rather than forcing our kids into a learning environment in which they cannot succeed, we work hard to create and maintain one that ensures each child gets the care they need to learn and grow and thrive.

Like our elementary school in Prek Eng, Cambodia -- and unlike each of our children's home -- the Asia's Hope school in Kalimpong, India has no permanent sponsorships. We fund this school out of our general budget, the same budget we rely on for medical emergencies, home repairs, staff salaries and other recurring needs. Please pray for our two schools. And if you want to participate financially in the operation of these schools on a one-time or long-time basis, I'd love to hear from you!

As our days have gotten zooier, and my time alone for introspection scarcer, I've gotten a little behind on my blogging. I may be able to rectify that, but I can't make any promises.

Right now I'm running on the proverbial fumes. One of the only things I don't love about Northeastern India is the 4:00 a.m. sunrises at this time of year. It's been playing havoc with me sleep, and I'm almost always tired. Wah. Okay. I'm almost finished complaining: our hotel also lacks light-blocking curtains, so if I wake up at 4:00 am as I did this morning, there's no chance of me getting back to sleep.

Okay. 

At any rate, the first part of our trip was really about maintaining and deepening my family's and my relationship with Nandu, his wife and two kids. With more than 150 staff, it's impossible for me to have deep personal frienships with all of them, my affection for each of them notwithstanding. But it's essential that I stay close with my top guys in each country.

As you may know, relational equity and social capital are of infinitely greater value in Asian business and ministry than in Western. In the U.S., for example, you can fly into Boise, walk into a conference room at a Holiday Inn, be introduced to your new regional manager at 8:00 in the morning and launch into a frank and open S.W.O.T. analysis before you've finished you first cream cheese danish. Not so in Asia, where interconnected --  and to me often-incomprehensible -- systems of personal and quasi-familial relationships underly every interaction, business, ministry or otherwise. So for me, sharing a meal is a part of my job whether or not we "talk shop" or explain to each other the differences between cricket and baseball.

Nevertheless, there's quite a lot of work work that we need to get done in the remaining time in India. And that time is slipping by, tick-tick-tick. Addison Smith, my colleage and project manager, and Jared Heveron, a videographer from Scarlet City, one of our partnering churches in Columbus, Ohio, arrived on Monday, and Nandu and I spent the day driving from Kalimpong to Siliguri, and then after we picked them up at Bagdogra Airport, from Siliguri to Darjeeling to Kalimpong. 

Yesterday, Tuesday, we spent the entire morning and most of the afternoon at a dance and music recital that our kids had been preparing for the last few weeks. It was wonderful -- we have some unbelievably cute and talented kids -- but it was very long. Five hours long if you include the lunch. Jared got some great video, and I got a couple good photos as well. In the evening, we met with our Indian lawyer, who is helping us navigate India's byzantine bureaucracy.

We leave India next Monday, so we've still got a lot to do. We have four videos to produce. Thankfully, Jared's sticking around for our Cambodia trip as well and then returning to India with another shooter and some storytellers afterwards. I'm sure we'll get them all "in the can," but right now I don't see how. So today we're meeting with Nandu to go over the shot list and make a plan to get rolling.

We also have at least one more meeting with our lawyer, budget and fundraising discussions, photos of all our staff and kids, various documentation projects and other miscellanea. Not only that, I want to spend more time playing with the kids, chatting with the staff and hanging out at each of our 4 homes. Oh, and we need to look at land for a future capital campaign. So, yeah.

But things are going well. I really do believe not only in Asia's Hope's overall philosophy and strategy, but in Asia's Hope India specifically. Our location is fascinating, complex and of extreme strategic importance. We border China, Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh, and are not far at all from Myanmar. We are at one of the world's great crossroads for migration, a dubious distinction given the illicit and exploitative nature of much of that transnational travel. We are in the nation with the world's greatest number of slaves, the most orphans, and much of the worst labor and sex trafficking. I could spend the rest of my life just focusing on India, expand Asia's Hope to 100 times its current size and impact and still have only scratched the surface. 

But God and his people are on the move in India, this vast, diverse country, home to five times as many people as were alive on the planet in the time of Christ. Our ministry is a tiny one, only a bubble on a great sea of need. But we're willing. And we're trying to move ahead with purpose and integrity. And that's what we've been called to do. And I'm so grateful to have all of you along for emotional, moral and financial support. This is all very good.

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At Asia's Hope, each home is organized and run as a family -- real moms and dads -- supported by teachers, tutors, coaches, nurses and counselors.

Last month, prominent Cambodian activist Somaly Mam resigned from her foundation amid allegations that she had embellished or fabricated the most dramatic details of her widely-repeated life story as a victim of child sex trafficking.

The New York Times, whose columnist Nick Kristoff had been one of Somaly Mam's biggest boosters, is in damage control mode. Yesterday they published an article that draws attention to widespread fraud in other Cambodian aid sectors, and they focused on very real problems of misrepresentation and profiteering among some orphanages.

We at Asia's Hope deplore fraud and corruption, especially when it involves the most vulnerable in society -- poor, orphaned or otherwise disadvantaged children. I join the Times in decrying the worst of the worst kinds of deceptions, those that further victimize children and mislead foreign donors to earn a buck for some "orphanage owner" somewhere.

In fact, the term "orphanage owner" is deeply disturbing to me. Asia's Hope operates as a transparent, accountable, not-for-profit charitable initiative in our support and our operation countries alike, and we work hard to ensure that there is never any financial incentive to admit any child into any of our homes. 

In Cambodia, for instance, we have actually slowed down our expansion over the past few years as the country's social services infrastructure and economy have developed, and we have continually tightened our admission standards to ensure that only the most needy orphaned children -- those have been permanently relinquished or abandoned by their remaining family members -- are brought to live in our homes.

We've also worked to provide truly comprehensive, holistic care for the children already living with us. We remain committed to grow deeper faster than we grow wider, better before getting bigger. 

Whereas the lousy orphanages that receive most news coverage barely provide "three hots and a cot," Asia's Hope provides a real family environment for each child in our care. Our staff receives ongoing training in child protection, childhood development, leadership and management. 

Our kids enjoy art classes, intermural sports, music and dance training, and have access to a wide array of tutors, enrichment courses and activities. And when they graduate, every child at Asia's Hope is entitled to a university education or vocational training.

Unfortunately, the stories of abuse and neglect at some orphanages make great copy, and provide for journalists and activists an easy hook. Bad news often travels a lot faster than good, and so we too seldom see the media profile organizations that we would consider our peers.

In the same way, it would easy to focus only on the tragic sins and shortcomings of abusive churches and draw the tragically simplistic conclusion that religion itself, rather than bad religion, is the source of the world's problems. But as James 1:27 reminds us, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress."

So, as Bruce Cockburn would put it, we'll continue to "kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight." For every story you'll read of a child being treated poorly in an awful institution somewhere, we'll tell stories of kids whose lives have been transformed by the love of a family and the awesome power of hope. And we'll continue to set a high standard that other residential orphan care providers can aspire to. Together, we'll engage suffering and unleash hope in Cambodia, in Thailand, in India and beyond.

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At the Prek Eng 3 children's home, as at all of our 29 homes in Cambodia, Thailand and India, orphaned children receive the kind of care we'd want for our own chldren if they were suddenly alone and unable to receive loving support from extended family members.

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We took the kids from Kalimpong 2 to the top of Delo mountain (a hill, practically, considering we're in the Himalayan foothills). We had ice cream, games and an all around great time. Here are some pics for the day. Special thanks to NorthChurch in Lewis Center, Ohio for sponsoring these wonderful kids! 

By the way, the kids all caught chicken pox a few weeks back -- you'll notice that some of the kids haven't quite healed yet...

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