Wrapping up our Cambodia trip

Well, our time in Cambodia is complete. My family and I will be leaving our hotel in Siem Reap and heading for the airport in just under a half hour. We're bringing Amber and Sunil — our Indian co-directors — and their wives with us to Thailand, where we'll spend time with our Thai staff and kids before heading back to the States.

I've been doing a decent job of keeping current with emails and in-person meetings, and I've kept our Instagram feed populated, but my blog posts have been few and far between. It seems that every day is packed full from stem to stern, and I usually have three or four hours of work to do after everyone else has gone to bed. Unfortunately, that means that there are a lot of pictures and stories I'd love to share that I may not get around to, at least not in this forum.

I wish I'd had more time to focus on communicating the needs at our secondary school in Battambang, Cambodia. That's something I'll be hitting on repeatedly between now and the end of the year. We urgently need to find long-term supporters for that project. It is essential to our work, but it's expensive for our little organization to keep the doors open. Please join me in prayers for that initiative. 

I do hope that if you've been reading my posts here or following on one of our other social media platforms you have gotten a sense of use what kind of ministry we are and what joining with us could mean for you. Please continue to pray for our time in Thailand. God is moving in and through Asia's Hope. 

If the admittedly marginal internet connection here will allow it, I'll post a few albums of pics from my Cambodia trip. Some of them I've posted before, some are new...

Our trip to Cambodia and arrival in Siem Reap.

Our amazing day exploring the temples of Angkor.

Family time with the kids and staff in Prek Eng.

An evening at the fights in Phnom Penh.

Wonderful times in Battambang.

John McCollumComment
Dancing in the streets

Sundays are always fun at Asia's Hope. This one had us dancing in the streets. 

The morning started at Hope Fellowship, our church in Battambang. With more than 400 attenders, this counts as something of a megachurch in Cambodia. We kicked off the service with a few congregational worship songs, and followed them with performances from three different groups of our kids. I sang one song, and then I preached a message from Romans.

I love worshipping with the Asia's Hope staff and kids, and this time was extra special, because I was joined by my family, Carol's family (Carol is the administrator for Asia's Hope's main office in Ohio), Addison (our project manager) and the co-directors of Asia's Hope India, Amber and Sunil and their wives. It's probably unwise for us all to be in the same place at the same time; if a meteor struck, Asia's Hope would be set back significantly by the loss of executive personnel.

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After the service, we stopped to take a group picture at each of our 13 homes. Even at a quick pace, it took us more than an hour. We had a delicious lunch together with Savorn at a local Indian restaurant, and returned to our hotel for a brief rest.

Late afternoon, we headed out for a dedication party at the brand new University Student Center, home to 25 young scholars who grew up at Asia's Hope in Battambang. I've known most of these kids since they were quite young, so it's a real kick to see them living more independently and thriving in their studies. We've been blessed with a beautiful — and affordable — facility for these kids, and they all seem to love it there. Next year, we're adding 10 more students to the center, and will probably have to open a second one within the next couple of years.

This center — and the one like it in Phnom Penh — are key elements of our strategy to transition our kids to independent adulthood and to raise up a new generation of educated, hardworking and responsible leaders for Asia's Hope's and Cambodia's future. We're working now to develop funding and operational strategies that I'll be talking a lot about in the coming weeks and months.

We hired caterers for the party, and enjoyed a dinner of beef (roasted whole on a spit), noodles, Cambodian sour soup, and fresh fruits. After the meal, we danced. For hours, it seems. And I know I've said this before, but I'm always so impressed with the difference between Asia's Hope dances and the ones I've attended (or chaperoned) in the States. These parties are wholesome, inclusive and joyful. It's so much fun to join our kids in cutting loose, laughing and dancing without judgment or self-consciousness.

Our day was not completely without its sorrows. Addison had to cancel his trip and leave suddenly — just a day after arriving in Cambodia — due to an unexpected and serious illness in his family. And Punam, the wife of Pastor Sunil, found out that her sister had died quite quickly after a short battle with cancer. As always, around here, tragedy and celebration are mixed together, drunk often in the same cup. So please pray for Addison's and Punam's families. Punam has decided to stay on and finish her trip. I hope that spending time with these kids and staff who have themselves lost parents, siblings and children will be deeply comforting.

John McCollumComment
Reflections after driving across a changing country
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It's Friday morning, and I'm finally feeling human after emerging from some monster cold/sinus infection/bronchitis thing that really dampened my ability to enjoy and engage much of anyone for about a week. I felt so lousy on Wednesday that I delayed my departure for Battambang by 24 hours. I stayed in bed most of the day and I think that was key to my recovery.

Yesterday morning my family checked out of our hotel in Phnom Penh, loaded into our borrowed van and made the five hour drive to Battambang, Cambodia's second-largest city. When I first visited Cambodia about 18 years ago, that drive would have taken something like 20 hours. The roads were often unpassable; the adjacent rice paddies were studded landmines, which are reported to be uncomfortable for vehicles and their occupants.

So for the first few years we flew into the city on rickety, reconditioned Aeroflot prop planes that burped and shuddered before landing with objectionable thuds and clanks on a single strip airfield, delivering us to a sweltering quonset hut where we rescued our terrified luggage and fled via taxi to the barely-air-conditioned and now defunct Te.O Hotel. Ah, the Te.O, with its questionable little restaurant, favored by drunken Cambodian military officials, presumably for its large stock of Johnny Walker Red and signature dishes like "Salad Bin Laden" and "Beef Tongue On Fire."

A few years later, the government had grudgingly improved Highway 5 to the point where a trip by car was manageable within, say, 9 hours. Sure, significant stretches of the road were unpaved and could have been improved by some light carpet bombing, but for teams of more than four or five people, driving represented a significant cost — and potential life — savings over flying.

Yesterday I made the trip in just under five hours. The entire way is paved, and it is now possible to find multiple rest stops with above-ground toilets. The city of Phnom Penh seems to stretch about an hour further into the former countryside, and the outskirts of Battambang extend far beyond its famous statue, which once marked the furthest boundary between semi-urban and really-rural. We've since upgraded our hotel, and can now choose from well over a dozen really good restaurants.

This morning I'm sitting on the second-floor balcony of the Kinyei Cafe, enjoying a perfectly-made small flat white with an extra shot of espresso. Kinyei is owned by my friends Marc and Jose, who also own Phnom Penh's Feel Good cafes and roasters. It sits at the quiet end of Street 1-1/2, adjacent to a couple Colonial-era shophouses that, to the utter bafflement of my Cambodian staff, I fantasize about purchasing, rehabbing and turning into a retirement home cum AirBnB. Most locals prefer the glitzier Starbucks-style "Brown Coffee" franchise stores and new-build condos, but I'm a sucker for the wood shutters, faded stucco and exposeable brick of the century-old buildings that probably indicate some latent Orientalist exotification bias. For that, I'm profoundly sorry-not-sorry. You can take the boy out of America, but...

Anyway, after checking into our hotel, we took a short rest and then headed out to visit our Battambang campus. It too has changed over the past few years. A lot. I remember when we first purchased the original parcel of land. It was out in the middle of the country, flanked by nothing but farmland. Even after adding our first few homes, arriving at Asia's Hope was something like discovering the Others' settlement in the TV series Lost — a tiny community thriving surprisingly in the middle of nowhere.

It's now on its way to being in something like the center of Battambang proper. We've since bought up all the available abutting plots, and have filled them with 13 homes, a church, a vocational training center, a middle and high school and one of the best soccer fields in the city. The surrounding land has all been purchased by developers, and is slated for condos, shops and God-knows-whatelse. Our campus remains, however, an oasis of joy and even tranquility in an otherwise chaotic hurly-burly of rapid economic and demographic expansion. There, kids whose parents died, abandoned them or simply turned up missing have found new life, new hope and new families. They tend gardens, play sports, learn musical instruments, attend schools and enjoy delicious meals cooked for them by dedicated parents who know their names, and tend to their emotional and spiritual traumas with a patience born of their own healing and deliverance from childhoods marred by genocide, civil war and life in refugee camps.

One thing that hasn't been radically transformed in Battambang over the last couple of years seems to be my ability to get a decent internet connection, so my posts may be a bit sparse. But I'll try to make up for that by uploading some big galleries when we get to Thailand next week.

 

John McCollumComment
Sweet family times

The combination of a busy schedule and an awful cold have left me a couple days behind on blogging. A picture being worth a thousand words, this post will be about 100,000 words long. 

We've enjoyed some really sweet family times over the last couple of days: a meal with the Asia's Hope Prek Eng home parents at a riverside cabana, a late night snack party at our university student center, lunch after church prepared lovingly by our staff and a few rounds of kickboxing (watching, not competing) with some of our high school and college-age boys.

All these are pictured below. Enjoy.




John McCollumComment
"Then young women will dance and be glad, young men and old as well."
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They will be like a well-watered garden, and they will sorrow no more. Then young women will dance and be glad, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow. — Jeremiah 31:12–13

After a couple hours of heavy rain, the clouds parted just in time for an outdoor banquet paid for by our friends at Vineyard Columbus. We joined the Vineyard team, the staff and kids from Prek Eng 6 — the home Vineyard Columbus sponsors — and the staff and kids from the five other local Asia's Hope homes. As the children cleared the plates away, the older kids on DJ duty cranked up the tunes. Like all Cambodian dance parties, we started slowly, walking in a circle waving our arms in varying degrees of artistic and technical proficiency.

As God turned down the lights in the sky, the Asia's Hope kids turned up the volume on the loudspeakers. The playground-cum-dance floor filled with eager participants, festooned with glowstick necklaces and and emblazoned with smiles. The party hit its crescendo about two hours in: old women, toddlers, teens and kids of all sizes laughing, jumping, wiggling and waving to the joyous sounds of Cambodian dance pop played at a volume better measured by a seismograph than a decibel meter.

I danced, I shot some photos, I rested and then I danced some more. And you'd have to be here to really understand what a profoundly and pervasively positive experience this was for all who attended. Unlike every party I ever attended growing up in Columbus, Ohio, nobody was left out. No one was being bullied. No one was trying to get away with anything naughty. No one had to be reminded to keep their hands in proper places or "leave room for the Holy Spirit." No one left early to cry behind the building.

This is a good place. God is here. He is smiling on us. And we are dancing in his light.

John McCollumComment
Still amazed by Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat, viewed from the western gate, just inside the moat.

Angkor Wat, viewed from the western gate, just inside the moat.

I remember my first visit to Angkor Wat, probably about a fifteen years ago. I'd visited Cambodia a couple of times before, and had never gotten out to see the ancient temple complex at the heart of what was once one of the world's largest cities, the capital of a powerful empire whose existence had completely escaped my notice for my first three decades.

I didn't travel much as a kid, and before we began the process to adopt our oldest son Chien, there wasn't a single site or city in Asia that would have made the top fifty or so slots on my bucket list.

My Cambodian friends were mystified — and probably a little offended — that I'd traveled all the way to their country, and had never made the trip to Siem Reap to visit the world's largest religious compound, a collection of ruins so magnificent that the European explorers who "discovered" it proclaimed it to be the work of some lost race of Romans or Greeks, refusing to believe that the Khmers or any Asian people could have built something so massive, so sophisticated.

I distinctly recall approaching the massive moat around Angkor Wat and wondering how on earth its builders could manage such a mammoth excavation without the benefit of modern equipment. And then as our made the right turn toward the temple entrance, I saw in person the same towers that grace the Cambodian flag, currency and roughly 60 percent of the country's mini-marts, and the sight literally took my breath away.

I've been to the Great Wall. It's impressive not because of any intrinsic architectural grandeur, but simply because it's The Great Wall of China; its fame is its primary attraction. And I've seen the Taj Mahal. It's astonishingly beautiful, like a gigantic, jeweled cake or magical tiara. It's much bigger in person than I expected, and as mahals go, you can't get much nicer. The mosques that flank it are sufficiently grand that if they weren't overshadowed by the Taj's beauty, they'd probably merit a visit themselves. As it stands, they're relegated to the status of outbuildings, garage mahals, if you will. 

For me, Angkor occupies its own echelon. And for Cambodians, whose nation has been kicked around for half a millennium, it occupies a position of national pride that I as an American can barely comprehend. It stands as irrefutable proof that they were once at the very top of the totem pole politically, artistically, culturally and militarily. They were peers of the Greeks, Babylonians and Romans. I've seen Angkor — or at least parts of it — at least a dozen times, and I'm still awed by the ingenuity and might of its builders.

I won't bore you (or embarrass myself) by expending my limited understanding of Angkorian iconography here. But I do encourage you to spend some time on Google or YouTube familiarizing yourself with one of our world's greatest archeological treasures. I hope you'll enjoy some of my pictures. Maybe you'll make the visit yourself some day. 

John McCollumComment
Always time for dinner with family
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I'm going to make this post a short one, as I'm still a bit jet lagged, and I'm getting up early tomorrow to visit the spectacular Angkor Wat temple complex with Kori, Xiudan and Pak. 

As the presence of this post would indicate to all but the most casual readers, we made it to Cambodia. It took us about 38 hours to do so, but we're in good spirits. We're starting our trip in Siem Reap — or, as I like to call it "Pigeon Forge, Cambodia." That is to say, it's overrun with tourists and tacky souvenir shops. Unlike the actual Pigeon Forge, however, it's also home to world-class architectural, archeological and cultural attractions and more than a few decent restaurants.

We decided to start our 45 day trip with a couple of days in Siem Reap — away from any of our project sites — to give my family a chance to recover from the exhausting journey in private, away from eyes of staff, kids and supporters who might be scandalized by witnessing one or all of us dozing off mid-meal or experiencing a physical or emotional meltdown. All kidding aside, my kids travel very well: they're enthusiastic, inquisitive and almost always extraordinarily pleasant to be around.

We settled into our hotel yesterday and spent this morning at a local archery range (take note: if our castle is attacked by Mongol hordes, we're going to have to rely on boiling oil rather than bow and arrow for our defense) and even got in a little swimming.

For dinner this evening we met a team from Vista Community Church. They had been in town visiting Angkor Wat, joined by a handful of university students and Savong, one of our Asia's Hope parents, from the Prek Eng 3 children's home. Vista has faithfully supported the Prek Eng 3 kids and staff for more than a decade, and have helped us raise these kids since they were quite young. They're also covering university costs for these young scholars who are studying to be engineers, entrepreneurs, lawyers and public servants. 

Dinner was great. I mean, the food was okay. But man, what a joy it is to spend a couple of hours with these amazing kids and a group of supporters from my own hometown. It was a special treat to spend the evening with Tod Heath, a guy I've known since I was about 13 years old. His son Adam is a dear friend of mine and one of my longest-serving board members. Tod and his wife Nancy were among Asia's Hope's earliest supporters, and they've been generous with their prayers, wisdom and finances as long or longer than pretty much anyone else. This is Tod's first visit to Cambodia, and I'm so glad he's finally had the chance to see first-hand what he's been investing in for all these years.

Well, I rise at dawn tomorrow for a long day under the hot sun. So I'm going to hit the sack. May God bless all of you who pray for — and pay for — our work here in Asia. I hope that my posts over the next few weeks will encourage and entertain. Peace.

John McCollumComment
That's how the light gets in.

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in”
— Leonard Cohen

Born in a rural Indian village to a destitute single mother who abandoned her at the age of two, Sabina was sentenced to a miserable life certain to end quietly, anonymously and early, thanks to a congenital heart defect that could only be repaired by a costly surgery in a far away city.

The tens of thousands of dollars needed for this surgery may as well have been billions. And from her home in the foothills of the Himalayas, a world-class cardiac hospital in Kolkata was an insurmountable, interplanetary distance.

But Sabina’s story has played out differently than that of countless millions of orphaned children living in poor countries around the world. At her most vulnerable point — as a frail, sickly toddler on the brink of starvation — Sabina was rescued by Asia’s Hope in India. And like all the children welcomed by Asia’s Hope, she was placed in a loving, Christian home with a mom and a dad who accepted her as their own daughter, surrounded by siblings who, like Sabina had themselves been rescued from a life of poverty, loneliness and exploitation.

No longer unwanted and vulnerable, Sabina’s daily life — and long-term outlook — was immediately transformed. Anil and Latika, her mom and dad, bathed her, fed her, clothed her. They tended gently to the sores that covered her face. They taught her to walk, to sing, to dance. At the age of six, Sabina was still small, but no longer emaciated. Her eyes, which were before hollow and haunted, now illuminated dark rooms. And her smile seemed of its own power to chase away clouds.

Sabina was now healthy enough for a life-saving open heart surgery. And because she was an Asia’s Hope kid, all her parents had to do is ask. Even before hearing the cost, I said, “Yes. Of course. We will do for Sabina what I would do for my own child.” I knew that the Asia’s Hope community would respond with its characteristic generosity.

I added a giving page to the Asia’s Hope website, sent out an email and posted the request on Facebook and Twitter. Within a few short days, our supporters contributed enough money for the surgery. After a couple of weeks, we raised the full amount needed for the surgery, travel, recovery and follow up care.

Last Thursday, skilled surgeons carefully opened Sabina’s chest and, over a period of nearly 8 hours, repaired valves, ventricles and arteries before carefully stitching her up and gently bandaging her tiny body. She awoke surrounded by loving family, embraced by the prayers of 800 Asia’s Hope kids and 200 staff in Cambodia, Thailand and India, and thousands of Asia’s Hope supporters in the U.S, Canada and Australia.

This morning, doctors allowed Pastors Amber and Sunil to bring phones into the recovery room, and I was blessed to receive a video call from my little friend, Sabina. “Jaimashi!” she beamed, her smile bright as ever. “Jaimashi, Sabina!” I replied.

“Jaimashi.” “Jesus wins.”

Jaimashi indeed.

Pastor Amber tenderly untied Sabina’s gown, briefly revealing the bandages that trace a shocking outline of a truly massive incision. It’s amazing to me that such a little girl could not only endure such a traumatic procedure, but come out of it smiling.

Sabina’s doctors expect her to recover fully and live a normal, healthy life. We’ll have to watch her closely, and she may need to have some additional procedures as she grows. But her parents know — and she will come to understand — that she is so deeply loved, so well-supported, that she will always receive the care she needs to flourish as a beloved daughter in God’s beautiful family.

The joy of Sabina’s successful surgery was, however, dimmed this week by the sudden, tragic and devastating influenza death of 8 year old Nikita, another of our children rescued by Asia’s Hope India. Nikita’s early life was not entirely unlike Sabina’s. She lived in extreme poverty until she was brought at the age of five to Asia’s Hope.

She too was given a new home, new parents and a group of siblings who loved her well. Her time in our care was as much a blessing for us as it was for her.

One daughter saved. One daughter lost. Such an equation is meaningless in the mathematics of the heart. One life doesn’t cancel the other. This is no zero-sum game.

Today, we hold extraordinary joy in one hand and crushing sorrow in the other. We cry out, “Why, God?” and “Jaimashi!” in the same breath. We are healed. We are pierced.

It would be far easier to never care enough to experience such pain. Many do. Why should you or I invest so much time, money, effort and emotional capital into an orphaned child — one of millions — living on the other side of the world? Not my fault, not my problem.

But as I’ve come to experience the heart of a Father who would send his own son to pay the debt for my rebellious, stubborn, selfish heart, I’ve also come to understand that the hurt and the healing all come in through the same wounds.

You can’t shut your ears to the cries of the poor and still hear the symphony of grace that turns deserts into gardens, sutures shattered hearts and turns orphans into sons and daughters.

I’m grateful for all of you who have joined me, who have joined Amber and Sunil, Savorn and Tutu, Anil and Latika and so many others in welcoming Sabina and Nikita and hundreds of other children like them. It’s an honor to serve with you, and even to mourn with you.

"Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in”

Jaimashi.

John McCollum Comments