Homes of Love

Every year a part of camp requires courage, compassion and strength….that is saying “good-bye” to each other.
All year long the HOL children dream about getting to come to camp again.  Camp is the one time of year that the HOL children from different areas get to see each other; that parents can share lives, stories, and prayers for each other; and precious friendships and deep love are grown between the children and young people coming from FEFC. Pictures say a thousand words.  I think I will let them talk…

I  want to give you a glimpse of our HOL baby (youngest child) getting his first ever toy…a Build-A-Bear brought from Knoxville.

Caitlyn Chesney is his sponsor and picked out one of the donated Build-a-Bears we received at Christmas from FEFC.  She was so excited to meet her little fellow. The rest is history! Enjoy the photos.

Day 1 of Camp…great excitement, a little bit of chaos, lots of laughter, choosing teams, making team banners, children looking for faces that had come in the past, young people looking for the child they sponsor and HUGE smiles and hugs when they find each other!

Day 2 of Camp…fun games (like pass the live eel), building castles with balloons, eating meals together.

Day 3 of Camp…team talk times, parent talk times, chicken fights at the pool with no rules, teen worship at night…and they did it!

Day 4 of Camp…outreach at the sand dunes, craft time, closing ceremony (I will write more about this later).

Day 5 of Camp…breakfast, everyone getting a little sad, family photos, lunch, tearful goodbyes.

My heart is full of what God did this week.  FEFC young people know how to love well and lavished love on the HOL kids.  An onlooker (from England) told me that he had heard about American optimism and told me he had actually experienced it this week. Hearts were once again bound together for a very short 5 days and ripped apart as the children boarded their busses.

Everyone was tired, but it was a good tired, a satisfied tired, a tired when you knew you have given it all and amazingly…IT WORKED!

Every year I hear the same comments from the children and HOL staff…”That was the best year ever!”

The Zimbabwe team has returned to the US. Sue remains for a few days and will come home next Monday. Continue to pray for her. Here are a few words as she unwinds for her adventure…

“I am in South Africa now with my brother Gary and Jolandi his wife. We will go up to Hoedspruit to see my sister Colleen for the weekend and I will fly out Monday evening. I am looking forward to getting home and hugging my grandbabies. It would also be nice to sleep in my own bed again. It was wonderful to be able to unpack my suitcase last night and have a shelf to put things on. I will get my washing done today and will try to connect with some friends and family before going out of town.”

One of the fondest memories I have of my childhood is swimming at night during vacation. Tonight I saw another family enjoy that pleasure. One of the HOL families got into the pool together after many of the other homes had tucked children into bed. The pool was full of laughter, chicken fights, and lots of splashing. The pool has no lights and there are no rules here! A boys dream come true and a parents nightmare!

Today was so much fun. So different from the last week in Cambodia. How thankful I am to see the difference a loving home makes in the lives of children.

A snapshot of the day today:

Children seeking out their HOL Extended Family sponsors that had come on the trip. Five HOL children got to meet their “sponsors” today!

Little brown almond eyes light up as they see familiar faces from camp coming to see them again.

Chaos as the HOL children are divided into teams…it was ordered chaos!

Watching as they name their teams: Zachius, Peace, God Loves U, David, Love, and Jesus!

Laughter, Joy, and lots of Hugs

Leaving Cambodia was hard.

It was hard saying “Good-bye”… to the many faces that are forever in our hearts: faces of Saints who are trying to help, faces of young girls lined up on the street waiting for their next customer, faces of team mates who have become dear friends.

Our team…so diverse, 25 of us, from age 21-70, speaking different languages, a former 70 year old missionary, several former drug addicts, and a former pimp, a correctional officer in a jail, a handicapped lawyer, college students, a music agent from Nashville and this list goes on! Our lives intersected with all these people for 6 days but our hearts are forever changed. How can God do that?

On the bus leaving Cambodia I needed some down time. I decided the best way was to listen to some music. Being a little too tired to make decisions on music, I put it my ipod on “shuffle” and was going to listen to what ever came on. Graham Kendrick’s song, “Until the Day” started playing and as it did, tears started falling. It reminded me of the first time I left another SE Asia country 16 years ago for the first time. Looking out the window as the images got smaller, knowing I had left things as I had found them. Desperate people doing desperate things, children living the unimaginable, young girls and boys like they were on a store shelf competing for the buyers market. God’s people trying to help but missing a whole generation of maturity due to the Cambodian genocide implemented by Pol Pot.

“Until the Day”

When I walk through suffering

Let it be an offering

Like a fragrance rising

In the valley of shadow

Not to waste my sorrows

But to trust and follow

Until the day

When You wipe away every tear

You will hold me, carry me

Until the day

When You take away every fear

Who can imagine, who can imagine

No more suffering, no more crying

No more afraid, who can imagine the day

No more suffering, who can imagine

I am looking back at the beginning of the trip when I allowed myself to imagine, Could God possibly allow us to help these children?

I really do not know. I see pieces. I see a desperate need. I know in my heart that we cannot be “need” driven. We have to be God driven.

In Him are the answers and in Him I trust.

Well, you heard from Amanda.  Now I want you to hear from Caitlyn.

Girl’s don’t just line up on the street corners here, they line up on the entire side of the road. They don’t come out around mid-night, but they are lined up by the time of 7. I saw the desperation in their eyes…15, 16, 17, 18, 19 years old. They are still children themselves, and they are being forced to offer their bodies for money. If they do not show up with a certain amount of money the next morning, their pimp will beat them! Prostitution has changed in Cambodia. There are less brothels, and more “entertainment centers”. This has greatly complicated things. Men can now show up at an entertainment center, buy a girl, and then he has to take her off the premises to use her. This is bad for two reasons. The first is that it has become much more difficult for the brothels to be raided and stopped. The second reason is that now a man can buy a young girl and show up at a hotel where 6 of his friends are waiting. She is not only used, but gang raped. This is much more dangerous for the victim.

The night after we explored the red light districts of Cambodia we went to a village that is known world wide for child trafficking. 100% percent of these little girls are sold. Girls are actually brought up in this village in order to be trafficked for money. It is a terrible terrible terrible thing. We had the chance of walking this street, handing out candy, and showing the Lord’s pure love. These little girls are absolutely beautiful, and their eyes were filled with such emptiness. They had a glaze over their eyes that no child should ever have. They have seen and been through more than I will ever see or go through in my whole life. I wanted to pick them all up, make a run for it, and rescue them from the deep, dark danger that they are living in. But all I could do was pick them up, look them in the eyes and say “depwa”, which means, “you are BEAUTIFUL.” Upon returning to the car, Amanda and I cried out to the Lord with tears of sadness. How could someone be so cruel? My life calling is to these children. With the Lord’s help I AM going to help them! I have seen the need and now I must help. God we cry out for your children!

I’ve spent the past 4 days in Cambodia and I LOVE it here. The people are so gentle and kind, the children are so tan and beautiful and the trees are so green! But for all its beauty, Cambodia is a place of great darkness and sadness. 98% of the people here do not know Christ. You can see that people are just living for the next day, trying to figure out the next meal.. they don’t know hope.

One of the greatest issues in Cambodia is sex trafficking. The girls line up on the streets to sell themselves to whoever will buy them- I have seen it with my own eyes. We spent the past 2 days visiting organizations that work to help girls and women get off the streets but nothing became real to me until today. Today we went to Sway Pak- a village that is known around the world for trafficking children. You can feel the evil in Sway Pak when you walk down the streets. There almost every children is RAISED to be sold into prostitution by their own families. Virginity is especially valuable and so most families sell their daughters at as young as 5 years old. A Cambodian proverb that says “Men are like gold, women are like white cloth” basically says that if men are dirty then they can be cleaned easily but once women are dirty then they are stained forever. This is why once women have lost their virginity, their family feels no guilt in selling them into the sex trade. They no longer have value in the eyes of their society.

Today in Sway Pak we walked down the dirt roads, past the very homes of the people who do this to the children. I looked past their doorways, saw their homes, looked into their eyes. My heart cried out- “Jesus, where are you? God, why does this happen? Please, Lord, redeem these people.”

And then we turned a corner and all the sudden there were children EVERYWHERE. The dirt road was full of them.. running all around us, grabbing our hands and asking for candy. They reminded me of a street full of my students- little girls with innocent faces and little boys with wide smiles.. except they were all destined for a life of prostitution, slavery, a life without Christ. My hands were handing out candy and clicking pictures with my camera but inside all I could do was cry out to the Lord- “why? why? Help them Lord!” I wanted to stay be with them and at the same time I wanted to scoop them up and run. When it was time to go, I made it as far as the corner of the road before tears were streaming down my face. I can’t describe the overwhelming helplessness I felt (and still feel) for those children. I can’t explain how hard it was to leave them on that street knowing the life that they are going to live. It’s terrible and horrible and unfair.

I have so much to process and understand and ask the Lord to show me.. but for now I know He is saying to me that I need to pray for those beautiful innocent hopeless faces I saw today. Because He has not forgotten them, and I now that I’ve seen them.. I’m responsible to pray. One of the places of rescue that we visited this week reminded me of this song, and it has become my prayer today:

I will change your name

Your name will no longer be called-

wounded, outcast, lonely, or afraid.

I will change your name

Your new name shall be:

confidence, joyfulness, overcoming one.

faithfulness, friend of God,

one who seeks My face.

Join me in praying that Christ will REIGN in this country.

Hi Everyone,

I want to get this HOL update off to you before we leave town and won’t have internet again for about 10 days.

Shad, Millie and the children were able to come out to Lasting Impressions and spent the night with us this time. Shad was able to go a business seminar Steve Hall did for local businessmen and enjoyed learning from Steve.

Millie and I were able to spend some good time together and catch up a lot. I was able to spend time with the children and hear how each of them are doing. The kids have made great strides in the last month since Millie read some of the materials we brought her and has been able to make sense of some of the struggles they have been having.  She was so excited to tell me how different things have been just knowing what she knows now. Shadrech is also thrilled to see how different things are now. Quite honestly, I see it as nothing less than a miracle.

Lara and I were able to spend a few good hours with Shad and Millie while the children played in the playground near us. We shared vision and got excited about what the future may hold. Right now we all feel this a season of learning, growing, and training. We are pleased with the place the Lord has us in.

Thank you for your prayers and support.

Love you,

Sue