Destiny Rescue: Cambodia & Thailand

"Destiny Rescue is an international Christian-based non-profit organisation dedicated to rescuing children from human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Our vision is to rescue the sexually exploited and enslaved, restore the abused, protect the vulnerable, empower the poor and be a voice for those who can’t speak up for themselves." (Destiny Rescue website)

Morning in Phnom Penh 

A part of me thought I went away seeking direction. First morning in Bangkok, Thailand I sat in a tree house and cried because I didn't know why I was so far from home. 

Turns I didn't come for re-direction but re-focus. To be lost and then found. Not to find direction, but God. The real God, not the god I made up in my head.

at rescue home in Phnom Penh

So you go away with a bunch of strangers and you leave the place where the corruption is hidden and you fly into a country where corruption is rampant & obvious. 

Air is thick with dust in Cambodia and everything from university degrees to children are bought at a price. I miss home and I don't want to go home. I want to be here because this is where injustice lives and this is where injustice dies. I want to be here because this is where the darkness is and this is where the light breaks in. 

rescue home in kampong chhnang

phnom penh

It's stupid how I live to protect myself when there's millions of people who need protection. Stupid how paranoid I am about making sure I don't lose anything & ensuring that I gain everything when there's a world around me who don't have anything left to lose.

"You can choose to look away but you can never again say that you did not know." 

William Wilberforce

I know that a girl, ten thousand girls, twenty million girls... and boys -- will be bought by another human being tonight, that this other human being will buy her to have sex with him. And still I spend my time trying to make a life for myself. None of us were made to make lives for ourselves. 

Sunrise from team house roof in Chiang Rai

At first I was only angry. I wanted to push over every man I saw with his arm cradled around a young Asian girl in the red light district, in the village, in the city. Several people reminded me: slave girls aren't the only ones enslaved. 

Like our money-making-sex-culture is making one mass grave out of all of us. 
Like me on this side of the world being okay with poverty means a parent sells her kid to the sex industry. 

men restoring a temple

temple ruins

I have memories:

• singing Taylor Swift songs in the Bangkok rescue home 
• playing running games on the grass near the river in Chaing Rai
• sitting in the Destiny Cafes 
• visiting the vocational training centers: the cafes, the jean-making shop, the print shop, the hair salon, the jewellery making place
• seeing Angelina Jolie drive past in a Tuk Tuk in Siem Riep 
• kids calling out to me for money from behind the wire fence at the Killing Fields 
• the girl next to me who drew God as an angel and replaced the halo with a question mark 
• being on the rooftop of the team house in Chiang Rai 
• picking up some shopping techniques for back home: bartering
• the girl in the learning center above the print shop talking about how Jesus set her free 

But what now? Do you just forget?

Matthew 25,

I was hungry and you fed me,

I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,

I was homeless and you gave me a room,

I was shivering and you gave me clothes,

I was sick and you stopped to visit,

I was in prison and you came to me.

Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.'

Back home, the sun sets.
We could forget.
We could remember.
We could set them free.

Use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. 
Galatians 5