Rural farmland about 20 kilometers southwest of Phnom Penh. Green rice patties, sugar cane trees and ponds full of lily pads. This is the setting for Place of Rescue.
Place of Rescue is an orphanage, AIDS Center, granny home, and refuge for young, abandoned pregnant women. It is home to more than 200 children, 25 grannies, and 21 families with AIDS! It was founded by Marie Ens in 1994 after her husband passed away. She and her family had been in Cambodia before Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge took over. They went back to Canada but Marie never forgot about the Khmer people and they way they touched her heart.
In 1991 right after her husband passed she saw a sign that read “Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be.” Three years later the Lord directed her to the story of Abraham. The Lord gave Abraham a baby in his old age and in that moment the Lord whispered to Marie “Grow old with Me. The best is yet to be!” Place of Rescue is the promise the Lord gave Marie, and this is their story.
When we first pulled up to Place of Rescue you couldn’t see much, a small home and storehouse to the left, garden in front and eight to ten small brick homes to the right. Channak came down the lane and introduced himself to us, he is resident director and has been working at Place of Rescue for five years.
As he started leading us around the campus we began to see the love everyone there has for those society has deemed “worthless”. There were endless smiles, laughs, and joyful people!
We started near those small brick homes. They are homes to families who have AIDS, one or both parents, they receive treatment, work in the gardens or sewing center, and their children are given an education. More often than not it is just a mother and her children, sometimes two families live in one home but if there are three or more children they have their own home.
We continued to walk and came to the first school room, home to the preschoolers. My heart melted and I instantly fell in love! Oh how I instantly felt at home with those precious little three and four year olds!
Next was a small playground for the younger kids and just beyond that was the first of two orphan housing sections. Each section is set up with ten homes set in a square with trees, flowers and large section of grass in the middle. Each home houses ten orphans and a house mom. The house had a bathroom area, large common space, kitchen, bedroom area with five bunk beds and storage, and then a separate room for the house mom.
Channak began telling us a story about when he first started at Place of Rescue. He was working on biographies for each child, while asking each child how many siblings they had each of them answered “ten”. He didn’t think much of the answer for the first few children but as each of them continued to answer ten he was like “wait this can’t be right” so he asked how many brothers and sisters they had before they came to Place of Rescue and they finally understood what he was asking. These children have hundreds of brothers and sisters now! This community is a huge family, they love, respect, and help their house mom, and the grannies are all their grandmothers!
We continued on and went to the first of two baby homes. There is one house mom for two babies and currently twelve babies live in those homes. Next to the baby home was the first granny home! Again my heart melted! Seriously what is better than babies and old ladies!?!?! I can tell you nothing is!!! The grannies all hugged us, kissed us, and wanted to take our “extra weight”. They kept squeezing our arms and then pointing to themselves. Channak reassures us it was a sign of love and we all had a good laugh!
The rest of the campus is very similar, another granny home, baby home, and orphan housing unit. There is a primary school, kindergarten through sixth grade, and a library where the children can do homework, read, and learn computer skills. They have a pool for the HOT days of March, April and May, badminton and basketball court, and three playgrounds. There is a meeting place for parties throughout the year and a church. They also have a nurse who lives on the campus for more serious illnesses. They have a chicken house and fish pond for food and as mentioned before huge garden where they grow corn, eggplant, squash, papayas, leafy vegetables, tomatoes, and mangos.
In Phnom Penh they have two dormitories for children who have continued to university. They also have two more orphan centers on the Thailand border. All in all they house over 400 children! And they do this all to the glory of God!
I have loved UH this month. It has been incredible to get to see all the different ways the Lord is working in Cambodia, how clearly His hand is on this country and the changes that are being made in His name! Place of Rescue has a piece of my heart, I left it with the grannies, babies, and sweet faces orphans who now have the most incredible family one could ever ask for!
Ezekiel 47:9 “…where the river flows, everything will live.” This is Place of Rescue’s verse. They are the river that is flowing and they people they serve are living! Grannies, children and AIDS patients are loved, cared for, served, and taught to know the Lord!
