Last weekend my team had the opportunity to go to Siem Reap to visit Angkor Wat.
(From Wiki: Angkor Wat is a temple complex at Angkor, Cambodia, built for the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre since its foundation – first Hindu, dedicated to the god Vishnu, then Buddhist. It is the world’s largest religious building.)
It was really great to get away from our ministry for a day or so and spend some time team building- and just relaxing.
When we first arrived, we ran into some complications, however. We went to the YWAM base (Youth With A Mission- a large Christian Missionary Organization where we had been planning to lodge for the weekend), and… it wasn’t there. The building that used to be YWAM is now a “massage parlor”.
And it didn’t stop there.
One of the guys on our team, Tim, was trying to secure a tuk tuk for us (a moto drawn carriage… a Cambodian taxi) and the driver kept soliciting him. Over and over he asked if Tim wanted a “happy ending” and promised to know of the best places in town for him to go. Tim kept explaining to him that that was NOT what we were here for, and to stop asking him. The driver was very persistent, and Tim ended up getting angry with him. What a sad state of affairs we are in if as soon as a tuk tuk driver sees a white male, he automatically believes that he is here for sex tourism. How ridiculous! What an outrageous assumption! Or so I thought…
So we went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner to celebrate Kylie’s birthday. (She LOVES burritos.) When the 8 of us sat down, we couldn’t help but notice the disproportionate number of white male couples sitting in the tables around us. Some had two white guys, some had three or four. It was kind of strange- I have never seen anything like that in the states- usually there are more ladies present if guys are going out to dinner on a Friday night. Soooo…. either Siem Reap, Cambodia has a happenin’ gay community…. or these were sex tourists.
It made me want to cry.
Give me pimps and traffickers any day of the week. Give the the women and the children all day long. But the actual “Johns”? The “buyers”? The rapers of the women and children? I have a harder time understanding them.
For the pimps and traffickers- this is purely economical. I’m obviously not saying that I agree with it, but I at least understand it. I have even begun praying for them, and looking forward to more interactions with them in order to share the love the Jesus has for them.
For the women and children- they were either coerced, threatened, tricked or “chose” this life because of their hopeless circumstances. I get it.
But the johns? They KNOW it is illegal- that is why they come to Cambodia in the first place. They KNOW it is wrong- they certainly wouldn’t want someone having sex with their little child. So why then?
After our morning in Angkor Wat, we got to spend a few hours in the safe house that our team leader Kristen worked in during her stay in Cambodia last year. These precious girls (ages 12-17) were all rescued from brothels and massage parlors by the IJM (International Justice Mission). They played, and laughed and teased each other- just like you would expect from girls their age. And the icing on the cake? We got to go to their church with them on Sunday morning. Granted, all that we understood in the whole hour and a half Khmer service was the chorus of one song, “Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah”.
It seems that some things, like laughter, hugs, hula hoops, and Hallelujahs, translate into every language.
