Blood Stained Nation

       Here now, one of my final blogs paying tribute to the amazing nation of Cambodia, and to all of the absolutely beautiful people I met throughout our month there… 

 

          (Warning: This blog contains graphic content, not suitable for young eyes.) 

 

   Cambodia was by far one of my favorite nations visited thus far, and certainly my favorite month of ministry because of how personal and relational it was. (Kenya is turning out to be a similar month… stay tuned!) In fact, many people on S-Squad have felt a special calling to one day return, God willing! While I don’t necessarily feel that same call to return and serve there full time, I most certainly do feel a special kind of love for this country unlike any visited in the past. Learning even just a little bit of the depths of their horrendously dark and fairly recent history, contributed greatly to this love of mine, allowing me to see tremendous beauty arise from the ashes of such a great nation… 

     It was the 1970s, shortly after America’s war with Vietnam, something equally horrific was taking place just a few hundred miles away. 

     Marxist theology had once again taken ahold of a national leader, and once again, immense devastation followed. Rural Cambodians worked forced labor in rice fields. As for doctors, lawyers, teachers, and other educated Cambodians, they were rounded up and murdered, often, as we learned, quite brutally with farming tools. 

    The belief was propagated by the government to the soldiers, that you must “take out a weed by its root” so even women and children were killed…. 

   Infants

        were smashed 

                  against 

                          this tree… 

     One of our last days in Cambodia, team Pneuma had the humbling experience of visiting the largest out of *over 300* killing fields around the country. During the reign of Pol Pot,millions of Cambodians lost their lives. It’s estimated that at this time, Cambodia lost at least 25% of its population. 

   Our tuk-tuk driver, Mr. Kim, arrived early in the morning and about 20 minutes later, Jacinda, Rachel & I were walking amongst the graves of many who lost their lives under the reign of Pol Pot. 

      I stood there, in front of a sign of fact, shocked. The soldiers who committed these horrendous acts were often the same age as me, and the other members of my squad… 25, 24, 23; some even younger. At 14 years old, children were turned into soldiers, killing their countrymen and women, even their own families, knowing that if they didn’t, they themselves would be the ones killed…

(above: photo of some who lost their lives at The Killing Fields, taken by Jacinda Koziara.) 

            I was broken by what I’d seen that day. 

I wanted to get out, to walk, to run, to scream, to cry. What do you do when you have seen such grisly sights?

     One of my teammates came into the room, “By the way, we all have to give a word at the young men’s group tonight…” The boys of the dorm we were staying at wanted us to come to their weekly Bible study and share with them for our last week in town. 

    Normally caught off guard at something like this, I was so thankful for the opportunity to speak. Through sharing with the young men that night, God brought some healing to my own heart, and my prayer is that it also brought a piece of healing to just a few of the next generation of Cambodians.

     In talking to the young men that evening, I explained to them a little bit about the World Race. 

     I told them about how when we get to a new country, we never know what to expect. What will our living arrangements be like? Where will we lay our heads? What kinds of food will we eat? What will the people be like? But certainly, wherever we have gone, people almost always recognize us as foreigners, as standing out and being different from them.

        I told them nothing but truth, about how in Cambodia, we were welcomed like family, and how we were blessed to have experienced so much of the culture. 

      We tried their food, learned some of their traditional games, and even learned to dance! 

We had the extra blessing of experiencing one of their holidays, the Khmer New Year.

    I told them too, of the special opportunity we were given to learn about Cambodia in a depth and detail unlike any of the months past. 

    I told them about our experience with the Diamond Island exiled orphans. (That’s the place I shared with you previously, where the government set fire to homes, evacuating the people there so that the ground might be turned into a land of tourism.)

       Finally, I shared with them my experience earlier that day, and our visit to the Killing Fields, & (now a museum) the school-turned-prison of S21. 

     I pleaded the truth of Ephesians 2:19&20 with the boys we spoke to that night. I told them that our team, though we are at first strangers from abroad, we are no longer foreigners, but members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Jesus as our cornerstone. As members of the same household then, that makes us family. I realized then, that this horrific history is not only their history, but it is the history of my brothers and sisters;

                      it 

                        makes

                                 it

                                    my 

                                      own…

  I told that room full of young men, that what I saw that day was proof that we are in a battle that stretches far beyond what our eyes can see, and even often beyond what our minds can comprehend. 

What more does a person need to see to believe? 

     We really, truly are in a cosmic battle of good & bad, of righteousness, and of sin.

     So how could we even go about processing the horrors of what we saw that day? As individuals, or even as a society? 

                    We always have a choice.  

    Do we dwell on the horrific things that happened? 

       Or do we shift our focus heavenward? 

        We turn our focus on Christ.

    

 

Isaiah: 61 

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon (them).

The Lord has anointed (them) 

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent (them) to 

bind up the brokenhearted, 

to proclaim freedom for the captives

and release from darkness for the prisoners

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

and the day of vengeance of our God

to comfort all who mourn

and provide for those who grieve in Zion- 

to bestow on them 

    a crown of beauty

      instead of ashes…“

       God is redeeming the nation of Cambodia.  

I looked around that room that night, and I saw the faces of the next generation of doctors, lawyers, and teachers. 

I saw musicians, and engineers, and artists, pilots, businessmen and women, inventors, authors and preachers.  

I saw real hope in the next generation, with their tremendous hunger for knowledge, and their thirst for the Word of God.  

 2 Corinthians 1:21 & 22 tells us that it is God who makes all stand firm in Christ and that He has anointed us. It tells us that He set his seal of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, a guarantee of what is to come… a promise of a seat at Heaven’s banquet table, a promise of no more war, sickness or disease; a promise of perfect work. In this promise, we have already won the war. Our job then, is to keep fighting the battles.

         Psalm 5:4 

“You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil; 

with You the wicked cannot dwell…”

   However difficult it may be to wrap our heads around earthly injustice, what I saw that day completely broadened my idea the word, giving me a great faith and comfort in the cosmic justice that God promises…  

(This photo also by Jacinda Koziara,                                                                            taken at “The Killing Fields”.)