This is the first story i heard in cambodia, over lunch, with our host, our first day here.
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“For what shall it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and by so doing suffers the loss of his own soul?” – Jesus Christ
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His eyes aren’t smiling.
They’re looking back into places i haven’t yet seen, in a time before i was here.
And his characteristically happy face is furrowed with the seriousness of the subject matter.
“Yes, i am in charge of this ministry,” his black hair and natural curls (like fresh whipped cream) frame his lemon shaped face; his hands prepare us to hear the next part of his story. “My idea is that each safe home has a mom and a dad, and each mom and dad have just ten kids, so that way its not like an orphanage where kids graduate school and become an orphan again. Because usually they finish and feel like an orphan again. I want each kid to have a mom and a dad.”
“One little boy we recently got, it took a long time to save him.
A ladies husband died, and she became a drinker. Soon she ran out of money. And to pay for her alcohol she sold her son to a farmer with the wheat fields.
But he was worked so hard that he ran away. Somehow he remembered how to get back to his home.
But his mom still needed money, so she sold him again to a dog farmer. And the dog farmer treated the boy pretty badly.
When we heard about him we went to him to try and save him. We asked his mom if we could save him. And she said we could. So we told him but he didn’t trust his mom anymore. He thought she was trying to sell him again. He was so angry that he would pull out a knife at us when we went to try and talk with him.”
The mans cambodian accent, and the look in his eyes as he tells us add to the story in a way i cannot.
“He tried to fight us every time we went to talk to him, but you know, he cant really because he’s just nine, and just too small.
Because of his mom and how hard and cruel his master is, he doesn’t trust us. So we kept going back and trying to convince him. Finally we asked someone in the village, to find out who he trusts.
They said that he had a teacher when he was in second that he liked.
So we talked to the teacher and she came with us and finally convinced him to leave the dog farmer.
I told her if she can take him home for one week i would pay all the expenses. Because he needed to go somewhere safe to calm his feelings…Finally he went with her to her home. And after a lot of work he settled his emotions.
Now he is in our safe home.
He’s been with us for four months and he is completely changed!”
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When i tell the story, you lose how the words rolled out of the catacombs of his memory and slip between his teeth.
You miss how his heart beats in the vessle on the side of his neck.
You miss how his hands, with some short and some randomly long nails, open up each part of the story.
How his eyes hold passion and patience we have not yet held on our own.
How there burns anger and sorrow under his quick smile. And how many tears have been shed.
How his own story of redemption is still being written in little bare feet slapping across the wood floor of a simple upstairs church …
How dark his skin is.
How pleasant a face he has.
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“So before this meeting that God miraculously orchestrated at a conference, i like to paint,
so i used to paint and hang up my paintings in cafes and then use the money from the sales. And thats how i saved a few kids at first.”
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I can’t tell the story how it was told.
I can’t tell it because it wasn’t born of my own year long fight for a single boy to have a chance to live decently.
I can’t tell it right because i am not “father” to over 45 kids.
I can’t tell it because i arrived last night, and this 32 year old man has been here, fighting since he was 15.
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I am sitting on and between our 6 bags in a small vehicle they calla tuk-tuk.
It’s already 1AM and im speeding through the humid darkness, the wind wipping my hair back. And he sits across from me, also among the baggage, – smiling, his daughter leaned against him sleeping.
Except he is single…
– she was adopted by him when she was 2 because her parents left her behind when they left eachother for different spouses.
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The roads wip by. I feel like i am still in Bolivia. Trash litters the sides of the streets. Little buildings, structures of cement and waffled metal, line both sides of the street.
There are painted red, lit up, open cafes, with plastic lawn chairs lined up full of girls. Theyre all dressed differently, but for the same purposes.
Our tuk-tuk speeds on into the darkness.
