WARNING: This blog might offend you so prepare your heart.
Naked, beaten, blind folded, crammed into a dark truck.
You are shoved out of the truck. You were told you were being moved to new housing. The crowd of people around you is thicker than the crowd on New Years Eve at Time Square. Many people are frantic with fear, others are hopeful that what they have been told is true, and still others hope that they will find their relatives safe here.
As you stumble out of the truck the air is thick with an unrecognizable, unbearable stench. It’s the smell of fresh blood and rotting bodies. A few will be rescued but most of the people you are with will soon be dead. Your uncle might die slowly through starvation, exhaustion, severe physical abuse. Your brother or sister or best friend will be blind folded, have their vocal chords cut so that they can’t scream, and then they will be gunned down in a mass execution. Your children will be smashed to death on a tree and your wife or mother will be raped, beaten, and shot. You might have to stand witness to these atrocities, you might be forced into committing them, or you might never know what happened or if your family survived at all.
skulls of some of the victims from this killing field. They are housed in a memorial stretching 7 stories high fillid with bones and skull remains of victims
This is a minuscule glance of what happened in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. Over 3 million people were victims of the massacre that happened in Cambodia. If you are over the age of 30 here in Cambodia you are a survivor of the genocide.
Clothes gathered from the graves and grounds
Saturday I visited The Choeung Ek Genocidal Center AKA The Killing Fields. Listening to the stories was hard. Seeing real, human bones and clothes still on the ground, knowing that scared confused men, women, and children were in those clothes, only 34 years ago. 3 million people were brutally murdered and to this day a lot of the western world knows nothing about this. They don’t know that there are Christian brothers and sisters still struggling due to the effects of that genocide. Most people don’t realize hundreds of thousands of children are recruited as child soldiers and many die as child soldiers, or that more than 185,000 people as real as you with hopes, fears, dreams, and feelings are going to die of starvation, preventable sickness TODAY. That’s over 675 million people every year, that’s more than twice the population of the United States!! Where were you in 1979? Even more recent, where were you in 1994 while there was a mass genocide going on in Rwanda?
Killing Tree. Children were held by the feet and smashed or beated to death against this tree, then thrown into a grave.
It’s ok if you didn’t know but now you do. There are still horrible horrible atrocities like these happening in our world today. Literally TODAY. Right now, as you are reading this someone is being tortured and they will die.
I am so thankful and blessed to have been born in the U.S. However, I’m realizing that the blessing and privilege I’ve been given means that I also have it in my power to help those who are suffering. Not only those in my country but those around the world. That starving Cambodian child is loved just the same as your child in the eyes of God and you should break for them in the same way you would break if you heard of a child in your life dyeing. Prayer is amazing but if everyone is only praying and not taking the action that the Lord leads them to take then, not listening to God’s answer to prayers then what good the prayer. God gives us choices. Even when we pray we have the chance to accept an answer that is spoken to us or to deny it.
This is what the mass graves look like today. Every couple months bones and clothes are still collected as they come to the surface.
So, where am I going with all this? The point is, the world needs Jesus, the world needs people who are willing to go and others who are willing to fund those who are willing to go. The world needs the body of Christ to start listening to the father who created that body. Rise up men and women of GOD! If you have a shirt on your back you are rich in the eyes of SO many people in the world. I know from experience that if you have white skin Asia, Africa, and South America they consider you rich, beautiful, and greedy. A lot of the world thinks that all Christians and white people are like what they see in the movies because the movie theater is the only place that they have ever known white people. It’s the only place where Americans come to them and talk to them. In case you’re lost, I’m talking about a person on a movie screen being the only American who has ever and will ever be speaking to them. A very truthful dialogue from the movie “Hotel Rwanda” resonated so deep in me the other day
(Rwandan) Paul Rusesabagina: “I am glad that you have shot this footage and that the world will see it. It is the only way we have a chance that people might intervene.”
(American) Jack: “Yeah and if no one intervenes, is it still a good thing to show?”
(Rwandan) Paul Rusesabagina: “How can they not intervene when they witness such atrocities?”
(American) Jack: “I think if people see this footage they’ll say, “oh my God that’s horrible,” and then go on eating their dinners.”
Some of the children victims of the Genocide.
Now if you’re still reading, I hope you aren’t too ticked at me but I do hope you don’t say to yourself “WOW that is so true” then go back to watching your TV show and never think twice about it again. No matter what you do, I will never condemn you and never judge you because I’m not here for that and God is still doing so much work on me and the ways I need to be more giving, loveing, and obidient. However, you can never again say that you didn’t know.
These children live in a small wooden shack on the other side of the fence that surrounds the Killing Fields. They run along the fence and beg for money, water, soda, or food.
Thank you to all those who support any missionary or any volunteer organization your money and prayer are truly appreciated beyond words. Thank you to every person who has gone out into the brokenness of our country and the world despite what they had to leave behind.
My squadmate Sarah with some of the Children at the Orphanage we are working at this month
There are hundreds of thousands of people, volunteers, missionaries, and organizations you can help by getting up and going or sending your support. There are even millions of people who have never heard the good news and who are suffering but have not been touched by any missionary or organization.
The givers are no better than the goers and the goers no better than the givers. The difference comes in which one you are being called to. Not which one you prefer, which one are you being called to for this time. Here at AIM alone there are hundreds of missionaries on the field who need funding. Pick one. I won’t be mad if you don’t pick me but do something, tell someone about Jesus today don’t EVER stop praying but get up off the floor and start moving! The true body of Christ does not sit still with its eyes closed like a blind paralytic; it’s alive and moving, are you a part of the living, moving body of Christ?
Please share this blog. And so much thanks and blessings to all those who are active and moving in the body of Christ!
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Fundraising Update:
Currently, I need to raise $2,100 in the next 2 weeks or I will be on a plane home. If you would like to help support me CLICK HERE
Promise My next blog will bemore light hearted. I’m going to do a picture blog so stay tuned
Credits:
Camera broke so all of the pictures are from google images and Sarah’s picture is from Sarah! 🙂
