Brought to Cambodia 3 years ago from Vietnam, Huynh worked as a prostitute. Through her business, she met a man who married her with promises of a life free from prostitution. She became pregnant with her daughter, Sat Long*. After a complicated pregnancy and birth, Huynh’s husband left her and married another woman, leaving Huynh alone to care for Sat Long and provide for her. Because she can speak Khmer but she cannot read or write the language, her options for working were limited, so she returned to working as a prostitute.
Recently, her landlord had been pressuring Huynh to sell her daughter to him for $1000 to help her financially. Sat Long is 8 months old and if she were to be under the control of the landlord, she would eventually be sold as a child prostitute. Hunyh loves her daughter far more than the large sum of money she was offered, but her refusal to sell Sat Long led her to be kicked out of her apartment, so she appeared that day at the nurse’s office of our organization, desperate for help.
We heard Huynh’s story over our lunch break, and were deeply moved by her difficult decision to give Sat Long up to an adoption agency and then try to find the money to get back to her family in Vietnam. As we witnessed the joy in Sat Long, and the adoration of a mother for her child, we knew there must be something better for them, God MUST have a plan that would keep them together and out of the world of prostitution. So we prayed for Huynh, sharing with her who God sees her to be, and then each prayed silently for the rest of the day that God would make a way in this situation…
