Writing blogs while on the Race is an interesting thing-
particularly when the entire team is involved in something really major- and I
am the last one to write about it.
The thought definitely crossed my mind to just include links to the story
that I am about to tell you, so that you can go read the stories that they wrote. But then I
realized that you might want to see it through my eyes, so here we go.
A few weeks ago on a Friday- I believe it was January 31, a
beautiful young woman came into the “family house” building of our ministry
site. She had a little 8 month
baby girl in her lap, was holding her tightly and kissing her, and desperately
telling her story to my team-mates who were in there.
Her name is Huynh* and she is 27 years old and from Vietnam, was brought to Cambodia 3 years ago, and began working as a prostitute
because she could not find any other work- especially since she could not read
or write in Khmer (the language of Cambodia). She met a man and married him after working for about 2
years, and they got pregnant.
There were some complications with the birth of their baby, Sat Long*,
and Huynh needed a c-section, which her husband paid for.
Soon after little Sat Long was born, Huynh’s husband left
her for another woman, and she returned to working as a prostitute because she
was still unable to find any other kind of work. This was a very disgraceful thing, and because so much of
Asia’s culture is based around shame, Huynh could not go home to Vietnam with her baby
because then she would have to tell her family the whole ordeal.
But because of the complications that she faced during child
birth, working as a prostitute had become very painful for her, and she was not
sure how she would continue this work.
That is when her landlord entered the picture-
This gem of a man offered her $1000 for her
baby. Huynh is a good mama, and
she knew EXACTLY what would become of her little girl if she sold her to this
man. But then many people in her
life began to put a lot of pressure in her to sell little Sat Long. When she still refused, her landlord
kicked her out of her home, and she now had nowhere to go. She thought a lot about it, and
realized that the only thing to do was to give little Sat Long up for adoption,
with the hope that she could see her again someday, and go back to Vietnam to
live with her parents. She came to the organization we were
working at in the hopes that they could provide bus fare for her to get back
home after she gave up her baby.
Huynh was such a contrast to many of the mothers that we
have interacted with in Cambodia.
So many either abuse their children, allow their husbands (or sons) to
abuse them, or are completely unconcerned with them. And here was a woman who loves her baby girl so much- and
truly wants what is best for her.
We were all pretty broken up about it- we all wanted more
for her than to give up her baby and go back to her parents house in
shame. We prayed and prayed for
her for the rest of the weekend.
The next day, the girls from my team were getting lunch at a Christian
organization called Daughters of Cambodia. As we were eating, all of a sudden Katie exclaimed, “She could work here!” (Daughters mission is to provide job
training and jobs for women coming out of prostitution,) We all started praying for her- and that
she would NOT sign the adoption papers that were being prepared for Sat Long
for that very day.
On Monday morning when we went into our ministry site, we
learned that Huynh had, indeed, gone to the adoption agency on Saturday. In fact, she was there at the same time
that we were at lunch praying for her and for her baby. She told our team that she came very
close to signing the papers, but at the last second, she “just couldn’t do
it”. The team told her our idea,
and she was so excited. We told
her that she would learn a skill and have a job and there would be free child
care for little Sat Long. She
said, “All I have ever wanted was a little home where I could live with my
daughter, and a job that would bring me dignity, and you have given that to
me.”
Kristen called Ruth, the founder of Daughters, to try to set
up a meeting. They ended up
getting together and Ruth decided that Huynh would be a great fit, and that she
could start the very next day!
So the next day, the same tuk tuk driver went to pick her up
and brought her to our hostel. All
of us girls piled in (the men on our team stayed back- and together they
covered my classes for the day so that I had the opportunity to go and minister
to Huynh). We brought her to
Daughters and then we went apartment hunting. The place that we found is $22/mo, which is at the top of her
price range since she will make only $60/mo, but we are hoping that she will be
able to room with a friend soon- and we decided to use some of our ministry
fund to pay for her first 3 months of rent.
We let her stay in the “apartment” (basically a 8 foot
square room with a tiny bathroom) and rest while we got supplies. Us girls spent the day in the markets
buying everything from a fan to a mattress for the floor to rice and plates to
laundry detergent and a mosquito net.
At that time, she had only one outfit because she apparently
owed her peach of a landlord $20 and he was holding her clothes hostage until it
was paid in full. With the money
that we gave her for food, she gave him $10 and he gave her half of her clothes
back. This debt bothered us all,
but my team mate Tim in particular.
He said that if $10 will make it so this woman never has to talk to this
man again, then we need to just pay it and let her be done with it. He said, “When we came to Jesus, we
were told that our debt was ‘paid in full’ and we need to show that to this
woman”.
The day that we left Cambodia, we got to visit her one last
time. We brought her a little
gift- a bicycle. It has a basket
so she can put her groceries in it and also a little ‘baby seat’ in the
back. We went as a team to deliver
it, which was really cool because the guys finally got to meet this sweet woman
and her little baby. All month long we have been separated
into a few different ministries at our work site, and this was the first thing
that we really accomplished together as a team. Bringing the bicycle to Huynh and Sat Long
was also the first time I looked around at my team and realized that they were no
longer just my “World Race Team”, but had in fact become my family.
* names were changed (also, I was not allowed to include pictures- sorry guys)
