This is a blog written yesterday from a World Racer who is in Cambodia right now working with these girls, showing them the truth of God’s love and reaching out to them in kindness. Please read it and remember that this is what I will be doing in just a few months. Thank you for your support! Also please direct your child to the KIDS AREA under the TOPICS Section for their blogs to read.
It’s 8:00am and the sun is
already beating down over Cambodia. I step out of my guesthouse into 99-degree
heat, and my flip-flops are faithfully waiting on the front steps for me to
slip on. I strap my backpack to the handlebars of my turquoise-blue bike as I
wheel it out the front gate.
Crossing the street can be a
challenge for the typical American, but after the first few times you get used
to it. Just ease your way into the ever-flowing swarm of motorcycles, buses,
Tuk-Tuks, cars and bicycles; if you wait for an opening you might be there all
day.
Twenty-minutes of fighting
traffic, and I pull up to the gate of the safe house. The security guard knows
me by now, so she opens the gate and hands me a visitor pass followed by the
typical Cambodian greeting: hands in a prayer position in front of her face,
and a slight bow. I greet her the same way, and park my bike in the shade, then
I’m off to find the girls.
The girls are beautiful:
flawless tan skin, big brown eyes, and huge smiles adorn their lovely faces.
They’re smart, too: in their broken English they tell me their names and
favorite ice cream flavors, and what they want to do when they grow up. They
love pizza and dancing and makeup, just like any other teenage girls. But they’re
not just any teenage girls.
They have hits on their
lives.
Yep, that’s right. A sweet
little 12-year old grabs my hand and leads me out to the yard, and I’m
wondering how anyone could put a price on her life. But it’s true- someone
wants her dead.
She, like the other girls in
the safe house, was recently rescued from the sex trade industry. Most likely
her story follows the typical pattern: her family is poor and her parents owed
someone money. They were tricked into selling their young beautiful daughter as
a prostitute- told she could “have a job” to pay off the family’s debt, not
knowing what that job would entail.
This girl was lucky: she was
rescued. Many are not. But she still has to deal with the implications of what
was done to her. She wants to go home, but she’s not safe there. Part of her
wants to go back to her “boyfriend” -the man who has been using her body. She
has anger that she doesn’t understand. She’s no longer a little girl, but she
is deeply aware that she became a woman before her time.
I wish you could see the
girls dance and laugh; I wish I could tell you all of their names and stories,
because it would break your heart. (For obvious reasons, we can’t post any
specific information about the girls or the safe house online.)
But for now, I’ll take it one
day at a time. I’ll play with their hair and let them teach me how to dance, I’ll
sit and color with them and teach them songs. I’ll distract them from wanting
to run away, because that’s what I am in Cambodia to do. And at the end of the
day, I’ll get on my turquoise-blue bicycle and sweat for 20 minutes until I can
lay under the fan in my room and pray for my girls.
