Thursday morning we left YWAM Bangkok on busses to head to the Thailand/Cambodia border, and arrived in Cambodia around lunch time Due to some not so favorable travel conditions (aka horrendously large potholes and the worst roads you could ever imagine) we didn’t arrive in Phnom Penh until about 1:30 Friday morning (if you look at a map, the distance we traveled should never have taken almost 10 hours!). Since we’re working through YWAM (technically University of the Nations) this month, we were given the YWAM introduction/cultural orientation so we could understand Cambodia a little better. We also took part in a city tour around Phnom Penh on Saturday to see some of the things we had talked about in the orientation. Most of the information you’ll read here is from those two days.
The entire history would take too long to type, but I think the condensed version is important for you all to be able to understand what kinds of things my team will be seeing and experiencing this month. Something I was completely ignorant of is that Cambodia has had a recent civil war and genocide. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Khmer Rouge like I had, but really knew nothing about it. So first, a little language lesson: “Khmer” means “Cambodian” and “rouge” is French for “red” (there is some French influence here because of previous times in history…too much detail to get in to), so basically saying “Khmer Rouge” is talking about the communist Cambodians. Anyway, the Khmer Rouge came into control of Cambodia in 1975 and basically had the goal to have the fastest set-up of the best communist nation ever created. They forced everyone out of the cities into farming communes and placed the king under house arrest in his palace. They also killed everyone associated with the previous government or military and any educated and religious people as well. During the four years the Khmer Rouge was in power (1975-1979) about two million people were killed (that’s almost 30 percent of Cambodia’s population at that time!).
When we went on our city tour Saturday the first place we stopped at was called the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, at a place that had been a torture prison during the Khmer Rouge. (The buildings had actually been a high school until the 1970’s when the Khmer Rouge took the complex over). As many as 10,000 prisoners came through this prison, and only 7 of them survived. One of the areas was filled with pictures of those who had been imprisoned there, and there was a whole section of kids’ pictures, as well as a few pictures of women with their babies. I was frozen – I couldn’t move past that room for a long time because of the deep impact it had on me. My heart is for kids, and to see pictures of real kids who suffered in very real ways completely broke me. There was also an exhibit based on a book that was written after the genocide ended of people who survived the Khmer Rouge, and there was a comment book in that room for people to write their feelings/thoughts after reading the stories and seeing the pictures. Some people wrote things like “I’ll be praying this never happens again…God bless Cambodia” and on the other end of the spectrum, others wrote things to the effect of “where was God – any god – in all of this? Are humans so fallen that they can do this?” At the end of our tour we watched a documentary containing the story of one woman who had been imprisoned at Tuol Sleng and executed there – it was so hard to hear what kinds of things people were punished for and to see pictures and hear stories from one of the guards who worked at Tuol Sleng during this time.
A little bit later in the day we went to one of the killing fields, specifically, the one where the prisoners from Tuol Sleng were taken for execution (it’s called Cheung Eik). Over 9,000 men, women, and children were found buried at this site and there is now a memorial to honor those who died there. The first thing you see when you walk in is a huge stupa that was built in 1989 (I think?) that contains many skulls that were excavated after the Khmer Rouge fell. There were also a few of the mass graves marked off to tell exactly what kinds of people had been buried there. We walked around the complex for a while, and again, I had to stop and sit and just pray about what I had seen.
There is such a spirit of heaviness above Cambodia because of the history. Please pray for healing for this land, that Cambodians would be able to overcome the past and be released to move on. Pray for restoration of broken families – many people in Cambodia are still living with memories of what happened and have in some way been personally affected by the events of this time. Also, pray for generational curses to be broken, specifically in the areas of fear, hopelessness, and violence. Cambodia is a country with a lot of darkness, but there is a sense of light starting to break through. Pray for the small number of Christians here, that they would feel free to share the freedom that they have found in Christ with those who are still living in darkness. Pray that the strongholds of Buddhism would be demolished and that people will come to know Christ in very real ways. Pray for our teams who are spread out all over this country for the next month, that God’s light would shine through us and that He will use us to bring people closer to Him.
