It was January 8th, 2012
when my friend Michael first told me about how God had put Cambodia on his
heart. It’s funny because minutes before
he told me that, we had been praying over my friend Seth. We were praying specifically for him but for
whatever reason the word, Cambodia appeared in my mind in big white block
letters. And I couldn’t shake it until I
finally prayed Cambodia over Seth not having any idea why until after the
prayer when Michael told me of how just a week earlier at a conference in Atlanta, Jesus had put it on his heart. That same
night my friend Marrisa called me just to let me know she was leaving in a few
days to go to Cambodia with a group for a couple weeks. I began to think there was something significant about to start happening.
Prior to
that night, I had thought about Cambodia maybe once in my life. And that was back during my junior year of
high school when I was in a class specifically focused on America's war history. We learned about how America
bombed Cambodia for a little while around Vietnam time and there was a guy in
the class that would bellow, “Cambodia” in the deepest and most Zeus-like voice
that he could whenever our teacher would mention it. Other than that, Cambodia was truly as
foreign to my mind as any place could be. I left for San Diego to work with Invisible
Children the day after Cambodia was brought up for the first time and within a
week, the country had been mentioned randomly about four or five times. And it just kept happening. I shared this with my friend Lindsey one
night over a cup of peppermint tea and quickly the same thing started happening
to her. So I couldn’t get away from
Cambodia. Naturally I learned as much as
I could about it. I read a book and some
online articles about the history of the Khmer Rouge genocide in the late 70’s
and knew some quick facts. It was always
a side thought for me until last June when I sat down to watch a documentary
about sex trafficking that a friend lent me.
I have been
interested in fighting injustice ever since I went to Uganda for the first time
in the summer of 2009, which is why I worked for Invisible Children last
year. For the past many years I have
been learning more and more about the diverse and widespread injustices all
over the world and one that has crushed ever since I first heard about it in
the summer of 2011 is sex trafficking. I
can still remember the exact seat I was in in the auditorium of the University
of San Diego when Gary Haugen, founder of the International Justice Mission,
shared about it at an Invisible Children conference called the Fourth Estate. The documentary I watched last June is
called Nefarious. Much of the
documentary focuses on Cambodia. Over
the 90 minutes or so that it lasts, I became more and more unstable from the
evil that I was hearing about. There was
a scene where it described a seven-year-old girl who was raped and killed and
they recovered her bloody pajamas after the murder. Those images have been burned into my brain
ever since. I mean to the point where I
lose sleep over the state of sex slavery in Cambodia and the rest of the
world. I know it sounds cliché and I understand that to say I am “passionate” is a great buzz word/phrase but I honestly feel like I am
downplaying how I feel in many ways, not inflating it by saying those
things. I have been emotionally and physically haunted by this
evil.
August 2012
I moved back to Fayetteville and in September my parents came up for a football
game. We were eating together before the
game and when my parents asked Cody and I if there was anything new going on, I
promptly and simply told them that I had decided I needed to go to Cambodia in
the summer (as you can imagine, not exactly something a mom loves to hear). I didn’t know how it was all going to happen
yet but all I knew is that I had to go see Cambodia. Too many dreams and too many words and too
many instances had happened in my life about Cambodia. I came to a place where I decided that I had to see the country, walk up and down the red light district, and stand in between the
mass graves of the killing fields in Phnom Pehn. About a month later I was working on rough
draft emails to send to different missionaries asking them if I could sleep on
their floor for a month or so as I planned on just exploring the country and
seeing what it was like, when I met Lauren at a coffee shop. It turns out Lauren was a missionary in
Cambodia for a season and went to my church and was planning on taking a team
back to Cambodia this summer. I was in
from day one.
Next Friday
I am getting on a plane and spending all of June and all of July in
Cambodia. We are working with different
NGOs and getting a glimpse of what it would be like to work in anti-trafficking
as a career. We will explore different
ways of preventing the sex trade, rescuing the girls, rehabilitation and other
aspects of all that encompasses anti-trafficking work. It was is going to a two month vision trip
and to call it a dream come true is about as accurate as I can put it. I am so blessed to be going with my twin
brother Cody and my good friend, Michael (yes the same Michael that spoke
Cambodia over me that first night) among six others, who are perfectly and
divinely knit together to make this summer exactly what it needs to be.
God is so good to fulfill the deep
desires He puts in our hearts. He could
have let me go anywhere to see what anti-trafficking would be like but He
allowed me to go the exact place that He has intertwined so intricately with my
last year and a half.
If you would like to be kept up to
date with our team’s adventures, updates, and prayer needs please send me your
email, so I can add you to the list.
This summer is going to be wild and we desperately need a committed
group of friends to pray for us and encourage us.
I do not expect to step off the
plane at the end of July and know exactly what I want to do for the rest of my
life (although that would be great). However, I do expect a great amount of
clarity of what way Jesus wants me to continue to pursue work in breaking the
oppressor’s rod and spreading His Kingdom as we march on to fulfill the Great
Commission in Jesus’ name. Please pray
for me in this way and for our team to have unity and for protection over us as
we go deep into Satan’s playground. Pray
that our team’s eyes are opened to the horrors of sex slavery and human
trafficking but also see the great hope of healing and eternity in Jesus. And pray that we can be a great encouragement
to the organizations we will be working with as they stay and work there full
time and as we just learn and see how they do their work.
This summer and for the rest of my
life I am trusting that Isaiah 58:6-12 is much more of a promise than it is
anything else. Hallelujah for hope,
justice, and the immense and unexplainable love of a very real and present
Savior.