I recently returned from my second trip to South East Asia with Love146 and was surprised to find so many at Terra asking me if I was going to write about my experience.  Apparently the novel length, grammatical disaster I called a “travel log” written on my last trip in April of 09 had more of an impact that I suspected.  Thanks so much for your collective interest.

My trip to South East Asia in 2009 was largely funded by the Terra Nova Church community.  I returned this time as a Love146 employee, which happened as a result of that last trip and for which I am deeply grateful to you all.  Going to South East Asia with Love146 in 2009 not only deepened Terra’s involvement in the issue of child sex trafficking, but also had a significant impact on the future of my career.  I came home having tapped into something that had gone to sleep in me.  Unable to sell ski wax anymore and with Frieda’s encouragement, I entered into a year long dialogue with Love146 that ended in my employment starting part time in April of 2010 and then full time last September.  As “National Networks Coordinator”, I’m building relationships between Love146 and churches and starting then networking together passionate groups of volunteer abolitionists called Love146 “Task Forces” (Angel Eads leads our Task Force here in Troy and it is going really well.  You should join it).  It’s a dream job, perfectly suited to me.  So often we look at the next step in life with sort of a grass is greener mentality only to reach that place and find it just as messy as the last place.  This has not been the case at Love146 (at least not yet!).  While there are certainly hiccups, I love my work, the organizational culture and the incredibly impressive people I work with.  The Lord led me to something new and it is beautiful and good.

Apparently my bosses at Love146 felt my last trip to South East Asia left me equipped to lead a group of people on a trip, something I was actually pretty nervous about … 5 people to three countries with three different languages and three different currencies on the other side of the world.  I ended up taking 3 Task Force and church partners, Bobby Leoni from The Well Church/Making Waves Task Force in Geneva IL, Shanea Shaub from The Rock Church in Castle Rock Colorado/Castle Rock Task Force and Amanda Hightower from the A29 mothership, Mars Hill Church in Seattle.  Mars Hill is in the process of launching an amazing non-profit called REST (Real Escape from the Sex Trade).  Also with us was one of my coworkers from Love146 who had never had the chance to see our programs in South East Asia, Marilyn de Guehery.  If you follow Love146 you know Marilyn’s amazing graphic design work.  I spent hours carefully planning every detail only to realize hours before our departure that in my inexperience I had screwed up my time zone change and lost 12 hours from our itinerary.  Leaving me to explain to the crew that I had effectively lost a full day from their very expensive trip (awesome!)  It served as one last reminder that this trip did not belong to me and that turned out to be a useful thing to know.

The question most have been asking is “how was this trip different than the last?”  Aside from being responsible for every detail and the safe return of all involved, largely this trip focused on solutions.  In 2009 much of what I experienced was a shocking immersion.  This trip centered much more on Love146 Asia Prevention and Aftercare, Love146 staff in the field and our program partners.  Instead of as much first hand exposure to the problem we were having strategic conversations with strategically placed people.  There were moments that were terrible and shocking, but those came mostly from anecdotal accounts rather than first hand experience.  However this trip was no less inspiring and perhaps more inspiring in some ways.

When it comes to Asia Prevention, much of the work of Love146 comes in the form of identifying effective and under resourced local solutions and doing “capacity building” with those groups.  Love146 in not the solution, we support local people working on local solutions.  We do this though an immensely capable and highly experienced staff on the ground in Phnom Penh, Dr. Glenn Miles and his assistant Sophorn Phuong.  It seemed like everywhere we went Glenn was a founder or board member or an official advisor or simply held in high esteem by these local people and organizations.  Made me immensely proud to work with him.

We visited Kone Kmeng, a Cambodian organization that mobilizes Khmer churches to serve and protect children.  The story of the people who started this organization is amazing … too long to unpack here.  We met a Kone Kmeng partner, a pastor who planted his church with money he made driving a Tuk Tuk (motorcycle cab).  He created two local schools for at risk children who’s parents are absent for any number of reasons (most often as they are working long hours to feed their families) … all before he started holding his Sunday worship services.  Now the children who go to school during the week, return on Sunday with their parents to hear about Jesus.

We met Alli Mellon who leads a project called Hard Places.  Hard Places creates a “drop in” program for exploited children.  Not all children can or want to leave their families and communities to go to a place like the Round Home for residential aftercare.  Imagine a ministry to cares for children in the midst of trafficking; often having to release them back into horrible situations.  It was incredible to see and heart wrenching.

We visited with Chab Dai, the network of Christian ministries working together cooperatively in Cambodia and now in the US to end trafficking.  We visited with “First Step” a group working to end the sexual abuse and exploitation of boys.  We met with a woman who created a flip chart for Love146 that can be used to teach local children in schools and villages about the dangers of trafficking and how to avoid exploitation.  We participated in two different street outreach initiatives, one to prostituted women and one to western men in a Red Light district of Phnom Penh.  We were inspired by a growing group of socially responsible local businesses created to train, employ and provide alternatives previously exploited people.

Looking at some of the cultural forces at work in Cambodia, we also visited Tuol Sleng or S21 Prison (now a museum and memorial) of the Khmer Rouge revolution of 1975.  It was my second trip to this devastating place where 17,000 people where imprisoned, and horribly tortured until they were willing to confess to be an enemy of the revolution and then sent to the Killing Fields where they met a brutal end.  On this trip we also visited The Killing Fields themselves, a memorial and mass gravesite outside of Phnom Penh.  I had heard about it from other travelers but nothing can prepare you for this experience.  Walking amongst pits, one-time mass graves.  You look down on the path you walk and see pieces of cloth and small white … bones … that rise to the surface of the ground in heavy rains … you realize you are literally walking amongst and on top the dead.  Your first inclination is to run, until you realize there is no where to go.  Most Americans will never learn in school about this effect of our intervention in South East Asia, a genocide that took the lives of 2 million people, ¼ the population of Cambodia, genocide second only to the Holocaust in terms of scope but second to none in its brutality.

As a traveling “mystic” and “pilgrim” I had been reflecting on and diving back into my spiritual struggle of 2009.  I believe the God of the Bible is sovereign … omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent.  But Cambodia is the most challenging place I have ever been in this regard.  All good theology and doctrine seem at best hard to grasp and at worst rather flippant in places like this.  Stand in The Killing Fields and say “for our good and God’s glory”.  Tell it to the child who has been raped and then cut by her western “customer”.  Make no mistake; I believe the God of the Bible is who He says He is.  I can live with the mystery of how some of the things I have seen and experienced could possibly be for his glory.  But trust me when I tell you these things are much easier sitting in my office on River St than they are in these places that absolutely defy imagination.  I read pieces from Romans 9 to our group as we left Tuol Sleng.  Our group sat in silence and stared out the window of our comfortable air-conditioned van.

I entered into this trip absolutely determined to ask people on the ground in Cambodia and The Philippines about reconciling God’s sovereignty and their experience.  I did not want to wave the white flag that is mystery so easily this time.  I wanted to press in.  To a person, those I spoke with, the people operating in the most difficult situations and the most horrible stories, were pretty comfortable with the “omnis” of God’s character.  Allie Mellon told me one of the most horrific stories of trafficking I have ever heard, told me how she struggled with anger from time to time towards God.  But then told me “God is good all the time in everything” … and then … she looked me directly in the eye and told it to me again.  I find myself whispering those words frequently now.  Dr. Gundelina Velazco, The love146 Director of Asia Aftercare, perhaps the most extraordinary person I have ever met, just stared at me when I asked her that question.  Then very softly, in her grace filled and elegant way told me that the Round Home girls in our care saw what happened to them as part of their story with God, something He would use for good in their lives.  Her serenity, the joy of our girls, left me feeling sort of foolish.  What right do I have to struggle with the sovereignty of God if these people who live in the midst of far more difficulty can find rest.  “But who are you, oh man, to answer back to God?”  I’m not suggesting that all Christians working in hard places or all Christian survivors of horrible things are comfortable with the sovereignty of God … but all the ones I encountered on this trip were.

Being back at The Round Home after two years was amazing.  I had been there for the opening in 2009.  Now I was returning for the wedding of one of those first residents, and as an honored “Principle Sponsor”, which meant I was in the wedding procession and signed the marriage certificate (they listed me as Dr. Miller and I didn’t bother to correct it … is that bad?).  Since 2009 The Round Home has served about 30 girls.  Many, 8 last year alone, have been baptized in the local church and have come into a relationship with Christ.  There have been three weddings in three year.  Most amazingly to me, the worldwide statistic for reintegrated survivors of trafficking who return to a life of exploitation is about 40%.  Of the reintegrated girls from The Round Home none have been re-trafficked …100% of our reintegrated girls are thriving in life outside of exploitation and still connected to The Round Home.  To sit with the girls and to hear Dr. Velazco talk about her work, the balancing for the clinical, academic and spiritual was truly a gift and the highlight of the trip.  Wanted to leave you all with a photo from the wedding.

Afterthoughts…  The trip reinforced my understanding of what we are doing at Love146 and deepened my relationship with our immensely capable and inspiring staff on the ground in South East Asia.  As a church, you should feel very confident in your support of Love146.  The work and the people reflect Christ and are representative of who we aspire to be as a community and what is important to us.  I was challenged professionally on the communication of the spiritual nature and importance of our work as an international human rights group that is not a “faith based” organization.  I have work cut out for me in this regard.  I pressed hard into my struggle with God’s sovereignty in the hardest of places and He proved himself to be worthy of my faith.

I also was made painfully aware of what seems like a hole in my relationship with God.  I have come to realize how much nearer I feel to God traveling in the developing world in closer proximity to situations both desperate and filled with light and hope … connected in a way I find very difficult back home in the developed west.  Some has to do with unplugging from routine and traveling light, and that way offering fewer distractions compared with my life affluence and comfort.  Its not that I think God operates differently there compared with here.  It’s just that I think our lives of comfort can have a numbing affect on the soul.  The story of the rich young ruler rings so true … Luke 18:18, “but when he heard these things, he became very sad, because he was very rich”.

Please feel free to send your questions my way.  Also you can have an impact on this issue by being part of our Troy Love146 Task Force.