After lunch, we went to Catherine's home. She is a tiny 26 years old and is raising 30 children on her own! We are working with her while we are here in Cambodia, and are splitting into 4 teams and will each take a day of the week to go for the next few weeks we are here. We will break it up into 1 boy, 1 American girl, and 1 Asian girl to have diversity to our group. She is single, young, and is raising them alone. She does not use the 'O' word and it is not allowed in her home: orphan/orphanage. These are her babies that call her 'mom' and that she treats as her flesh and blood. How amazing! She speaks Khmer well and the kid absolutely adore her! I am so glad we will be able to work with them while we are here. I met a few today that I really seemed to click well with. For safety reasons, we cannot take pictures of them or use their names on Facebook. This is not Facebook, so I will wait and see when I go the specifics. She owns two 5 story homes side by side, a boy side and a girl side. Ages 4-19, but because of hormone issues, once the boy reach 14, she sends them down the street to the boys home for older boys that is connected with Water of Life Church (the church they belong to and we area affiliated with while down here).
I love speaking the little Khmer language I know with the kids. They think it is soooo funny white girl speaking their language. "Khaming-Khaming" means children. Love that word. It is fun! :) Let the little khaming-khaming come to me said the Lord!
For dinner, we went back to the Lebanese restaurant that we went to earlier in the week, and it was just as fabulous!!! While there, an older white man came in with a very young local Khmer girl dressed in short skirt and tank top. As she was sliding into the booth, he was rubbing her butt and slapping it. How inappropriate! In public to be humiliated like that, but she was a prostitute and must deal with that on a daily basis, to be only seen as a sexual object. She looked so broken in her eyes, but had to be nice and show him attention since he paid for her. You could tell she was miserable, but kept a fake smile. My heart breaks for her.
I know it is easy to write her off saying it is her choice. And it is. But after being here, and seeing how these people live and how helpless they are, I sympathize for them. They have nothing. They are poor mostly living in dirt floors. Dirty floors. Dirty water. Defecate on the side of the road. Making big money by selling themselves to foreigners who come here specifically for that seems like a brilliant idea when you have nothing!!
I learned today that when some of these prostitutes get pregnant, they don't abort (as what I would have expected), but go through with the pregnancy so that when the child is about 5, they can sell them for lots of money (especially when they sell them the night they are virgins, as expected, sick twisted people like young little virgins). Not all, but some. It is not uncommon for parents to prostitute out their own children, or permanently sell them off for a large lump sum. When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.
Please pray for Catherine's children, who she rescued all from the streets. No telling where they would be now if it weren't for her taking them. And for these lost souls selling themselves for money. This is what they know. And it is wrong. Please pray for divine appointment for each one to be reached out to, and for open hearts when the time comes. This life cannot be easy, nor easy to get out of. But all things are possible through God. He is waiting to rescue each of them from this life!
Small village in the city along the sewage line. Makeshift shacks lined up.
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