Abandoned-Orphaned

Hope Restored

On Easter Sunday, we celebrate the new life and hope that is within us. Jesus’ victory becomes ours and, as we interact with the world around us, we are to be carriers, displayers and tellers of the promise that is found only in Him.

I find it very fitting, then, to receive this e-mail today from an orphan caregiver in Thailand concerning children lost – now found – and the process of seeing hope restored; restored through a faithful servant who understands the amazing power of love.

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Dear Paul...

Wow. I just read through a good bit of your blog..."happened" upon it. Wow.

It really touched my heart, my heart that is so bent towards orphans and those abandoned. I work in Thailand at an orphanage for kids with HIV; 70 kids. Most are healthy as they are on the ARV drugs, and you would never guess that they were HIV by looking at them...well, most of them. Some are symptomatic, but all are able to attend school.

It's what you can't see that breaks my heart. The look in their eyes, the odd behavior, the restlessness. The knowledge that they were sent away, pushed away, given away just because they are HIV. This is what they really have to live with every day. And as they are living longer and getting older, it gets harder and harder. They are able to voice themselves with more clarity and express their emotions with more fire. And as a caregiver, it is hard to know how to deal with some things and I am never able to separate the fact that these kids are hurting deep into their soul. They weren't wanted.

I do many things at the orphanage, but the thing I see myself doing most is just loving the kids. Taking them into my arms and giving them mom love, even when they smell so badly of infection or are covered with scabs. I feel like I have to fill in the gaps, to make up for something lacking, to pour out and out and out. My husband and I are even in the process of adopting an HIV positive orphan boy. His name is Bu and he is 5. He is lovely and I can't wait until he lives with us.

On our campus, we also have housing for "abandoned women"....wives and sisters and mothers who have been rejected by their families and left at the hospital, never to be picked up again. Last Sunday, one woman died, leaving behind her 8 year old son for us to care for, for us to mother in her stead. Somehow, it ended up being me that brought the boy, Boonyarit, back to see his dead mother, her body all shrouded and tied up. As we sat next to her, laying on a mat on the floor, I untied her face. She had just turned 31. But she looked 90. And she weighed about 50 lbs. But Boonyarit and I sat there and talked about her and what she was like and how she loved him and how he made her so happy.

I am no grief counselor or any kind of professional, but I am a mommy. And I thought about this, "if that were me and Boon was one of my boys, what would I want said about me?" So we talked about how she is singing with the angels and dancing with Jesus, because she loved Him. We talked about how glad she was that Boon was with us at the Agape Home now. And then I said, "let's kiss her one more time." So we both did and I tied the white sheet around her face again. He waved bye-bye, Paul. And he smiled at her, his eyes as sparkling as his mom's ever were. And I bit my lip and took a deep breath and I said bye-bye, too. We walked out and the men came in to put her in her coffin, which was just there inside the room.

Things die and things are left behind. Dreams die. Mommies die. Hope dies. The will to live dies....but this is not the end of the story. Dreams can come alive again, I can be a mommy. Hope can be restored. And the desire to live life to the fullest can spark again.

God cares about lost things. And He cares about children who have been lost...lost in a political system, lost in the shuffle, lost to someone's memory.

Thank you, Paul, for being a finder.

Ellen C.

Would You Press the Button? (part three)

We press that button in other ways also.

As we dwell within our entertainment-oriented, pleasure-seeking, self-indulgent domain, we ignore the plight of the world’s masses. As we give time and attention to the things that bring us materialistic or experiential satisfaction, we become apathetic to the mega-issues of our day.

We spend evenings absorbed by NBC, HBO and PPV, while people die in Darfur and the Congo. We fill our schedules with all manner of pleasurable activities and leisure occasions, while children are being raped for profit in Cambodia. We watch hundreds of hours of sporting events each year, while an emaciated worker is held in continual debt bondage to a brick kiln in India.

Where is our sense of outrage?

It has been numbed and replaced by the selfish pursuits of all that our culture has to offer.

Entertainment and material that "moth and rust will destroy" have been prioritized over giving time, attention and resources to our neighbors around the world.

Each time we tune into the next pointless TV show, instead of volunteering at a non-profit ministry, we are pushing the button.

Each time we splurge on trivialities and frivolities, instead of giving those funds to save a life in the developing world, we are pushing the button. We are choosing our pleasure over somebody else’s existence or well-being.

The 2006 American Time Use Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, revealed that:

On an "average day" in 2006, persons in the US, age 15 and over, slept about 8.6 hours, spent 5.1 hours doing leisure and sports activities, worked for 3.8 hours, and spent 1.8 hours doing household activities. The remaining 4.7 hours were spent doing a variety of other activities, including eating and drinking, attending school, and shopping. Watching TV was the leisure activity that occupied the most time, accounting for about half of leisure time, on average, for both men and women.

Obviously, an "average day" factors in weekends and the reality that some activities are only done by a subset of the population. It is therefore designed to represent "adult society as a whole." Given that clarification, doesn’t it appear that our society can give more time and attention to the problems of the world, if only by replacing a few hours of TV per week?

We obviously devote a lot of our schedule to shopping. We live in a country that spends over $3 Billion on fine fragrances at department stores each year (not including Internet purchases and regular perfumes); a country that disperses over $250 million annually on just mascara alone; a country that will pay $15 billion this year for pet food, four times the amount spent on baby food. We dish out further billions on pet toys and accessories.

Time we invest in watching reruns and purchasing fancy fragrances could be used to save lives. Money we spend on pampering pets could be used to rescue the street child that nurses off of a stray dog in Bombay.

We’ve got it all wrong.

We keep pressing the button.

To be continued...

Would You Press the Button? (part two)

I see the button as an allegory, a metaphor of sorts.

The fact of the matter is that we press that button every day.

As we go about our daily lives of comfort and excess, without consideration of how our choices and actions might impact others, we adversely affect ‘strangers’ the world over.

When we buy a new bathroom rug because the last one is apparently out of style, we keep an eight year-old boy, Rajan, chained to a loom in Nepal.

When we pick up a latte from our favorite barista, we fuel a conglomerate that forces Juan, a poor Costa Rican coffee grower, to sell at prices far below what would allow him to afford that same cup of coffee for himself.

When we buy the latest fancy T-Shirt with gold embossing at XYZ Casuals, we rob Ajay from ever leaving the cotton plantation that holds him and his sisters in perpetual bondage in South India.

When we go on an exotic spa vacation to Southeast Asia, we entrap Isra, a fifteen year-old Thai girl from the impoverished hill tribes, in a world of daily violation and exploitation.

When we visit that adult Website that our teachers warned us about, we enable pornographers to imprison a scared teenage girl, Imana, in a Burundian hotel room for three days, robbing her of her innocence and privacy.

When we choose to adopt a child from a country with a less-than-reputable child-placement program, we cause Esmeralda to reluctantly give up her new baby girl in Latin America.

When we select that rare hardwood for our kitchen cabinets because it nicely matches the existing wallpaper and is much grander than the neighbor’s remodel, we help to eradicate the ecosystem that sustains Daniel and his family in Brazil.

When we choose to get an organ transplant in Eastern Europe because the wait is too long in the United States, we cause the abduction of Serge, a street child in Moldova, and the subsequent harvesting of his kidneys.

Whether it’s the big and profound (organ transplants, Internet pornography, and international adoptions), or the seemingly trite and trivial (cups of coffee, T-shirts, kitchen cabinets, vacations, and bathroom rugs), we constantly enslave, maim and kill our neighbors around the planet.

What’s unsettling is that the facts are out there and are readily available. They can be researched with relative ease. But we simply don’t have the time and inclination to do so.

We’re just much too busy...and comfortable.

We keep pressing the button.

To be continued...

A Sense of Urgency

Our fourth stop to view church-based school programs being conducted amongst the ethnic Vietnamese living on the waterways in Cambodia, took us across the Mekong from the capital city of Phnom Penh. Here, set in the current against a small chiseled cliff on the opposite bank, sits a small community of boats and barges within eyeshot of the metropolis that preys upon its children.

As I was sharing and praying with the young students, two of our group spoke with the teachers. When asked how often children in the community are sold to traffickers, the response was an affirmation of steady frequency. The teachers then pointed out the two oldest girls in the classroom, aged 12 or 13, and stated that, "If they don’t get jobs and provide income for their families soon, they will probably be sold."

These same girls smiling for my camera lens in a school setting could very soon be forced to pose for pornographic photos as men repeatedly take advantage of them, up to twenty times per day.

Our minds went into action. The need for sound research and approach collided with an immediate sense of urgency. This is typically the case with such scenarios. One has to figure out the right culturally-relevant strategy and implementation steps through the local indigenous churches, but also acknowledge that, as each day passes, more and more children are placed in imminent danger. (Please view my related, ‘Green Lights’ post regarding this delicate balance.)

And so this is my promise:

We’re quickly going to assess trade-skill development programs that also provide immediate income opportunities for these older children as an alternative to being sold into prostitution. These programs will include capital equipment needs and micro-finance initiatives to then place fully-trained girls into positions of self-sustainability. As we evaluate the market opportunities for the goods these girls can produce, we will also open up western markets to them through inventive Internet-based tools.

After all, World Orphans not only seeks to respond to orphaning and abandonment, but prevent them.

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If you are interested in contributing to this pilot program that will be executed using trusted, experienced partners, please send donations to World Orphans and write "Child Sex-Trade Prevention" in the memo line of your check.

World Orphans
1840 Woodmoor Dr., Suite 100
Monument, CO 80132
1-888-ORPHANS
719-487-1700

All contributions are tax deductible and eternally significant.

A Game of Thirds

After we rumbled down the dirt road and past the wooden houses on stilts at the shoreline, we came to an opening, a dock of sorts. There, we walked over deeply-cracked mud and boarded a longboat that would take us to the other side of the slow-moving Mekong.

Barges with homes built upon them were anchored close to the shore; just a few feet away from Cambodian soil, but a whole culture apart. Different language and customs. Common problems.

The motor’s rhythm was labored and irregular, but it was enough to propel us by this first cluster of refugees and illegal immigrants and across the dirty expanse to the opposite bank. There, we docked at a floating church that was running a school for children, many of them orphaned or abandoned.

Current estimates of the Vietnamese community in Cambodia range from 100,000 to over 2 million. Citizens of neither Cambodia nor Vietnam, many live on the lakes and rivers in flotillas, waterborne villages huddled together for protection and community.

We boarded the church where thirty or so children were diligently studying at rows of desks as part of a program funded by our hosts. The gentle rocking of the mobile vessel spoke of the villagers’ precarious position, caught in a land of prejudice, discrimination and persecution, but unwelcome back in the socialist land of their heritage lest they spark a counter-revolution.

To be Vietnamese in Cambodia, especially as one engaged in subsistence life on the lake or river, is to be a ‘yuon,’ a person regarded by most Cambodians as ‘lower than scum.’ Widely resented, these poor fishermen are frequent targets of political power plays and hate crimes. Various purges and sporadic attacks have brought death to them and their families, including the massacre of children in a floating video game parlor. Viewed as intruders, stealers of fish, and polluters of waterways, they are unwelcome guests in a culture where many seek to eradicate or expel them.

Lack of citizenship privileges, restricted access to basic education, social exclusion, illiteracy, limited trade skill opportunities, strong obligations to paying family debt, and extreme poverty all work together to attract the wolves. It’s no wonder that the children of these displaced Vietnamese communities are constantly preyed upon by traffickers.

The net result is a horrible game of thirds...

Over one-third of the 60,000 to 100,000 full and part-time prostitutes in Cambodia are under 18 and most are Vietnamese girls, many stolen or hoaxed into sexual slavery. The impoverished Vietnamese boat people are so desperate for income that one third of the families have willingly sold a child to sex traffickers in order to survive. Another one third has seriously considered doing so.

I scanned the children in rows before me and looked at every third child.

How many of them might be sold?

If not for this church-based education program, how many of them would already be in brothels by now?

Migration

To be in Ho Chi Minh City is to be in the middle of an ant nest swarming with mopeds and motorcycles. People dart on two wheels from every direction, seemingly without order. Larger vehicles push their way through the mayhem, much like lions on the chase splitting herds of stampeding wildebeest. I was amazed by their lack of concern for the ‘small guy’ as they plummeted into busy thoroughfares without hesitancy or caution.

Victims are common. The Saigon Times reported matter-of-factly that, last week alone, there were 185 traffic fatalities in the country. If that statistic bears out as an average, it equates to almost ten thousand deaths per year on Vietnamese roads.

As Vietnam enjoys an economic boom its citizens trade in their pedal-powered bicycles for motorized versions. Wealth is still limited, though, and families will often share one set of wheels. It is not uncommon to see three, or even four or five, members of a family stacked like dominoes onto one moped. Little ones are held in mommy’s arms or crunched up against the handlebars in front of daddy.

Given this scenario, bad accidents can take out whole families or, as parents presumably protect their children during collision or ground impact, they sacrifice themselves in their stead.

Billboards extol the dangers of multi-thousand-pound vehicles colliding with their lesser counterparts. But who heeds such signs when you’re simply going about your way in a system of semi-organized chaos?

We saw the aftermath of two motorcycle accidents as we went to and from a location up country to visit orphans. I wondered, as the lions pluck off the inattentive, dazed or confused, how many accident orphans are left as a result?

Our vehicle and others simply skirted around the accident scenes, un-phased by their occurrence or consequences. Just another casualty in the daily migration, collateral damage in a society trying to further itself on the world’s stage.

Our host told us that the greatest fear of these motorcycle riders is to crash and survive, only to be run over by another vehicle. I could see the risk. The crowded surge leaves little room for a delay in response reflexes.

...And so we are left with yet another analogy for our dog-eat-dog world where the crowd moves forward at the cost of the individual, where the errant or slow wildebeest is felled by the predators.

Stand and Fall

"If Cu Chi stands, Saigon falls."

These are the words of an American general during the Vietnam War, as told to us by our guide into the land adorned by a jungle canopy above and a jungle of tunnels below. Above ground, amongst the dense foliage and thick humidity, bamboo vipers and cobras dropped and slithered while huge scorpions scampered alongside them. Below ground, over two hundred miles of snakelike warrens were swarming with thousands of Vietcong guerrillas perched to strike. Venomous bunkers and booby traps occupied both realms.

Camouflaged pits hid lurking metal spears poised to impale an unsuspecting soldier. One permutation included spikes on parallel rollers that would pierce bodies on the way down and prevent extrication without further injury. Similarly, a leg trap held a twelve-inch upright spike to penetrate through boot and bone, while four other barbs set at 45-degree downward angles ensured that the retraction of the foot meant ensnaring the calf. These despicable contraptions were designed to immobilize and terrify.

The goal of the enemy was to injure and maim, not necessarily kill. "The Americans would take two people to care for one," we were told. An injured soldier meant that three were effectively kept off of the battlefield. The dread of these devices meant those remaining in the fight would be trapped by fear, scared into inaction.

Isn’t this how our chief enemy operates also? He burrows under what we hold dear and cherish. He tunnels through the foundations of God’s best for us. He tries to keep us, and others tending to us, out of combat. While we are so busy patching each other up, he acts at will in the world, bankrupting the morality of societies and stealing the childhoods of innocents.

We should recognize it for what it is. Yes, we are to care and nurture our own, but with an extreme sense of urgency to get them, and us, back into the greater battle. The goal isn’t just ‘whole’ people; it’s whole soldiers.

After all...

If distractions stand, opportunities fall.

If traps stand, possibilities fall.

Visible Evidence

Tiny fingers curled up into a bony claw. Emaciated legs the girth of a quarter. Heads flattened and swollen. Lungs laboring to take in breath. Eyes crying out in silent pain.

The appearance of these severely-disabled orphans is deceptive.

They look broken, and indeed they are, but their value far outweighs what society would place upon them. They are each more precious than anything this world has to offer, more significant than the wealth of the nations. After all, each eternal soul is a cherished prize that outlasts the materials and treasures of this temporal world.

But each of these children also reminds us of the corruption of the creation, brought about by man’s revolt against God. There is nothing that these children had done that brought such disfigurement or incapacity. They are the ‘innocent’ victims, visible in waves of severity: Physically immobilized. Mentally stunted. Emotionally tormented. Consciousness trapped inside unresponsive prisons.

Abandoned.

To be a child of such condition and circumstance is to be the living embodiment of the effects of our corporal sin, powerfully-visible evidence of the fall.

In the mind’s eye of God, he crafted and pictured these children as perfect. His creation was good. Our choice blunted and bruised them at the genetic level. We, ourselves, took the form and distorted it. We grabbed limbs and minds and twisted them into something barely recognizable.

Some would say that these children now have no purpose; that they are just living units without contribution.

Not true.

This is where we have the opportunity to fight against our own rebellion, to show that we are indeed creatures of compassionate choice. To stroke the hand of a child that can never hold one this side of eternity. To brush the knotted hair of a young soul that will dance with flowing locks in the new creation. To smile and kiss the forehead of the abandoned child that will never be adored by an earthly father.

It is in these moments that we understand the immeasurable value of these precious souls...and the worth of our own.

Full Circle

My Vietnamese-born host, Joseph (not his real name), knows all-too-well how it feels. His mother was killed by a bomb that struck the church parsonage when he was just three years old. He bears the scars of flying shrapnel as a daily reminder of the event. The next year his father, an army chaplain serving in the South Vietnamese forces, was ambushed by Vietcong and summarily executed.

Two days before the fall of Saigon, Joseph and his two siblings were grouped with six other children from his Grandfather’s family and herded onto a boat out of the country. The adults stayed behind due to space limitations and the desire to help their people through the turmoil. After some intermediary stops, and a period awaiting refugee status approval, Joseph and the other children became wards of the state in Canada.

Joseph now serves in orphan ministry and is part of the team visiting here. His heart for his people is plainly evident and, while visiting a state orphanage with him today in the former Saigon, I saw his big heart for the children he identifies with so well.

Drive-By Visit

The orphaned children were on an outing to a popular vacation destination by the sea. We drove to a beachfront hotel, over four hours from the city, in order to see and bestow gifts upon them in an intentionally-public location.

In what surmounted to a loose clandestine mission, we arrived as seaside tourists and started taking pictures of the waves lashing upon the shore while the children were being assembled on a different part of the property. Our Vietnamese worker took the role of a porter, following us with suitcases packed with items for the children, and then diverting towards them while we took photographs of each other in front of security personnel.

We strolled along the beachfront promenade while things were being readied. As we kept up the vacationer façade, I joked to a teammate that "We wouldn’t make very good CIA operatives, would we?" I immediately followed with the self-defacing comment that even mentioning the CIA was pretty much a less-than-smooth move on my part, akin to joking about having a gun in the TSA line.

Our ‘porter’ then came for us, making sure we got a couple of more tourist snapshots in front of the security folks that were enjoying a shaded area together near the beach entry.

We then ‘happened’ upon the children on the other side of the grounds and, after quick bursts of gift-giving and photo-taking, we were gone.

We didn’t escape the attention of the property owner, though, who had made a beeline to the security folks and then to the front desk clerk. The situation appeared to be diffused by two of our Vietnamese comrades, but we were told afterwards that the local pastor, who had been standing out of the way of the whirlwind of activity, would certainly be called upon by government authorities within the next few days. After all, this is a police state.

It’s a delicate balance of openness and persecution here, a constant tightrope of forces pulling against one another. One strength desires to appease the international community; the other seeks to oppress any movements that could potentially cause civil disobedience and unrest.

Sometimes children just happen to get caught in the middle.