A Late Night Out!

We're here! After our 18 hour flight we have arrived in Phnom Penh on a rainy humid Wednesday evening with all 24 pieces of luggage which took one van and a half for all our luggage to fit in. Sotheary our Ratanak staff person on the ground came to greet us and we were off on our adventures into the Phnom Penh streets through a familiar maze of rush hour traffic that I have often called organized chaos with motorcycles and cars packed along the streets going in every direction as we made our way to our hotel---our home for the next 3 weeks. I am always amazed at how many cars, people and motorbicycles can travail along these streets seemingly without colliding.

Arriving at the hotel entrance, I recognized one familiar face one of our tuk-tuk drivers from last year who recognized both Char and I. His name is Hoyt and as per usual he just wanted to know if we needed his assistance and how long we will be here.

The team settled into their designated rooms and then we were off to our local corner shop that will become our 'water' store as we each gathered our daily rations of water bottles to brush our teeth. Genie in her typical Asian fashion managed to negotiate a deal so that any future purchases of pop or water we will get at a special discount given the size of our team.

The bulk of us headed to the hotel restaurant and some of the team were interested in trying my favorite local dish---Lok Lak---a sauteed beef over a bed of lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes. Having filled our stomachs once again on what seemed like a constant eating adventure over the past 18 hours we settled into our rooms for an evening of rest. It was just after 10:30pm when I got a call that one of team members had fallen in the bathtub and hit her head so badly that there was a deep gash above her right eye. She was bleeding profusely. Thank God that one of her roommates Tara is a registered nurse and so she proceeded to clean off the blood but as it continued to pour out, we realized that she would need some stitches. So here I was trying to make calls to people I knew at this hour of the night to see if they could suggest a medical clinic. Normally in Canada, it would not be an issue as most people go to bed late at night but here in Cambodia, many folks are in deep sleep at that point. Thankfully, I managed to get hold of Lois, a Canadian missionary who will be helping us out at Daughters and so off we went, 6 of us in a tuk-tuk into the cool evening breeze to the SOS clinic which is open 24 hours. Travelling at midnight in an open air tuk-tuk, the streets are quiet but it is also the time when the criminal element tends to rear its head so we prayed on our short journey asking the Lord to be a shield and mighty fortress recognizing that this incident did not happen in isolation but a reminder that oppressive forces are at work to keep us from doing the Lord's work.

After spending one and a half hours at the clinic, our teammate Marty was stitched up with a band wrapped around her head. She looked like one of those war-torn soldiers who had just come home from a battle. Indeed we are in a battle here for the lives and souls of those whom God desires to bring out of darkness into the light. No sooner had we arrived back at our hotel, I noticed two foreign men exiting a van with two young khmer girls. It was as if Satan was trying to say to us, 'you think you are going to make any difference here, I own this place and its people.' While incidences like these make my blood boil, they actually fuel my holy discontent to fight even more to speak up on behalf of those who have no voice.

It's now Thursday morning and I have had 4 hours sleep but yet praise God, I am wide awake. Today we will head off to a morning meeting with Helen Sworn who runs Chab Dai, an organization that represents 40 Christian NGOs that seek to end sex trafficking in Cambodia. Ratanak funds prevention and training programs through Chab Dai and so it will be good to connect with Helen and get the latest updates. Later this afternoon, we will head to one of my familiar jaunts, Svay Pak---a place notorious for the selling of underage girls and yet it is a place now where hope in the community is slowly rising. Our partners at Newsong have been ministering to this community over the last year and half through Rahab's house, a former brothel that was converted into an outreach centre. I am excited for I am hoping to see some familiar faces of kids we met last year during our outreach program. "Stay tune. The best is yet to come" is the words I keep getting.