Lisa: Daughters Day 1

Today was our first full day at Daughters. We started out the morning chatting with Ruth Elliot who founded Daughters two years ago. Ruth is a trained psychologist and had worked with organizations involved in the rescue and raid of girls who were sexually trafficked before she formed Daughters which focuses more on providing life skills and employment opportunities for girls who want to leave the sex trade.

We spent the first two hours of our morning at Daughters praying for the organizational needs, including its staff and clients. This will be our daily routine in the first part of the morning—a time of intercession for the nation, and for the women and children who are affiliated with Daughters. There is something about a roomful of people praying together that releases fresh empowerment and energy as we storm the gates of heaven on behalf of the brokenhearted. In the midst of our prayer time, a message from one of the volunteers came to a few of us that a young baby girl of 1 week old was brought to Daughters with her umbilical cord still attached. The baby had suffered a swelling of the brain and also was affected by spina bifida. The parents were told to just stop feeding the baby and it will die. But we believe that God has other plans. If anyone can do a miracle and heal her, He can and so if you remember please pray for this baby. The mother hopes to bring her again tomorrow so that we can pray over the baby. So often God uses the weak to shame the strong and I can’t help but wonder if this is one of those situations.

In the afternoon, our workshops began as a few of us were participating in the first budgeting session which involved teaching the girls general concepts of why it is important to manage their money. In the Cambodian context, the poor like in many other nations are more interested in near term survival and so the thought of saving funds for a rainy day is not something that they deem necessary. And so it was quite interesting to hear their reaction to a skit we did about two girls who made different financial choices despite earning the same amount of money. Their responses were an unexpected surprise as they focused on the need to save instead of spending frivolously on non-essential items. We encouraged them to think of a goal or dream that they would like to save towards and many of them were dreaming big dreams of one day owning a house or starting a business. For women who have grown up in oppressive environments where hopelessness abounds, it is refreshing to see hope rise up again as they have opportunity to dream again of new possibilities for their lives.

Perhaps the most fun time was during the dance class. My teammate Joy led this session and asked the girls to do a variety of hand movements to reflect the words of the song which said: ‘You are the face of God’. This particular song became the tool that God used as a bridge between some of our team and the girls, as with each new dance routine , the laughter and giggles grew louder. It struck me that many of these girls have never known any laughter in their lives. If anything they have had to wear ‘fake smiles’ as they services customers who repeatedly raped them. But today, they had the opportunity to simply have a childlike spirit with deep joy and laughter. Things like this that we take for granted in our every day life is certainly not something they are ever used to and so we trust that our time with the girls will lead to more opportunities like this, where they can slowly begin to laugh and be human again.