Human Depravity and a cup of coffee

Tuk-tuks are one of the best modes of transportation around Phnom Penh.  They are the chariots of the busy streets and congested boulevards that criss-cross the city like a tangled web of ribbons.  Pulled by a motorcycle, a tuk-tuk is wagon-like with two benches facing each other. It can seat four people comfortably.  We take them often when our destination is beyond walking distance.

The tuk-tuk in this photo hosted a sign from one of the NGO's (non-government organization) that is working to eliminate the trafficking of children that Phnom Penh became notorious for. Joni says that it has improved a lot due to international pressure. This is the power of one plus one plus more that creates a momentum of outrage to affect change.

Speaking of kids and trafficking, tonight we will be visiting one of the coffeeshops in a poor Vietnamese area. In Phnom Penh, these coffeeshop establishments are really brothels. Rather than open up bars, Vietnamese sex operators open coffeshops. Do they actually serve coffee? Yes. But it is also understood that they serve "more."  For a Vietnamese girl to be working in a coffeeshop it is safe to assume that if she's not prostituting yet, she eventually will.  Many of the girls who are working there were pressured by their families or even "sold" by their familes to work there. This is in order to bring money home. The girl, who is very loyal to her family, willingly does this even if she doesn't like it.

Besides family pressure and poverty, there is the seduction of pretty clothes, make-up and male attention.  It is a reality.

One of Joni's former students is now working in a coffeeshop. From what Joni hears, she is so far just serving coffee, but it is a very short jump to sex work.  It is believed that after her father lost his job she was pressured to earn money for the family.  Joni tells me that some families will be lured by the money to coax their daughter towards a life as a prostitute, while other families would never even let that be an option, no matter what the financial crisis. So as in all societies and communities, there are those who hold fast to a moral code and make their way, while others have succumbed to moral depravity.  It is the way of the world in whatever context you may find yourself in.

And here, the context is that Vietnamese families are often scratching out an existence, living from crisis to crisis. The temptation of money earned from the beauty of a daughter's youth, is too good to pass up.   Providing more options for daughters, and their families, with other means to earn money, like going to hairdressing school or getting a high school education which increases the likelihood of a good job, does help weaken that temptation. But it is a big picture solution and there are those mothers and fathers who dissuade their kids from going to school in order to be home and help the family.  Joni had one very bright student who was promising in going beyond primary education. But the mother said No, I need him home to help me. She would not allow him to continue on a path that would ultimately better his life and likely her own. She could not see beyond today.

This is the power of education, in changing not only the mind but the worldview and really, the human heart. Joni will tell you, however, that as potent as a little education can be, it takes a much Greater Power to change the human heart. This is the crux of the story. Education is desperately needed, but it cannot demotivate the corruption of a person's soul. This is why the message of God's love and power is needful. Greed, lust, the power of money and temptation ultimately hold us hostage in their grip. Jesus breaks that grip when we are ready and willing to be loosed.

I know I'm getting my preach on. It's Joni's influence. She has seen evil up close, eyeball to eyeball, and she has seen the manifest difference faith in Christ can make in a life. Transformed lives lead to transformed societies. And for all the wonders of the world, technology, medicine and yes, education, Joni has seen the human heart transformed by one thing only, and that is when it becomes engaged with God.  She is compelling to listen to. I will be writing much more about Joni and her 28 years of missionary service in some of the most remote areas of southeast Asia in weeks to come.

She's become my new heroine.

The So-Much-More Power of Education in Phnom Penh

"Em bao neu tuoi?" I clumsily asked the boy with the mischievous sparkle in his eyes.
"Sau tuoi," he answered as his grandmother beamed with the attention he was getting. Six years old.

It was a hot day. The blue Cambodian sky blazed as heat bore down without mercy. We sat on small stools in the entryway of the family's home. We were in search of their youngest daughter, a former student of Joni's. Armed with a gift of color markers for the girl, Joni suddenly became panicked and leaned over towards me. "The brother!   I forgot about him and didn't bring him anything."

"I have licorice," I said remembering the dozen or so bags I had divvied up after buying a barrel of licorice from Wal-Mart to give to kids.

"You do? Oh, that would be great!"

Moments later a beaming six-year old boy was dashing into the house to stash his score of American candy.

Lying Low in Phnom Penh {We are Here!!}

About eight weeks ago my friend Joni asked me if I wanted to come to Phnom Penh with her. She has been a Christian worker among Vietnamese people for nearly three decades. Several years ago she felt inspired to move to Phnom Penh where a large Vietnamese population lives.

“This is it!” she said as we crawled out of the tuk-tuk that drove us from the airport to the ministry center she’s developed in a central part of the city. A large block building, stood before us under the midnight sky. The tuk-tuk driver stacked our suitcases on the sidewalk in front of the center’s massive iron gate. A rat scavenged in a nearby pile of garbage. Cockroaches greeted us as they scurried around our luggage, but thankfully not our feet.

Leaving on a Jet Plane...

I leave in less than two days for Phnom Penh, Cambodia with my friend Joni Wise.

I fundraised for 6 weeks to raise the money for the expenses. As of today I have received more than double what my original goal was. This means I can take a suitcase full of supplies for the kids; this means that there will be no finacial pressures, and it also means that the surplus can go towards those needs that are pressing for Joni's students and sponsored children. She told me the other day, "It's a different world, Pam, get ready."

I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Armed with pens and notebooks and a camera, I am a writer on a mission.

We'll have internet access there. Look for updates here at my blog and also on Facebook. I'll post as often as I can.

If you'd like to know more about my Writer on a Mission trip to Cambodia click HERE and it will give you all the details.

I am ready.

The Misunderstood God: Your God is too Nice and other lies we believe about the Creator

 **please note that in this book review I have uncensored my writing pen which means that it is dotted with profanity. Sometimes a well-placed F word is all that will do.

Last year my good friends Fran and Len gave me a copy of a book called The Misunderstood God, by Darin Hufford. If you've known me for very long then you know I love to read books on Christian spirituality that challenge or debunk traditionalistic mindsets that stunt our further understanding of the Mystery of the Divine.I mean, c'mon, my blog is called How God Messed Up My Religion for a reason!


I read the book quickly. It's an easy page-turner. Usually be the end of the first few paragraphs I can tell if I need pen in hand for a book. This book's back cover was info enough to get me scrounging up my fave finepoint black ink pen. Here's a back cover excerpt:

The Misunderstood God is a no-holds-barred reexamination of the character of God, beyond the confusing mixed messages people often get from religion...Hufford concludes that most people have actually been taught to think of God as the opposite of love and find themselves confused and uncertain about God's true nature...this book untangles the twisted mess religion has created and replaces it with a clear, cohesive and wondrous affirmation that God really is love itself...

The book is  based on a series Hufford taught at the huge church he was on staff with. When I called Darin (yes, I emailed me and requested a phone interview because his book was so effin' good, that's how I roll!) he told me that originally he thought the series on Love would last 2-3 weeks. It went on for 16 weeks and was rockin' everybody's world. In a good way.

Lieu

 His name was Lieu. He was so skinny, even for a Vietnamese man. His jaw was unusually square and his face much too haggard and gaunt for a guy only in his 20's.

Lieu was a struggling heroin addict.

He somehow came to be connected to our team that volunteered in one of the open refugee camps, Kai Tak.  Kai Tak was near the airport Crowded, noisy, it was a compound devoted to sheltering Vietnamese refugees that sought temporary asylum while they waited to be accepted for permanent residence by another country.

I guess Lieu must have been off drugs for only a few months. He appeared depressed and exhausted. One of the team members arranged for him to attend a meeting that was designed just for addicts, a Christian meeting where addicts were encouraged to find power in the reality of God's love to overcome their drug habits.

This meeting was ran by a woman named Jackie Pullinger. She was reaching legend status by the time I arrived to Hong Kong in the mid-80's.

Curvy Sassy Rita Mae

Meet Rita Mae, my new tattoo. She is 

the curviest, sassiest cleaning woman 

in the Pacific Northwest

T

This is Traci, the artist who 

brought Rita Mae to life.

Click HERE to learn more about Traci and

her art

Erin and Donna met up with me afterwards.

We celebrated New Tattoo Day with 

great coffee. Of course!

I Like Men Fat as Pigs, and other Tales from The Refugee Camp Years

My name is Nguyen Thi Hoa Cuc.

At least that's the Vietnamese name someone came up for me when I taught English in Chimawan refugee camp in Hong Kong many years ago. Nguyen is the most common Vietnamese surname. Cuc (pronounced Cuup) means flower, chrysanthemum specifically.

I was in my early 20's when I volunteered in Chimawan.  Unmarried, young, blue-eyed American girl. I got a lot of attention as did all the foreign females. The camp was dominated by young, marriageable Vietnamese men. Lonely, locked up, waiting for the elusive dream of freedom to finally come within their grasp.Young, idealistic and compassionate foreign women coming to their camp daily do help teach English. You get the picture.

The standard conversation, typically a mixture of Vietnamese and English, would go something like this:

Him: What is your name?

Me: Pam, or Hoa Cuc

Him: Where do you come from?

Me: America.

Him: How old are you?

Me: 23

Him: Are you married?

Me: No

Him: Do you like Vietnamese boys?

Me: (awkward silence, shifting of eyes and embarrassed laughter by all within earshot)

I came up with a way to diffuse this always-awkward-question by learning to say something funny in Vietnamese that would keep the tension at a distance.

Him: How old are you?

Me: 23

Him: Are you married yet?

Me: No

Him: Do you like Vietnamese boys?

Me: I like men fat as pigs so I like American men.

(raucous laughter by everyone within listening distance and awkward moment totally deflected)

To this day I can still remember how to say "fat as a pig" in Vietnamese.


There was one family I became particularly good friends with. It was a middle-aged mother, two sons aged 18 and 22 and a 16 year old daughter. They were an unusual sight in the camp. Not many women her age came across those treacherous seas on those fishing boats.

I don't remember her name for she insisted I call her Ma (mom) from the first time I met her. Her sons were called Hung and Tuan. The sister's name was Dung (pronounced Yume)

This family and I connected really well. There was some kind of chemistry that brewed between us. I don't know what it was.

The Refugee Camp Years: remembering the Boat People of Viet Nam

I grew up in Las Vegas, the daughter of an American soldier. My father, a career military man, joined the United States Air Force when he was 18 years old. He left the comfort and familiarity of his Virginia home and traveled to places like Korea and Japan. Then, later, after he married my mother and my sister and I were born - in Germany by the way - the American war with Viet Nam broke out. My father would go to serve three tours, a total of three years on Viet Nam soil while his young wife lived as a single mother with two little girls to raise.

That was decades before I ever hopped on a plane and landed in Asia myself.

Hong Kong. Age 21. Left the comfort and familiarity of my hometown of Las Vegas for the mission field of Hong Kong. During my nearly seven years there, I spent some of that time teaching in a Vietnamese refugee camp. The war had long ended, yet within the borders of Viet Nam a different kind of conflict raged within the nation. Repercussions towards former South Vietnamese soldiers and their families were commonplace; Amerasian youth, the offspring of Vietnamese women impregnated by American soldiers, were marginalized citizens of a communist nation that defeated their father's military forces.

Vietnamese refugees, also known as Boat People for this is how they left, began to surge out across southeast Asia looking for sympathetic hosts. Hong Kong reluctantly became a shelter for thousands of displaced Vietnamese people. Refugee camps were erected. Public sentiment coolly received the refugees, though blatant racism was a common occurrence.

Happy Super Mom Day! Now where's my cape....????

WHAT IF... There Were No Church Buildings?

A man had been shipwrecked on a remote island in the Pacific, and was alone for 20 years. When a ship finally arrived, his rescuers were impressed with the three buildings he had built and asked him about them.

"Well," the man replied, "this is my house, and that building over there is my church. It's a wonderful church and I hate to leave it."

"And what is the third building yonder?" a rescuer asked.

"Oh, that is the church I used to go to," the man replied.

What if the wonderful raging beauty known as The Church had remained wilded from it's early days and never went inside? What if the model of groupings of people securing a building for the sole use for Christian meetings had never taken off?  What might the world look like today?  What might The Church?

Under Reported: Vietnamese Kids Trafficked in Cambodia

Many Americans are familiar with the magnet Cambodia has become for international sex trafficking. Pedophiles from around the world have made the small southeast Asian country synonymous with child sex slavery. What is under reported, however, is that many of the child prostitutes are illegal Vietnamese immigrants, one of the most marginalized people groups in the nation.

CNN reported earlier this year about the tragedy of child prostitution in the region. Here's an excerpt:

Cambodia is categorized as a destination country for foreign child sex tourists, with increasing reports of Asian men traveling to Cambodia in order to have sex with underage virgin girls. The State Department report states a significant proportion of trafficking victims in Cambodia are ethnic Vietnamese women and girls who are forced into prostitution in brothels and karaoke bars.

 This is a photo of a Vietnamese girl named Thao (pronounced TAO).  She was a student in my friend Joni's school for Vietnamese kids in Phnom Penh, Cambodia a couple of years ago. Thao stopped coming to school and they lost track of her for awhile. She recently resurfaced and has been sold by her family into the sex industry. She can't be more than 13.

Girls like Thao are virtually defenseless in Phnom Pehn. Illegal residents, they are not entitled to education or protection by the local authorities. This makes them incredibly vulnerable for exploitation.  People like Joni, who is an on-the-ground grassroots organizer, are devoted to finding ways to help PREVENT the buying and selling of girls like Thao, which often happens by their own families. Not because of something noble as in a family making an unthinkable choice in order to feed the rest of the household....families that sell and trade their own daughters (and sons) often do so because of chronic addiction that has wrecked them. Often gambling addiction. When they put out their kids to "coffee shops" - brothels - they are receiving about US$50 a month for their daughter's "help."  This becomes a steady stream of income for a family destitute by not only poverty and displacement,  but also by the corrupting forces of gambling, drug and alcohol addiction.

Later this month I'll be flying to Phnom Penh with Joni for a two-week guided tour, Joni, who'll be checking in on her students, teachers, and kids she sponsors in and around Phnom Penh, will introduce me up close and personal to the Thao's of the city. Joni's intention in bringing me over is to turn me and my digital pen loose to write up the stories of the people she has been privileged to serve.

In 2004, Cambodian police estimated that more than 50,000 girls were in brothels through Cambodia, many of whom were Vietnamese. The World Human Rights Organization and UNICEF estimate that one-third of the prostitutes in Cambodia are under the age of 18, the majority of whom are Vietnamese.  HumanTrafficking.org

Evil is alive and well in the world.  I hope to shine a light on those dark corners in order to help goodness overcome it. Someone somewhere once said that evil flourishes when good people do nothing. I do not know what I can do as an average American woman about the plight of Vietnamese trafficked girls in Cambodia. But I do know what I can do as a writer and a blogger. I will for sure look for ways to tell others how they can help turn on the light and participate in overcoming this evil within our lifetime. That's the dream. That's why I'm going to Cambodia with Joni. I will keep you posted!

My Lame Blogging Life

Ok. I really love blogging. Really. I do. And I am constantly aware of the last time I blogged and how I would very much like to blog today. Then, before I know it, today is over and it becomes my intention to blog the next day. Then, that day finishes up without a bloggy word in sight and on and on...


sigh.


There are all kinds of reasons I have become intermittent with my blogging. I'm in  a new stage of parenting called Teenagers. It is much more time consuming than the previous parenting phase was. I love it, I love parenting my teens.  It's kinda like parenting toddlers. Did you know some parent experts refer to toddlerhood as the first adolescence and teenage life as the second toddlerhood?   I can see why.  Though my 13yo and 16yo don't need my help as much with daily basics, they do need me more than ever for guidance and sounding off. They don't necessarily acknowledge  my loving motherly presence every waking moment - or even everyday - but they orbit around me much like they did when they were toddlers. Though instead of finding courage from my steady presence to navigate early steps across a toy-strewn playroom, they now find security knowing I'm available when they need to talk, need money, need a ride, need to vent, or the need to just be together and watch South Park.


Work has picked up too. A lot. In case you don't know, I run my own cleaning service. I've been a cleaning woman by trade for the last eight years. The recession has not affected my livelihood!  Business has been  brisk, with new clients added to my roster every month for the last several months.

Just writing about this reminds me that the blogosphere is dominated mostly by men...or actually, I'd rather say it's dominated by people who are Not Working Mothers. The working mom - and yes, I know, EVERY MOM is a WORKING MOM, yet the moms who also work outside the home are working double duty! -
so I need to remember that as much as I'd love to be writing and blogging everyday there are some powerful forces at work in my life that require my attention and energy more, and they are called Rose and Jeremy!

Which brings me to a huge life shift that is coming up and I am scared sh*tless about:  after a 27 year hiatus from formal education I have applied and been admitted to Marylhurst University, a small liberal arts school 35 minutes from my home. I intend to become a part-time student in the fall.

How am I going to pull it off?????!!!!!!!!!

I'm not sure, but I will. And I need to face up that it is a great possibility that my dry blogging streak might get even drier. I hope not. But come September, we'll see how it goes.

So this is just a check in with my blog community who has been such a support to my development as a writer and as a blogger. You have helped shape my writing. You have helped me find my voice and to have confidence in what I say and how I say it, and what I question and how I question. You have been the best university for me, my blog university.  And I thank you!

This is not goodbye, even though it may kinda sound like that. It's more of a "This-is-why-I-haven't-been-around-much-lately" post. I have missed you. I have missed me blogging, for it is here, my first and best writing laboratory that I have been steadily honing the craft of writing, of making the invisible appear as I struggle to bring to light that which is hidden in the shadows. I need to blog. Really. I do.

I blog. Therefore I exist.  Or something like that.