Today in Poipet - A Day that God Made

Here's a special post from Ashley, one of our team leaders:

This was a day that God had made.  On Saturday our team was talking with the CHO staff about our plans for the Soldier Camp.  We had expected to spend time with the women and children.  But the CHO staff said they wanted us to help them fund two days of anti-human trafficking awareness training at the Soldier Camp.  The plan was for the CHO staff member to conduct the training and our team would buy the snacks and meals.  Well, late Monday afternoon we were blindsided when CHO told us that we, as in our team, were the ones to present the training.  You can imagine our shock.  We did not have a presentation planned.   We are not experts in this area. 

After a momentary team freak out, we remember that we had prayed specifically for God to use our team as he saw fit.  I myself had prayed for God to use us in an unexpected way to accomplish his plans.  This training was certainly an unexpected way.  Luckily, months ago, we had discussed with CHO the possibility of presenting anti-human trafficking awareness training.  Matt and I had actually created an outline for training, but we hadn't look at the outline in months.  And it was just an outline.  Thank God for individuals who save emails.  Matt was able to pull up our old outline.  We pooled our collective knowledge about human trafficking, we relied upon the skills that God had given us through past experiences, and we pulled together a training program in a matter of hours.  We were not sure how it would go over.  Our group today was the soldiers.  We didn't know how educated they would be.  We didn't know how open they would be to the information. 

God was definitely in charge.  What we presented was new information to many of them.  They had not heard about human trafficking before.  Several of them had personally experienced human trafficking but they didn't know what it was called.  I don't even think they knew it was wrong.  One young man said he was approached by a person who offered to get him a job in Thailand.  He only had to pay 3,000 bat for transportation to Thailand.  He gave them the money. He was taken to Thailand.  He began working.  But they never paid him for his work!  Finally he decided to return home but he had no money.  He had to walk back from Thailand to Cambodia.  The group talked about Korean men who come to Cambodia to marry Cambodian women.  After the marriage the men will take them away and force the women into prostitution. 

We talked about how they can prevent human trafficking in their area.  Everyone recognized that the people in the community need to be educated on what it is, and how to protect themselves.  We talked about the need to make sure parents educate their children about how to protect themselves.  In the United States we teach our children about good touch bad touch so they will know when someone touches them in a way that is not appropriate.   Well, we brought out the male and female stick figures and had them discuss what areas of the child's body should not be touched.  There was alot of discussion as to what should not be touched on the boy, and not very much discussion as to the girl.  We were a bit confused. In our mind, this is not a topic that is up for debate.  One should not touch the privates or the chest of a child.  Period.  So afterward we asked why there was so much discussion over the boy's stick figure.  We were told that in some villages it is customary and  acceptable to touch the privates of little boys up until the age of about 12 years.  After a boy reaches 12 years old, then no one should touch the private.  We asked again for clarification because this seemed strange.  But we received the same answer.  So we asked, in these villages would it be acceptable to touch a little girl on her private?  No!  You do not touch little girls, but little boys "it is ok".  So the big discussion was over whether or not this custom is appropriate.  The majority of the group said it was not.  Now as a community they see there is an issue that needs to be addressed.  They now know there needs to be education in those areas so everyone will know what types of touches are inappropriate.

This is just a snipet of what we experienced today.  The training was well received.  We are overjoyed at what God accomplished.  And we look forward to holding training for about 20 pastors and their wives tomorrow.

God bless,

Ashley

PS:  team from last year, we saw some of the same people.  i gave them some pictures of our time with them last year.  we held in the training in the church/community building that was built with our contribution from last year.