From the Field
Here are excerpts from a report on a trip to Cambodia by Harvey and Heidi Shepard:
It is estimated that 2 million people had been killed during the reign of Khmer Rouge, mostly sent to the mass graves now known as Cambodia’s Killing Fields. I have read that after Pol Pot’s reign of terror there were only 300 educated people in the entire country; included in these were about 50 doctors.
One consequence of the wars and killing is that countless children became orphans. These children were the beginning of Cambodia’s street children. Since then the street children have had children, etc. and now it is estimated that there are about three thousand street children just in Phnom Penh.
Some of our time here has been spent with “His Child,” a Christian organization InterServe partners participate in. They run an orphanage as well as a pre-orphanage halfway home for children coming off the street or rescued from the boarder (before being sold to brothels in Thailand). There is also a bus which goes out to the neediest areas from which street children can receive a lesson, some food and a change of clothes. I (Harvey) have been going along to provide medical care, although it is very basic. The children have little family or social supports in place – you can’t give a five-year-old child who lives on the street, for example, a week of antibiotics – it won’t get taken correctly, or will be sold, etc.
After a visit to the Killing Field’s mass graves and seeing the many skulls and bones of its victims, as well the infamous prison where many were tortured, there is the grim reminder that life is not only difficult for many of this world, but for some, intolerably evil. Yet it is also a reminder that much of what happens in this life is just a foretaste of what awaits us in the next. For many, it will sadly be a fate far worse than the Pol Pots of this world have been able to dish out. For others, it will be such an overwhelming experience of goodness that we will continually be taken by surprise at how purely good it is.
While we are here on this fallen earth, occasionally tasting hints of both these extremes, we pray that by the grace of God we might be able to introduce some to the One who brings Hope during this life, and who guarantees safe passage to eternal joy with Him when this life, whether good or bad, comes to an end.
It is estimated that 2 million people had been killed during the reign of Khmer Rouge, mostly sent to the mass graves now known as Cambodia’s Killing Fields. I have read that after Pol Pot’s reign of terror there were only 300 educated people in the entire country; included in these were about 50 doctors.
One consequence of the wars and killing is that countless children became orphans. These children were the beginning of Cambodia’s street children. Since then the street children have had children, etc. and now it is estimated that there are about three thousand street children just in Phnom Penh.
Some of our time here has been spent with “His Child,” a Christian organization InterServe partners participate in. They run an orphanage as well as a pre-orphanage halfway home for children coming off the street or rescued from the boarder (before being sold to brothels in Thailand). There is also a bus which goes out to the neediest areas from which street children can receive a lesson, some food and a change of clothes. I (Harvey) have been going along to provide medical care, although it is very basic. The children have little family or social supports in place – you can’t give a five-year-old child who lives on the street, for example, a week of antibiotics – it won’t get taken correctly, or will be sold, etc.
After a visit to the Killing Field’s mass graves and seeing the many skulls and bones of its victims, as well the infamous prison where many were tortured, there is the grim reminder that life is not only difficult for many of this world, but for some, intolerably evil. Yet it is also a reminder that much of what happens in this life is just a foretaste of what awaits us in the next. For many, it will sadly be a fate far worse than the Pol Pots of this world have been able to dish out. For others, it will be such an overwhelming experience of goodness that we will continually be taken by surprise at how purely good it is.
While we are here on this fallen earth, occasionally tasting hints of both these extremes, we pray that by the grace of God we might be able to introduce some to the One who brings Hope during this life, and who guarantees safe passage to eternal joy with Him when this life, whether good or bad, comes to an end.
posted by M Clark at 7/07/2005 09:00:00 AM
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