Compassion in Thailand

Temple in Chiang Mai

Last week I had the honor of traveling to Thailand for work. I posted previously about the sponsor gifts I was able to carry with me, and how touched I was by all of the love these wonderful sponsors were sending their children.

Chiang Mai

Learning Traditional Thai dance

Thai Soap Flower (carved by hand out of soap!

Thailand is an amazing country. The people are sweet and gracious, and the countryside is lovely. My meetings were in Chiang Mai, the northern capitol city that has become a major tourist destination in the country, and one that native Thais are quite proud of (and rightly so).

Hmong woman with child

Sunday Market

One of the most amazing experiences in the city of Chiang Mai, to me, was the street market. Every night there are night markets in the city with a variety of artisans creating and selling goods right in front of visitors; food vendors selling items from yummy, amazing banana waffles to somewhat less enticing insects and unusual fruits; small shop owners hocking souvenir items; and Hmong women toting children on their backs and baskets on their chests selling all manner of jewelry and ubiquitous wooden toy frogs.

(Not so) Yummy

In addition to the night markets, there is a weekend market on Sunday that we were able to squeeze in (we were a bit jet lagged, so we more or less staggered through the Sunday market). There we saw more beautiful handwoven purses and silks, artwork, and amazingly intricate soap carvings. At one point in the Sunday market a man came over an intercom and began what sounded like a political speech. When his speech concluded, he announced in English "please stand for the national anthem" and immediately all movement on the street stopped....entirely. It was as though Times Square ceased all activity in one moment. All people, tourist and native, stood completely still.  I can't describe the eeriness and yet powerfulness of the complete silence and stillness in that moment while the anthem was sung....and then as soon as it began it stopped and the bustle was immediate.

Riding an Elephant

My new Friend

On the third day of the conference meeting we had field trips related to forest industry in Thailand. In the country, elephants were used historically for logging purposes. Thus, elephants are a massive part of Thai forest industry history. Now there is a domestic population of elephants that seek work elsewhere, as work is necessary to feed these intelligent giants. The result is a booming tourist industry revolving around elephant camps. We visited the Thai Elephant Conservation Center, which is devoted to training mahouts to treat elephants in their care humanely, and which provides free hospital services to elephants who are injured or sick. Their goal is the conservation of the domestic elephants in Thailand.

Bath Time!

As part of the field trip I was honored to participate in the mahout training show, and learned how to mount and dismount from the elephant, how to ask the animal to pick up an object I had dropped, and other training commands. We also watched the animals demonstrate logging techniques, and we were able to watch them bathe (they absolutely loved the water!). I also helped make some elephant dung paper--a really interesting process--and we learned how elephant dung can be converted into biogas for fuel.

Compassion Thailand Mailroom

Compassion Thailand Representative

Finally, and perhaps the pinnacle of my visit outside of the work we completed while we were there, was my visit to the Compassion Thailand office. The office is a 2-story, fairly modern building in Chiang Mai. It seems to be in an area where many other humanitarian organizations are located. It's a modest office, with a handful of cute little animal statues out front. I was met by a lovely, friendly staff member who was happy to explain the inner workings of their office. I was able to see the mailroom, which was a real eye-opener for me. I was amazed to see the pile of letters waiting to be translated. I learned that they deliver from the main office to the local offices once monthly, around the 20th of each month. When letters arrive at the main office they are sent out in small groups to the translators, who have about 7 days to complete translation and return the letters. Then the letters are placed into bins and when it is time to deliver the letters they all go into gigantic manilla envelopes for deliveries. Sponsor gifts like those I dropped off are delivered separately, as soon as can be arranged.

Compassion Thailand

Compassion Entrance

Thailand was beautiful and amazing, but it does have a dark side. One evening coming back to the hotel from dinner we walked down a road we were unfamiliar with. Signs of the infamous sex trade in Asia were ever-present, and left me feeling very depressed. In the airplane from Bangkok I read the book "Only 13," a poorly written but nonetheless heartbreaking account of a girl introduced into the sex tourism industry in Thailand at age 13, and a cataloging of the culture that lead her to that point and that ended in the development of severe mental disorders. Nothing could have concreted my opinion that Compassion and other aid organizations are desperately needed in Asia more than that happenstance walk through the red-light district.

I ask that you please pray for the poor in Thailand, and particularly the poor women and children who are exploited in southeast Asia. Shame on the tourists (and locals) who prey on these women.

The Absence of Love

I'm reading an amazing book right now. In case you hadn't noticed, I love to read. I mention a lot of books in my posts. I've been a reader since childhood. To be honest, I tend toward fiction as a way to escape stress in everyday life, but every now and then I'll get on a little kick and devour some nonfiction. I've noticed that the only nonfiction I seem to truly enjoy revolves around either human rights or academic theology.

The book I'm in the midst of now is called "Escape from Camp 14" and it details the story of a man named Shin who was born and raised in a North Korean labor camp and managed to escape. He is the only person born in a labor camp who has escaped, to the best of the authors' knowledge.

I'm halfway through the book. Shin's story is a brutal one. It's clear that the North Korean population as a whole is denied much, but the labor camp populations are for all intents and purposes, living out the lives of concentration camp prisoners--in many cases from birth to death.  North Korea denies the existence of these labor camps, despite the ability of any Westerner with "Google Earth" to zoom in on the country and clearly see the fences surrounding the compounds.

Though the story told in the book is one of a physically brutal existence--one even those living in poverty in the United States would likely struggle to imagine--what really struck at my heart was one statement in the book. The author states, "During his years in the camp he [Shin] said he had never once heard the world "love," certainly not from his mother..."

Can you imagine emerging into your 20s having NEVER once heard the word "Love"?  Having been isolated in a black hole of a nation, with no hope for a future outside the bleak physical struggle and starvation of the thousands around you; beaten and starving with little knowledge of a giant world existing just outside the confines of your relatively small country, and with the concept drilled into you since birth that you are worthless-absolutely nothing...all because of who you were born to?

In my relatively uneducated opinion as regards human rights violations over the past centuries, the conditions in North Korea must surely be one of the worst human rights situations in modern times.

Here's the thing. Shin and the countless other North Koreans suffering in isolation, poverty, starvation, and unawareness of a God who loves and values them are just examples of a vast GLOBAL population of children in poverty who have rarely, if ever, heard someone say they are loved and valued.

Do you want to make a difference in the world today? I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the way to make a real difference in the future is to feed the souls of the children. The more I learn about who the real victims are in situations of dire need, the more I'm convinced that children always receive the brunt of the abuse and the least love. Who do we think those kids will grow up to be if they are starved of love, starved of hope? What are we expecting?

 
If we want a more peaceful world, with cross-cultural understanding and shared dreams then we need to feed those values to the children. Our children, our neighbors' children, and the global population of children. I don't mean force-feed our ideals. I mean SHOW LOVE. If each person shows love, compassion, patience, understanding, sympathy....those seeds will grow and develop as God intended.

You have the chance to help. You can sponsor a child and feed that child not only food, but words of love and encouragement...hope and dreams.  Please help, and please pray--for all the children, but please pray specifically for the population of North Korea. God knows they need it.

The Value of a Daughter

"The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it." Psalm 24:1

I am convinced that nothing causes more grief to the heart of Jesus than when a young child is brutally stripped of their purity, left broken and trembling, reduced to nothing more than object. It happens every day, in every country (including ours). I think it is the ultimate expression of evil, and the ultimate satisfaction for Satan when innocence is corrupted at the hands of greed and sick, twisted desire.

Absolutely nothing in world news breaks my heart more than the knowledge that, daily, hundreds of thousands of children are kidnapped or tricked into slavery, forced to endure beatings and worse as they are locked into dirty brothels to suit the fancies of wealthy, disgusting patrons. These precious children are often drugged to induce compliance, which eventually results in dependence on the brothel owners. As a result, even when they are allowed the "freedom" to venture outside the walls of their prisons, they no longer run because they cannot escape the prison of addiction to the chemicals they have been force fed.

In the book "Half the Sky," journalists and authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn make the case that prevention is far more effective than rescue from trafficking and slavery. Wess Stafford makes the same argument in his book "Too Small to Ignore." In fact, I think we all are familiar with Benjamin Franklin's fire-fighting advice, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

That's where we come in! It seems so overwhelming when you hear the statistics, which range from estimates of 3 to 27 million children (young children and teenagers) enslaved in brothels, depending on the source of the data. But, consider this...the Pew Research Center found that, in 2010, United States citizens identifying themselves as Christians numbered greater than 246 million. That is nine times as many Christians as the high-end estimate of trafficked children. Imagine, then, if a 10th of all people identifying themselves as Christians in the United States sponsored a child... Could we make the enslavement of children for such sick, disgusting, evil purposes a distant memory?

Because, like it or not, a lot of what the problem can be reduced to is desperation... Families in poverty are desperate, and girls are often expendable. In some cases parents knowingly sell their girls to brothel owners, while in other cases they send their girls off to what they believe will be respectable jobs, where "friends" and relatives end up selling the girls. Sometimes the parents know but lack the resources to track their daughters. Sometimes the girls just disappear and the parents never know. Either way, if their daughters were MORE VALUABLE AT HOME THAN IN A BROTHEL, much of these types of transactions could be avoided. IF the daughters HAVE A VOICE and some PROTECTION, they may be saved.

How to raise the value of a daughter? Educate her. Provide her with knowledge of her own self-worth, her value in the eyes of Christ. Develop a skill that she can leverage for her benefit--that will make her a source of pride for her family, as well as a source of income. Women worldwide prove that they are capable, resourceful, and hard workers when given education and half a chance for success. When fathers and mothers can see the value and the necessity of their female children for the survival of their families, they are more likely to step up and protect them. If female children are worth enough at home as to be prohibitively expensive for brothel owners, there will be fewer bought and sold.

Hope. We have hope. These children have hope. We can give hope to at-risk children by sponsoring them so that they can build value in the eyes of their families and communities. We can teach young women that they have value beyond their bodies in the heart of Christ. We can teach young men that women of all castes deserve respect and dignity and love. Jesus did not believe in disposable humans. Neither do I.

My mom shared the following Hawaiin parable with me, which I recently read again in "Half the Sky"... I thought I'd share it with you, here...

A man goes out on the beach and sees that it is covered with starfish that have washed up in the tide. A little boy is walking along, picking them up and throwing them back into the water. "What are you doing, son?" the man asks. "You see how many starfish there are? You'll never make a difference." The boy paused thoughtfully, and picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean. "It sure made a difference to that one," he said.

Please...consider sponsoring an at-risk child today. GET ANGRY. The things happening to these precious children of God are despicable and inexcusable. You can make a difference to one, and one can make a difference to many.