Day 11 - 1 November

Today we visited the rescue home which also houses the sewing business and the jewellery business. We walked through the project and then did some English teaching with the national staff. It was lovely to get to meet some of the staff and enjoy their friendly kind natures. They really appreciate any help learning English. The only difficulty working with staff is that at times work takes precedence over English lessons. That requires a high degree of flexibility. All plans can be changed at a minutes notice.

Day 10 - 31 October

I experienced the funniest taxi ride this morning. We headed to Bangkok airport with a Cambodian taxi driver who considered himself a karaoke tragic of 80's English songs. He sang YMCA at the top of his voice, as well as a number of other songs which he had learnt off by heart but really did not know the English words and therefore was not singing the songs correctly. It was annoying, but funny. He sang all the way to the airport, while he sped at about 140 km/hour all the way.
We flew to Chiang Rai where we were met by Destiny Staff and taken to the team house. It was good to be based in one place for a period of time and to have our own bedroom during the next few days. We were to be going to church this afternoon but church didn't happen.
We headed to one of the children homes where regular Sunday afternoon games were in progress. It was great to meet the Destiny staff and the children from the homes.
We went for a meal at a tiny restaurant close to the team house and enjoyed a really early night.

Day 9 - 30 October

What an interesting day to show the convoluted process of travel in Cambodia! It took the whole day to travel to Thailand from Siem Reap.
The bus trip through the border was definitely something I wouldn't want to do often. You certainly need patience to deal with a border crossing. Bus stops before the border. Processed on the Cambodian side of the border. We walked with our gear across the 'no man's land' and then waited to be processed on the Thai side of the border, both of which consisted of long queues and much form filling. We took a taxi to Pattaya and booked into a lovely motel. We walked to the beach for a swim. A refreshing dip but nothing to write home to Queensland about. (The beaches do not compare) The sand is covered in beach chairs, but don't dare sit on one unless you are prepared to pay. Someone will come and collect in an instant.
Dinner, illustrated above, was full of so much chilli I would have burned up if I had eaten them.
After dinner we went for a walk I will never forget. I have never seen debauchery like I saw that night. We walked through street after street, brothel beside brothel beside brothel. It would be difficult to count the number of girls offering their bodies but I'm told that the number of brothels is in the thousands in just the one district. I could have taken photos but it just felt voyeuristic and inappropriate. The number of disgusting old western men draped all over young Thai girls made me feel physically sick.
An interesting coincidence that we were there on Halloween night. The Halloween street parade, in progress during our walk, felt to me as I imagine Hell will feel, the most oppressive evil I think I have ever felt. Such a sense of hopelessness and helplessness.

Day 8 - 29 October

I guess today was our one big 'touristy' day. We spent the day at the famous Angkor Wat site. Some people spend a week visiting each of the sites and wandering around the many different ruins. We had about 5 hours so it was a bit of a rush.

The pictures show some of the really steep staircases. Rachael got as far as poking her head over the edge of the balcony, but she didn't quite make it to the top.

The interesting part of Ta Prohm was the tree growing through the temple ruins which was shown in the Tomb Raider movie. It was a long walk to find it but worth the view when we found it.

Our evening consisted of a lovely restaurant meal followed by a concert of Apsara Dancers performing traditional Cambodian dances. The costumes were quite beautiful.

Day 7 - 28 October

Today began at the Destiny Rescue Coffee House, a great place with lovely staff. We met the staff of the rescue homes and became aware of the need for confidentiality and sensitivity. For this reason I have no photos of the day. We visited a rescue home that receive rescued girls regularly and spend their time providing for the immediate needs of girls such as food, clothing, accommodation, and counselling, and then saw the programs aimed at meeting the long term needs of the girls like education and vocational training. This was an emotional day of meeting residents, national staff, and the ex pat leadership. The struggles were different for each group, but I felt for each group for the struggles they meet each day.
We then had to catch another old and rattly bus, this time to Siem Reap, the tourist capital of Cambodia. On the way we stopped at a market where a number of different 'treats' were on offer including the spiders in the photo. No chance I was going to try them. I ate pineapple!
The lovely little guest house was friendly and cute. The staff members were delightful people. After dinner we went to the night market. I bought a number of lovely textile pieces, Cambodian traditional scarves and silk pieces which were beautiful. The ice-cream was interesting as were the fish that eat the skin off your feet while you soak in their fish pond. Crazy!

Day 6 - 27 October

Today was our last day in the capital. We spent the morning at the Destiny office. We helped make teaching materials for the Learning Centre. We were able to contribute money toward the purchase of homes for some of the slum dwellers. I also purchased 100 small butterflies, made by the rescue girls, which I planned to sell when I got home to raise money to purchase a washing machine for the Learning Centre. (I have since sold all the butterflies, and raised enough to buy two washing machines, one for the learning centre and one for the child care centre.)
After lunch, (a western roast dinner cooked by an Australian who trains rescue girls to both run the restaurant as well as a hairdressing and beauty therapy school) we headed to the bus as we travelled to Kampong Cham.
The bus was old and rattly and took a couple of hours. We got to Kampong Cham at dusk and checked in to a great motel. After the Phnom Penh guesthouse it was a palace.
We went for an evening walk along the river bought a meal and crashed.

Day 5 - 26 October

I spent the day at the Child Care Centre and the Learning Centre helping out. At the Child Care Centre we spent the morning washing and dressing children, playing with them and sitting in on their group time and book reading.
At the Learning Centre I spent time with Pat and the national teachers developing as many learning materials and helpful strategies for the teachers as we thought would translate well into the Learning Centre environment. It was so difficult to communicate without the language as concepts are difficult to communicate without educational understanding as the language is a little more complex than 'Hello' 'How are you?'
I had taken quite a few things to donate including clothing, reading books etc. I also took a disc from school with so many ideas for reading resources including templates for books. I don't know how useful they are when they have to be translated but I hope some of the material is helpful.
I was inspired about how much help I could be in this setting. I know I could make a difference in the education of these children. I can only see two things which could stop me from functioning well in the ministry.
1. A lack of language and the difficulty learning Khmer language.
2. The oppressive heat, humidity, smells, food, and any other lifestyle difference you care to name.
All things that can be overcome but certainly a challenging environment to work.

Day 4 - 25 October

After everything I said about yesterday it is hard to believe that there is another day that provided more shocks and challenges and confronting images, smells, sounds and experiences to assault my senses. It is the day that has stayed with me more than any other of my trip.

It could be that I was not prepared when I hopped in the tuk tuk from the guesthouse for the images which were to meet us. We arrived to see this scene. Yes the water is a sewer. This is the view from the balcony in the centre of the picture.

This was hard enough but then we walked into the dwellings. You could scarcely call them homes. I felt like a voyeur but couldn't help myself. I simply had to take photos of the children as I couldn't believe that parents raise children in this kind of environment. The little faces haunt me daily and I certainly would have taken half a dozen of them home to Australia if I could have done so.

We went from there to another slum village. Not easy to see but slightly better to look at than the sewer we had just seen (and smelt).

Day 3 - 24 October

A Sunday unlike any other. I must admit to being spiritually aware during the whole day, but not in a positive worshipful way that is encouraging, but in a shocking and confronting way which left me aware of the overwhelming evil capacity of the human heart. We spent the morning at the 'Killing Fields' followed by time at the S21 prison. The guy who guided us through the Killing Fields was so helpful and spoke such great English. It has always been fascinating to me to try to understand whatever could make someone kill off his own generation of his own race. What could possibly have motivated Pol Pot to do what he did. It was great to hear a Cambodian view of the Cambodian genocide.
I know it looks like a high school because actually it was. However there is a ghostly feel to the place which was Tuol Svay Prey High School, where Pol Pot rounded up the middle classes, and herded them into buses heading to Choeung Ek where they were killed on mass. It was fascinating to learn about Vann Nath, the only remaining detainee of S21 still living. His paintings line the walls of the museum and give very poignant images of the human cost of the Khmer Rouge era.
The day left each member of the team quiet and thoughtful and left a heaviness on the group.

Day 2 - 23 October

A relaxing breakfast before taking a walk through the streets. The overhead wires don't really pass Workplace Health and Safety. Rachel arrived earlier than we thought and she spent the morning sleeping off her trip from the UK. I took photos of the beautiful patterns of folded towels in the motel room. Too cute.

We headed to the airport at lunch time, ate a lunch from the eatery and checked in for our flight to Phonm Penh.




What a culture shock! Arriving in the Cambodian capital was an attack on every sense. I was overwhelmed by the heat, the dirt, the noise of horns beeping, the smells, the lack of hygiene, the decrepit look of the buildings and the poverty and beggars everywhere.There just don't seem to be footpaths or perhaps there are but there is so much junk on each footpath that you end up walking on the road, which is really dangerous.

Day 1 - 22 October

Brisbane to Brunei to Bangkok
Our late flight landed in Brunei early in the morning. We knew we had a 4 hour lay over at Brunei which sounded really boring, so we decided to take a transit tour. Simeon had taken the same trip a couple of years ago when he headed to Europe and I kn0w he enjoyed it.
My uncle had also been pilot for the Sultan so I was interested in seeing the unique culture.

We took the trip with a group of four older men and two young twenty-somethings. When I asked them why they were travelling to SE Asia, they looked at me sheepishly, um-ed and ah-ed before telling me that they were going for a 'lifestyle' holiday. It was obvious what they were going for, and since part of our trip was to observe the extent of prostitution in Cambodia and Thailand, I struggled to be polite to them.

The trip was enjoyable, most particularly the architecture of the mosques and temples, covered in gold and each one built to honour a particular sultan. The floating village was also fascinating.
I would love to have had longer to explore. There are houses, schools, markets etc all on stilts over the water. Because it is Friday, and it is weekend, children were attending the mosque for lessons.
They look so cute in their pink temple outfits.

The heat is oppressive and takes time to acclimatise. We flew to Bangkok and settled into our motel, had a nap and rested for the day as we had to wait for Rachel to arrive from the UK.

Count down on and ticking.

Count down on and ticking. Only two days to go before I fly out. I plan to be so much more faithful in keeping up the blog with pictures and some sort of ongoing diary while I'm away. I leave from Brisbane on Friday morning at ten minutes to one am. Not a very appealing time to be heading overseas but I'm ready and rearing to go.

I have already ten kilos of supply for the mission and the other ten kilos is a combination or really light clothes and really heavy vitamins and medications.

My goal now is to complete as much of my ongoing workload at school before I have to leave. I will then need to get back healthy and energetic so that I can hit the ground running and finish the year meeting all the deadlines.....

I'll keep you posted.

An inspirational woman.

I was encouraged to read this article in the Courier Mail last Friday. This is a woman after my own heart. Her name is Kerry Huntly. She went to Cambodia to help out for six weeks, came home, sold her house and went back to open a home in Siem Reap. That was two years ago. She is working with the slum dwellers on community development and teaching English. Her organisation is called New Hope Cambodia.
I'm delighted to be visiting the area close to this part of Cambodia and would love to spend time with such an inspirational person.
She does speak of how she misses her adult children back in Australia. I can so understand where she is coming from. That is the one thing that will be the biggest challenge of leaving Australia, especially if I end up going away long term.

A legacy of compassion

It was so great last Sunday morning to have the chance to hear Andrew Merry talk about Compassion Child Sponsorship. He spoke from Mark 9: 33 - 37 and focussed on why Jesus talked of greatness as it relates to the way we respond to children. He emphasised the relationship that we as adults have to adapt to when we have responsibility for children. Children demand so much of what Jesus values. They require that we learn to be selfless, humble, others focussed and protective. In fact we become the servants of our children. Our role as adults is to protect the voiceless ones and fight for the rights of children. We are to ensure that our children are given every opportunity to ensure that they can be the best that they can be.

Jesus was also being strategic when he told us that children are the key to the kingdom. Children are so open to the Gospel. They are impressionable; which gives us an incredible opportunity, but also a huge responsibility. The 'millstone around the neck' and the 'disposal into the lake' are appropriate for how I feel about so many adults who show they don't have any pace around children.

Giving

On a visit to the local library last week Talitha found Amy Grant's memoir called 'Mosiac'. Talk about a blast from the past! We are the same age and had our first children at about the same age. I grew up listening to Amy Grant and enjoyed reading her musings about her life. We are both at a real interesting stage in life for looking both forward and back.

Her thoughts on giving..............

'The life which gives, multiplies itself; the life which absorbs, destroys itself and others. All nature is build upon the plan of giving. The sun gives its light and heat, the bird its song, the lilac its odour, the orchard yields its fruit for the good of us, the field its grain for the same purpose. If one is not a giver, she is out of harmony with her surroundings. If she makes a Dead Sea of herself, she becomes fatal to anything that seeks life from her.'

My attitude and approach to giving cannot be separated from how I view God and, consequently, my fellow man. Do I believe in God? Do I believe that my needs are met by God? And if He can supply my needs, what about everybody else's?

Trust is doing what you believe you are called to do and trusting that God will provide. But here's where it gets personal: God provides through people. Am I willing to be connected to the people in my world, the people at work, the people in my house, the people I encounter in everyday patterns of living? Am I open to the possibility of my life, my gifts, touching another life? My life touching another, the domino effect of God's goodness rippling through so many other lives, is a powerful, far-reaching concept.

I am challenged by these questions. I can't make a difference everywhere and I can't make a difference for everyone but just like the little boy throwing jellyfish back into the ocean, 'I can make a difference for that one'. My desire is to make a difference for someone somewhere.

Cambodia - Here I come

Earlier this year I felt compelled to investigate mission opportunities in South East Asia: specifically the work of Destiny Rescue. DR are a Christian organisation committed to fighting human trafficking in a number of our poorer Asian neighbours.

It has taken until now to book and pay the deposit on a two week mission experience. I will be in Cambodia and Thailand from 23 October to 7 November visiting rescue homes where young girls (eight years old is not uncommon!) rescued from brothels are housed, fed, educated and loved.

I have applied for leave from work and while this has been granted, I'm not entitled to any pay during the period I'm away.

I have started this blog to allow family and friends to stay up-to-date with the planning, the trip and the impact of the trip as it could just be the beginning of something much bigger :)

If you would like to become part of the adventure I would appreciate your participation through prayer, financial contribution and emails of encouragement as I don't mind admitting that I'm going to need plenty of all three as well as the unlimited grace, mercy and provision of God to see this through.

Travel account details:
S.E.Lawson BSB: 014263 Account No. 525471155

Watch this space for updates and may God bless you as we reach out together to the precious young girls of Cambodia with God's love.

Passion for Mission

I have become impassioned with the needs of the victims of human trafficking in South East Asia. It all began with information about young girls rescued from brothels in Cambodia, and has continued becoming gradually more all consuming. I am planning to travel to Cambodia and Thailand in October to see first hand the work of Destiny Rescue, which is exciting and frightening at the same time.

I also heard on Tuesday of the work of Help International and their projects with the indigenous minority people in Thailand. I could listen all day to stories of lives saved and freedom regained, but experience a sense of deep sadness at the residual damaged done to young lives by selfish exploitation.

I would love to have the opportunity to contribute in a real and practical way, using my skills to make a difference. 'One step at a time' I must keep reminding myself as my mind goes much faster and further than my feet have travelled.

I often feel overwhelmed at the magnitude of the problem of human trafficking and the many facets of human corruption that feed this despicable activity. With so many contributing evils, the job of eliminating trafficking seems impossible. I take inspiration from the life of William Wilberforce and how long he struggled to have slavery outlawed in a society which gained economic benefit from slavery. I have been influenced in a similar way to the quote from Wilberforce in the movie 'Amazing Grace':

'You may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know'

Weird Aspie Dream

As part of how annoying it is to be Aspie even my subconscious reacts in Aspergers fashion. I have had 2 days at an in-service conference for teachers, in a really crowded auditorium. I struggled with the overcrowded space, the strong lighting, the noise, (especially other members of the audience whispering while the speaker was speaking). I waited in long crowds for food, which while it was tasty, was not part of the diet. There was only cow's milk for coffee and no salad veges, (which are what I live on at the moment)

The stimulation must have all been just too much for my system. I didn't realize until I woke this morning just how stressed I must have become during the day. I dreamt (as I have a couple of times before in such situations) that people I didn't know came and moved into my home. I wouldn't be surprised if I was calling out in my sleep as I remember yelling out over and over, 'Get out of my house. You have no right to be here. Get out!' The dream went from bad to worse because as I moved whole families out of one room of the house they simply re situated themselves in a different part of the house. They invited friends in and had parties, left mess and wouldn't leave, in fact they became more and more sneaky in where they were hiding and places they were using up.

I must have become quite out of control as I remember I began to become physical, pushing people out the door, with their belongings, shutting doors and locking them, only to find that people had entered a different way.

I woke tired and didn't want to go back to the conference again today to be greeted with the same thing again. I planned to sit at the back out of the assigned seating, attend sessions in smaller groups if possible, and even brought my own lunch and soy milk for coffee. I wasn't going to struggle again a second day. However, other people must have thought the crowd was too stressful as today it had visibly thinned and I was able to enjoy my day a lot more.

Learning to live - food intolerances

It is such a struggle to be Aspie in a neuro typical world! And the worst of it is that it doesn't matter how old we are and how much life experience we have, being an Aspie continues to be challenging. As I strive to make sense of the world, I believe that the benefit of this process is to both the Aspie and the NT. As I work on making myself more 'socially acceptable' I believe that part of my contribution to the understanding of those on the Autistic Spectrum is to help the NT to understand and become more tolerant of Aspies.

So perhaps this blog is part of that process. My most recent step forward in finding my way in this confusing world has been through understanding my own food intolerances. It has been an amazing process. Removing gluten has made incredible changes in my life. Sure, my digestion has improved, my unsettled tummy has settled, my weight has stabilised, my general health and feeling of wellness have improved.

But the most amazing change has occurred in my mental health. The panic attacks have gone. The need for medication has lessened. I am now able to relax and handle many of the daily challenges that would previously have sent me into an anxious state. I have spent about 2 months experiencing life in a relaxed state. It has been challenging to maintain a diet without gluten, and more recently dairy products, but what price is that to pay for mental health that has eluded me for my lifetime.

Check out the sushi. I had never eaten sushi before removing gluten from my diet. It is difficult to find carbs that are tasty and interesting to eat when wheat, rye, barley and oats are all removed from the menu. But being challenged to change my diet has also forced me to learn to eat new things. It has been great.