My Shirt with Two Right Sleeves

I own a dress shirt with two right sleeves. It fits me perfectly because it was custom made for me.

It’s not that I have two right arms. I don’t. But the Rapha girl who sewed the shirt for me made a mistake in the rush to finish it during my last visit and attached a right-hand sleeve to the left side of the shirt.

This shirt is one of my favorite shirts. I wore it to a funeral today that I officiated. Nobody there even noticed. Nobody said, “Say, do you know that your shirt has two right sleeves? What’s up with that?” And if they would happen to ask, I’d tell them.

One reason why I like my shirt so much is that every time I wear it, I think of the girl who made it for me. I think about how far she has come. And it fills me with joy. No store-bought shirt has ever done that for me.

But another reason I like my shirt with two right sleeves is that it reminds me that something flawed can still be something truly beautiful. Every person that I’ve ever met (myself included) is deeply flawed. Trafficked or not, we all have some real challenges within ourselves to overcome. The reason I like working with trafficked girls is that they know that, and many are facing their challenges head on. The rest of us sometimes, to our shame, are more concerned with looking good than getting the help that we need.

I have a confession to make. When I first discovered that my shirt had two right sleeves, I was tempted to get it fixed. Then I realized that would only ruin it. So I’ll continue to wear it proudly and let it remind me of a special girl and the truth about myself.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

Tangible Hope

Whenever I travel to Cambodia, I always send email messages home to update my friends and family. I just returned from Rapha House a few days ago and sent a few messages home while I was away.

One of the ladies at church who read these updates said that this time my messages weren’t as despairing as before. On my past visits, I confronted the horrors of human trafficking and the devastation that it brings to children’s lives. In addition to that, this time I saw something else when I visited Rapha House. This time I witnessed tangible hope.

I was in the car when Sopheap called the leader of our aftercare program with the exciting news that she just made her first sale. Sopheap used to be a client at our shelter, and then she married and moved away. Her husband and her lived in abject poverty, so we decided to help. We set her up in her own little clothing shop. And now she has made her first sale. It wasn’t just a business transaction; it was a case of tangible hope.

I saw tangible hope when I helped unload the salon furniture for Phally’s very own beauty shop. I witnessed a beaming smile cross her face when she told me in broken English that she was going to start her own shop. And in just a few days, she will leave our care and begin to realize the goal of our ministry—independent living.

At Rapha House, we have a saying: “We’re successful when the girls that we serve are successful.” And our girls are successful when we offer them tangible hope for a better life. Your participation makes that possible.

You may never visit Cambodia and email your friends back home. But you can rest assured that every prayer, every dollar and every effort on behalf of this work is bringing tangible hope to girls who at one time were hopeless.

You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more. (Psalm 10:17,18)

Sophea’s Journey Through Hell (2)

The dirty tile floors and windowless cement walls at the brothel resemble prison cells. And in many ways that is what they are for the girls confined there.

Whirring ceiling fans provide slight relief from the sweltering tropical heat and humidity. They offer a place for Sophea to fix her attention during the customers’ visits—an endless parade of men morning, noon and night. It’s not uncommon for trafficked girls to be raped seven to fifteen or even more times a day for two to five dollars per visit. Of course, the girls never see this money. Instead, they’re relentlessly reminded of their growing debt for food, clothing, lodging and whatever other charges the brothel owners choose to assign to them. It’s just another scam that the owners use to maintain dominion over their victims. Seldom do victims challenge this extortion. No one speaks out against the crimes that brought them to these places—fraud, kidnapping, rape and more. And any who dare risk fierce retaliation.

At first, Sophea protested being abused. She explained that she had never done such things before. But brutal beatings silenced her protests. To make her compliant, she was locked in a room with no food or toilet. Eventually, her captors forced drugs upon her to manage her. Such techniques are called “seasoning” and these Mengele-like men are expert practitioners of their hideous art. They know how to break the will.

Dehumanized, Sophea was reduced to a body without a soul—an object to be used and used up until she would eventually die or be discarded due to disease or undesirability. Death is often the only escape from this bondage. And Sophea recounts through her tears the time that she reached the point where she entertained killing herself.

Fortunately, she found another way out. One evening, a customer unconsciously left his cell phone on the bed when he went to the restroom. In a moment of clarity, Sophea phoned home and reached her grandmother. She said she was being held at a brothel. Her grandmother notified the authorities.

However, the brothel owners were tipped off and begin grilling each of the girls to find out who told. Sophea eventually confessed. Then the brothel owners rounded up the girls and moved them to another location. They decided that Sophea was more trouble than she was worth, so they turned her over to a drug dealer who repeatedly tried to rape her but decided to give her $2.50 to wash his hands of her find and leave her to find her own way home.

Today, sixteen-year-old Sophea lives at a safehouse and is studying cosmetology. And dreams are starting to replace her nightmares.

Editor's note: Sophea recounts her story firsthand in the film "Baht" produced by CIY and featured in their Move conferences nationwide.

He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. —Psalm 18:17

Sophea’s Journey Through Hell (1)

As a young teen, Sophea’s first experience with sex was not with someone whom she thought she loved. A total stranger in a dirty guesthouse on the road to Siem Reap, the tourist mecca of Cambodia, raped her. When he was done, a second man raped her and brutally beat her when she tried to resist. This was fourteen-year-old Sophea’s introduction to sex.

After this ordeal, the woman who had lured Sophea from her home with the promise of a legitimate job told Sophea not to worry. She said the men paid for the experience. Sophea, however, never saw any of the money and ended up being sold to a brothel where she spent eight months in a living hell.

How did an innocent girl end up in a place like this? It all started with a single incident of domestic violence.

One day when Sophea was in the third grade, her grandfather and mother got into an argument. After being hit, Sophea’s mom ran away to the Thai border, leaving her family behind.

Sometimes it’s hard growing up in a fractured family in the most prosperous country on earth. But growing up destitute and in a broken family in one of the poorest nations on earth can drive people to make desperate decisions.

In order to help her family make ends meet, Sophea took a job as a laborer at a sugarcane farm in Thailand. The adults mistreated her, calling her lazy and blaming her for everything that went wrong. She needed whatever money she could get but wanted desperately to escape this oppressive situation. One day a man came along speaking her native tongue. He invited Sophea to come to work in Bangkok. She trusted him and went. There she spent the next year working as a laborer and receiving nothing in return. So she called her grandma and asked to come home.

Sometime later after returning home, a woman came through her hometown telling about a restaurant in Siem Reap that was hiring responsible girls to wait on tables. The pay was sixty dollars a month. Sophea left with her grandmother’s blessing. And on the way, she found herself at the guesthouse where she was raped and then was sold to the brothel.

Next installment: Sophea escapes to freedom

O LORD, see how my enemies persecute me! Have mercy and lift me up from the gates of death —Psalm 9:13

The Judge's Verdict

My wife and I had a retired judge and his wife over to the house the other night, along with a couple of their friends. They wanted to see a film that we have featuring one of the Rapha girls telling her story about being sex trafficked.

Following the film, they were unsettled and said, “We live such sheltered lives here in America, we had no idea that things like this were happening in the world.” And then the judge said, “It makes you wonder…” he paused for a moment of self-editing and then voiced his thoughts aloud by saying, “…why doesn’t God do something about this?”

I told him that I used to think the same way. My protests over the evil and suffering in the world were well rehearsed. Until one day, God brought me up short. In the midst of my questioning, God impressed His gentle reply upon my spirit: “Why don’t you do something about this?” There I stood before the Judge without a defense.

Think about it. How did God eradicate all the suffering caused from polio? He used a man like Jonas Salk. How did God answer the evil of Nazism? He used the Allied forces, many paying the ultimate sacrifice. This amazing, albeit mysterious, God allows us to shape the future to a large degree. He gives us the freedom to determine the type of world in which we’ll live.

I then asked the judge a simple question: “Do you want to live in a world where millions of children are trafficked?” I waited for his verdict. His answer is of small consequence here. The only thing that matters is how you'll answer that question.

Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. (Psalm 82:3,4)

The Ultimate Betrayal

Recently, I saw a movie in which a Rapha girl recounts her story. It’s heart-rending.

I’ll write more about this film some other time. As I watched this girl’s story unfold, I was struck by the magnitude of betrayal that she endured. At every turn, the people she encountered used and abused her. The men to whom she was labor trafficked the first time as a young child mistreated her and cheated her out of her money. Then, she was trafficked again to Bangkok with the same results. She desperately wanted to help her impoverished family, so she took what she thought was a restaurant job in Siem Reap. On the way, she was raped not once but twice and brutally beaten. The restaurant job was a ruse, and she ended up trapped in a living nightmare at a brothel, where she faced unthinkable horrors, including unrelenting sexual assaults and forced drug addiction. That went on for month after month. One betrayal compounded upon another.

Today, I spoke with a young woman at church about this film. She wants to invite her parents to its preview, but she says that they’re good Christians and don’t like to see anything that makes them feel bad. They like to keep life positive and upbeat.

I understand. But nobody gave this young girl the chance to keep her life positive and upbeat. Her desires were never considered. Never heard. Never respected.

I understand that stories about the human trafficking and sexual exploitation of children are disturbing. We don’t want to consider such ugliness. But unless the church turns its face towards this reality and acts decisively and boldly, we are guilty of the ultimate betrayal. For who should take the lead in fighting evil, if not Christ’s church?

Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act. (Proverbs 3:27)

The Type of God He Is

“So where was God when I was being abused? What type of God would let something like that happen to someone?” Those are good questions. They’re tough questions but good questions. Here’s another good question: “What type of God would let something like that happen to Himself?” Don’t be too quick to dismiss this as an attempt to avoid the hard questions. It’s one question that might actually help us gain some perspective on the others.

What hurts when we think about God is His apparent aloofness. It seems that He doesn’t care. He didn’t do anything to stop our abuse. He could have. But He didn’t. He didn’t strike our abusers dead before they hurt us. He didn’t give us enough power to fight them off and escape to safety. He didn’t protect us from them in the first place. It seems like God just stands by and watches all types of horrible things happen to people and never does anything about it. What type of God is that?

While this may be true of the gods of other religions, we find something different in Christianity. In Christianity, God took on flesh, entered our world, suffered, and died on a cross. His death was for sin—all sin. So that means, when Jesus died He suffered due to our abusers. He knows personally the type of pain that they bring. He has suffered because of them Himself. That’s what type of God He is.

What’s more is that He knows fully the anguish of our feelings of abandonment and resentment. He has taken these upon Himself, too. He has taken upon Himself our anger, hatred, and doubts. All of it. He isn’t a God who watches our experiences from afar. He knows them up close and personal. That’s what type of God He is.

Why would He do this? The prophet writes: “He was wounded and crushed because of our sins; by taking our punishment, he made us completely well” (Isaiah 53:5 CEV). Jesus wants to heal us.

God values freedom, which means evildoers are able to hurt others. But God hasn’t left us without hope. He is able to heal all our wounds, including those done by others and the self-inflicted ones. That’s the type of God He is.

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. —Luke 12:6,7