The sweating starts - by Paul

Today I woke up after a very good night's sleep... although 30 minutes later than planned as I set my alarm clock for 5:30 p.m. instead of a.m. I was far too tired to post anything coherent on the Blog last night. Megan noticed :o), which really touched me, as it let me know that she is following her Dad's during this mission.

The trip out to Rahab's House was not along the route I had followed so often on Google Earth. We took slightly more inland route before connecting to Hwy 5... which is nothing more than a two lane road. The left turn into the village took me by surprise, and all of a sudden I was traveling along the very same streets that I read in Gary Haugen's book "Terrify No More". Surreal is a word that gets used a lot in our conversations.

We took a good 45 minutes to wander inside the building before gathering for a short devotional lead by Clayton. Christa Hayden, IJM Coordinator for after rescue care and rehabilitation, and Helen Sworn, of Chab Dai (a body of 40 Christian organizations that are fighting sexual slavery in Cambodia) came out to participate in the demolition. For both of them, this was an opportunity to swing the sledgehammer at a symbol of the evil they have been fighting for many years. We all took turns throughout the morning to do our inaugural wall bashing.

By 11:00 a.m. we had been working for about 2 hours and were starting to feel the effects of our hard labour. We figure that the temperature was in the neighbourhood of 30 degrees, without adding the humidex. By 2:00 p.m. I was hitting the wall. I had already consume about three litres of water and green tea. I was hot, my CoolMax shirt and jeans were drenched in sweat, and I was breathing heavily. So like any good worker, I took a break, sat under one of the fans, applied a cold can of pop to my neck and allowed my body to recover.

It was then that I realize what a privileged life I live. Thirty three years ago, the Khmer Rouge marched people out of the cities into the country and used them as slave labour to farm and construct massive dams. These poor people worked for up to 20 hours a day, through the heat of the day, with no water to drink and sustained by watery soup and whatever other food they could find or steal. They were weak, beaten physically and continuously threatened with death. Many never lived to see the 'liberation' of their country by the Vietnamese three years later.

As we finished our first day, our progress was encouraging. We knocked down the wall of about four rooms, half way there. Jeff and I also tore down the ceiling in the pink room upstairs, which was previously used to make videos, and will eventually be used to house the live in pastor. Tomorrow we will continue the wall demolition, start prepping the walls for painting, and maybe deal with the kitchen.

I know that many asked how we would dispose of the materials we removed. Out here, you just have to wheelbarrow it to the empty lot across the street and the villager will recycle the material. Most of it will be crushed and used as aggregate for cement. At the end of the day, you couldn't tell that we had dumped four rooms worth of walls out there... and tomorrow another four rooms worth of brick and mortar will magically disappear.



I'm looking forward to another day of hard labour tomorrow. The sunlight that is now flowing into the building is very symbolic of God's light filing Rahab's House, and it will be His light that will transform the village into something that will bring honour to the love he has for the forgotten and abused people here.

Please pray for the girls locked away during the day, and who are brought out at night to be sold to satisfy weak depraved men's desire for power. It is so painful to think of the terror they live every day. I know that God has heard their cries of terror... this is why he brought us here.

Paul