A Secret Oasis - Tim

Marty asked if I would put my little report about ARC from last Sunday (May 25th) on the BLOG. It essentially repeats my earlier blog about this encounter from in-country.

Imagine if you will a secret oasis behind enemy lines, a royal, shady compound behind high walls and security cameras. Secret because it contains the priceless living property of some very evil people who will stop at nothing to get it back. Even the neighbours think the place is just an orphanage. You walk past a swimming pool into a gazebo and sign a confidentiality agreement. The Cambodian male director, a great guy who by the end of your visit will humbly ask you to pray for him, leads you into two large adjacent 4 storey houses, almost like a hotel. An outbuilding serves as offices and staff quarters. You meet teachers and house mothers, see bright classrooms, computers, an infirmary visited by one of the country’s best doctors, breezy landings and spacious bedrooms with bunkbeds. Teenage girls sometimes appear or are furtive, sometimes in groups, sometimes alone. Some of them were rescued from Svay Pak in 2003, from the very brothel you are smashing up. You can’t believe your eyes that the little girls you’re seeing were on the market 5 years ago.

This is ARC, Agape Restoration Centre, or NewSong, same thing. 45 girls live here, rescued from rape factories and abandonment by parents. (you think, even the nazi SS loved their own children.) You know that there are 30,000 others still un-rescued somewhere in the country. You’re told it costs 10,000 American dollars to give each one the medical, psychological, educational, and spiritual aftercare required, and you get an inkling of the scope of damage done and the rocky road they’re on. In the mess hall you eat a wonderful Khmer lunch and Marty’s banners are handed out in a joyful and excited ceremony.

You sit quietly, watching, eyes front. An ARC teacher sits down and motions 3 of the girls to sit across the table from you. These are the ARC-angels. They speak with you in broken English about how they’re doing in school for what seems like a long time but isn’t, because you’re concentrating hard. Then, out of the blue, you’re hit with a sledgehammer. One of them asks, very softly, if you can be her daddy. Not her knight in shining armour to whisk her off to North America, just her ordinary, loving, kind, protective daddy. As you pick yourself up off the floor, dimly aware others on the team are standing with you, watching together this high drama, two things slowly dawn on you. First, the matchless, combat-grade courage it took for her to ask that question of you, who must look very like the hundreds of abusers she’s suffered from. Second, you’ve been granted the rarest, once-in-a-lifetime moment of privilege. You’ve seen, talked, and against all solemn instructions even enclosed their hands with yours. And because the girls once enslaved at Rahab’s House weekly go back to minister there, you’ve even been allowed to be partners with them in by far the best work you’ve ever done, with these godly young women, new creations, who have shared so deeply in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, and learnt about forgiveness and the power of God. And they don’t want you to leave.

You wonder who are you that you could be allowed anywhere near something so sacred. Then you remember the terrible, bottomline mercy and grace of first Corinthians 6 “you are not your own, you have been bought at a price.”