Today we a real highlight because our team was able to visit the Phnom Penh field office of the International Justice Mission.

IJM works in the darkest corners of the human race: sexual slavery. Its four-fold mission:
ersis
1. Victim Rescue
2. Perpetrator Accountability
3. Victim Aftercare
4. Structural Change

The young girls who are trafficked deserve freedom. Those who traffick them deserve accountability. IJM in Cambodia works to ensure that everyone gets what they deserve.

As a lot of you know, the people of Good Shepherd gave $207,000 to IJM this past Christmas.

The Phnom Penh office is one of 14 similar facilities located throughout the developing world. It's one of the first IJM opened . . . in part because sexual slavery is a uniquely pervasive scourge in Cambodia. We learned several reaons why:

• Cambodian culture has an obsession with female virginity. Sex with a female virgin is supposed to bring the man "good luck" . . . . as a result, some families in dire financial straits will even auction of the virginity of their adolescent girls.
• Cambodians have a saying: "men are like gold; women are like white cloth." In other words, men can be re-polished and re-finished. Once a woman loses her sexual purity, she loses value. That value can never be replaced, and prostitution then becames a logical next step. Lunacy -- for you to read it and me to type it.
• Southeast Asia has become a magnet in recent years for "sex tourists" -- pedophiles from the West who travel to this part of the world in search of cheap sex with children.
• The Khmer Rouge killed a generation of legal professionals in Cambodia, making it nearly impossible to have a functional judicial system.

In spite of those odds, IJM Phnom Penh is having an impact. In 2009, for example, it rescued 54 women and girls from sexual slavery. In 2010, 37 perpetrators were convicted and sentenced with the assistance of IJM personnel. The team here also arranged aftercare and skills training for dozens of rescued slaves.

We were able to put a human face on one of our favorite organizations today. We can't show you those faces or give you the location of the office because, as you might expect, the enemies of IJM are not nice people. We're only too glad to protect their security.

We also sat through staff devotion with the team. It was interesting . . . they trace the motivation for their ministry to Luke 4:16-21. If you have a really good memory, that's the exact passate we used in December for What Child Is This. Coincidence?

Here are some odds and ends from our trip. I will give a more comprehensive Friday post later tonight . . . or early Friday morning, Charlotte time.

Random notes:

• The world really is flat, as Thomas Friedman says. While delivering yesterday's sermon in a village with no electricity or running water, the message was interrupted by a cell phone call.
• Cambodia must have more motorcycles per capita than any other country on earth. The riders are resourceful, courageous, and certainly not risk-averse.
• The Cambodian church speaks of its readiness to move "from relief to development."
• The legacy of the Khmer Rouge, the murderous regime that ruled this land from 1975-1979, is never far below the surface of conversation.
• Interestingly, the day I surrended to Christ as Lord and Savior -- January 7, 1979 -- is the same day the Cambodians were delivered from the Khmer Rouge.
• People yearn to receive healing prayers.
• Most Cambodian Buddhists regard Jesus as a "foreigner god."
  
• I'm grateful that I listened to Julie when she said to pack several days worth of clothes in my carry on case. Our luggage caught up with us on the third day here. Talk about rising again!
• You should bring some really good books with you if you are on one flight for 14 hours. Fortunately, I did, and so the LA to Taipei leg was bearable. The flight attendants on China Airways are full of courtesy and composure.
• Things in the USA for which I have renewed appreciation: Emissions Controls on cars; zoning regulations in our cities; landscaping that ensures green space in urban areas; English muffins with honey; trash pick up on Thursdays; ESPN SportsCenter; air conditioning. Air conditioning. Air conditioning.
• On the other side of the world, I'm aware that Princeton plays Harvard in a one game Ivy League winner take all for a berth in the March Madness tournament. They play at a neutral site -- Yale. Go Tigers -- and I don't mean Clemson or LSU.
  

As I mentioned in Tuesday's post, Good Shepherd's founding pastor Claude Kayler forged a relationship with Cambodian pastor Sopeung Sok in 1999 and 2000.

As a result, our church was able to build a church building for Pastor Sopeung's church early in the last decade.

So today, I got to preach a sermon and then lead a baptism service in that same building.

There were 200 or so people present. And two very interested dogs.

The village went all out to welcome us, including a welcome tent usually reserved for once in a lifetime events like weddings, and a covered dish, Cambodian style.

Anyway, the highlight of the worship was not my preaching but the baptisms that followed it.

Because we baptized 50 new people into the kingdom. All were adults, many were elderly, and most were making the daring move of giving their lives to Jesus in the middle of a culture (and a village) that is almost exclusively Buddhist.

It's a journey that Sopeung himself has taken in his own life.

So we baptized them, one after another. It was exhiliratingly exhausting.

One interesting note about the baptisms: Ron Dozier, our pastor of Missions and Community Impact, performed them with me. So we had an African-American and an Anglo baptizing Cambodian people into the kingdom of God.

Good Shepherd is full on, full color. Even halfway around the world.


Tomorrow: we visit the Phnom Penh office of International Justice Mission plus a wrap up with Methodist leadership in this country.

Also - a couple of technical glitches are preventing downloads of some of our many photos. We're working on it.

On our first night in Phnom Penh, we had a dinner with about 15 United Methodist pastors and young adult leader.

I sat down next to a very nice young woman who introduced herself to me. Turns out she is the president of United Methodist Youth in Cambodia. That's a volunteer role.

Then she told me what she did for a living. "I work in aftercare for the International Justice Mission. Have you heard of them?"

Considering we just finished a major effort at Christmas that netted the IJM $207,000, yes, I've heard of them.

We have a visit with the Phnom Penh office of IJM scheduled for later this week, and my new friend works in an aftercare center in another part of the country.

Either way, it's a nice reminder that God is in control when you walk into one of those divine coincidences.