All is Love (Place of Rescue)

I apologize for the delay. Rebecca and I have moved back to our respective places to school or work or whatever it is that we do. I know.. we are still behind on a few posts. But no matter how "busy" we get, Cambodia keeps coming back to me. Since coming home, I just seem to be attending all sorts of sharing nights, women's nights and even a benefit concert - all supporting an AIDS shelter and orphanage called Place of Rescue. It seems to follow me everywhere I go, so I suppose it's finally time to pay it its due hommage.

Like I mentioned in our last post, HIV and AIDS is an epidemic in Cambodia. Since the last post, I've actually learned more about this problem. HIV/AIDS were unfortunately brought via tourists after the genocide and Pol Pot's regime. Not only had Cambodia seen mass murders of the educated forcing a huge generational gap (more info on this in a future post), but soon after the Khmai people were having to face yet another problem of HIV/AIDS. This meant a large number of orphans and elderly people.

Because this is such a problem in Cambodia, I suppose it was only fitting that we were able to visit two AIDS orphanages: Jeevit's House and Place of Rescue.To call Place of Rescue an orphanage is to put it lightly. This NGO located just outside of the capital city of Phnom Penh is a community unto its own. I don't know the exact math, but that's about 250-plus people all living at Rescue. This includes orphans, grannies, families living with AIDS, and single mothers. In one brief tour of Rescue, let's just say it's not hard to fall in love with everyone you meet. Kids wave wildly, grannies smile with blackened teeth, and babies hide behind their house moms in curiosity.


What intrigues me is that each person living at Rescue comes with their own unique and painful story that brought them there, yet they all blend together as a family. One little guy was found at a hospital with his mom. His mother was delusional and claimed that she was going to eat her son. Another group of kids had witnessed their father murder their mother. Some children were abandoned because of AIDS. Despite their situation, the past doesn't matter. Rescue offers them hope, a future, a family (a really big one, at that! They even call director Marie Ens "grandma").

Place of Rescue is something pretty special to me. My old home church has been involved with them and four years ago, my brother had the privilege of visiting. Coincidentally enough, his first visit there at the age of 22 was also my first visit there at the age of 22. I remember him regaling us with stories of how he fell in love with Rescue and of all the kids he was able to meet. One particular girl is Reaksmai. She was 14 when my brother had met her. Her mom had just died of AIDS and she was left alone with an older and younger brother. My brother and Reaksmai would write each other back and forth even after he had come home. He would send her pictures of our family and she would send back pressed flowers. It was awfully cute.


Fast forward four years and I'm at Rescue. Rebecca and I met with an awesome team from Calgary to run an English camp and teach a couple of classes. Each class received one student teacher who was a kid at Rescue. The interesting thing is that out of the 6 student teachers we could have gotten, Reaksmai was ours. It was like the stars aligned and I couldn't help but smile. Over the week, we enjoyed getting to know each and every one of our students. We really grew to love each other as a class. We got an intermediate class of kids ranging from maybe around 10 to 18. I loved how some of the younger kids who were amazing at English would assist the older ones who were having difficulty. I liked watching each child's potential spurt through, whether it was through their artistic abilities, their dancing, or even with how quick they picked up English.


As each day passed, we dreaded our fateful good-bye day, because we also felt like a part of their family and we just didn't want to leave. It amazed me how the concept of family could be found in a sea of 250 people. Not a day passed where I didn't receive hugs, or didn't get a kid holding my hand. To be honest, my heart aches a little bit as I write this just cause I miss them so much. After a week of playing with parachutes, running relay races, talking with kids, learning English, dancing to Michael Jackson's thriller, and learning bible stories, it was time to come to an end. They threw us a Khmai party complete with the kids doing traditional dances for us, teaching us how to dance, and a delicious meal. The night winded down and a heavy feeling overcame the room. It was a flood of emotion and chaos as hugs were being given and tears were flowing.


I am rarely an emotional person. I don't cry in movies (not even in Titanic), during good-byes, during funerals, nothing. But this day held an exception. I hadn't been feeling well that whole day (blame it on a bad piece of pizza). Having spent the majority of the day near a toilet, I heard a knocking on the door. It was our Khmai friend Chanthol telling me it was time to say good-bye. I walked out of the bathroom and immediately became bombarded by hugs. I held my composure as many of my students cried during their goodbyes until I ran into Reaksmai. Her cheeks were already stained with tears. Although I hadn't started crying yet, she began to comfort me. I'll never forget the words she said, "I'm going to miss you. If you ever feel lonely, remember that you have a sister in Cambodia. If you ever feel sad, remember that you have a God that loves you. Don't forget me because I will never forget you." As she said that, she took off her ring and placed it on my finger. My eyes welled and tears formed.

As we took the hour van ride back to our hotel, my mind flooded with thoughts. My good-bye with Reaksmai reminded me that Rescue is a place of love and it shows in each child because the love they received is the love that they give.


For more information on Place of Rescue, visit www.placeofrescue.com ! (Support them - country singer Paul Brand does :P )

hiccups & run-attack-jump-for-a-piggy-back-ride

Battambang. It’s the second largest city in Cambodia. It is about 303 kms away from Bangkok, the last city we were in before Cambodia. That’s about 6 hours away by land. Yet, we ended up taking the most roundabout way to get there. Live this day of travel with us…

Bangkok to Hong Kong: 2-hour flight. 2 hours of layover. Hong Kong to Phnom Penh: 2-hour flight. In Phnom Penh, we took a far too overcharged tuk tuk to our guesthouse. (Like I mentioned, this is the very same guesthouse that forgot about our booking and thus, forgot to pick us up at the airport like they had promised.) 12 hours later, we were at the bus station. 2 hour wait. Phnom Penh to Battambang: 5 hours. I’ll spare you from the long story of confusion and stress, but let’s just say it took us an additional 4 hours to end up where we were supposed to be – at the YWAM guesthouse.

In simplest terms, a 6-hour commute turned into a 17-hour long haul. Times like this, I think God’s got a pretty funny sense of humor.

Aside from these hiccups, we absolutely loved Battambang and its small town vibe. We met a lot of new friends and also hooked up with ones we had gotten to know in Bangkok. The pastor’s house that we were staying at made amazing meals topped off with fresh fruit. Although we only saw the pastor and his family in passing, we came to love them. During Pol Pot’s regime this family walked days upon days from Phnom Penh to Battambang in an attempt to survive the genocide. They continue to stick together as a family, living with grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins in this one home (plus all the mission teams and guests!) With all these people living under one roof, they are incredibly overprotective over all of us – wanting us to be safe and feel loved!

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Our week in this city was spent with a couple of different YWAM programs. We tagged along at the base during English lessons, participated in some dance lessons, and our favorite… Jeevit’s House! Jeevit’s House is an HIV/AIDS orphanage only a few blocks from where we were staying. It’s this beautiful house found in the middle of a slum. It not only addresses the needs of the kids who live in the house, but impact the community as well.


It all started with one baby girl - abandoned, sick, orphaned, and yet beautiful. December 2007. They took her to the hospital to get her checked out. They discovered she had AIDS. In Battambang, orphaned children who are discovered to have HIV or AIDS must go through a difficult process of being shipped down to the capital city of Phnom Penh to live at an orphanage. Laura, who started Jeevit’s House, began to have a dream. She wanted to have a center where “all the children abandoned, orphaned and ravaged by this disease, rather than hopelessness and death may find hope, life and healing”. Fittingly, they named the little girl Jeevit, meaning life.

Laura doing her thang!

Three years later in March 2010, Laura’s dream came to reality. Today, while Laura is only in her 20s, she plays mother to two brothers. Ruen is seven years old and Rain is ten months old. Although they only have two children living at the house, Jeevit’s House also serves the community around it – through rice giveaways, hygiene tutorials, and just loving on families.

7-year-old Ruen
Baby Rain

Rice packages in the background

We were able to join in on a few days of their community outreaches. Rebecca and I loved it. We’ve come to realize that our love for children just naturally ooze out of us, and Jeevit’s House is in no short supply of kids! These little guys are definitely not shy. Every week, kids from the community, as well as some moms drop by the house. It’s so obvious how much they love this environment. It’s not only a chance for kids to run and play, but it gives moms valuable skills and resources to raise their children. It also helps bring the community closer, as these members come to get to know one another.

Haha. The boys loved styling her hair

We played games with the kids, colored with them, received endless hugs, and were victims of run-attack-jump-for-a-piggy-back-ride. Although by the end of the day we were completely exhausted, we loved it! There’s an exuberant joy and care-free attitude that runs with children, even if life isn’t running so smoothly.

Coloring!

Crazy boys!

HIV/AIDS is a running problem in Cambodia, and even furthered by poverty. Tragically, this means a lot of HIV/AIDS orphans – whether this is because of a death of a parent or because parents have sent their children to orphanages hoping they will be provided for. Parents who do keep their children are faced with incredible hardships! Moms who have HIV or AIDS fear that they will pass their sickness on to their baby through breastfeeding. Unfortunately, these women cannot afford to buy milk with the right essential nutrients. Instead, they buy condensed milk, which contains mostly sugar and has no nutritional value. As a result, these kids grow up malnourished with rotting teeth.

Mama and baby!

Thankfully, Jeevit’s House stands, its desire to “help enable families to stay together and to help orphans find their place in new families” – to provide children with food, clothing, school supplies and fees, medical costs, and the ability to stay with their family or be part of a foster family.


Check out www.jeevitshouse.org! You can see pictures of all the kids they support, get more information, and possibly financially support this new organization.

unconventional charm

I have had a few friends who have spent some time in Cambodia. More often than not, they each come back claiming how they have fallen in love with Cambodia. Well, Cambodia must be pretty charming, because I have to admit, it’s stolen my heart too. At first, I couldn’t quite place why. We’ve been blessed in both the Philippines and Thailand that things have gone smoothly and relatively problem-free. Enter Cambodia, and we’ve hit bumps along every bit of the way. Places we were staying have forgotten about our bookings and confirmations. We’ve been lead astray trying to find our way from Phnom Penh to Battambang. We’ve been incredibly ripped off by seemingly friendly tuk tuk drivers charging us 20 dollars for what should have been a 9-dollar ride. Compared to the last two countries, Cambodia is more underdeveloped scarred from a painful genocide-torn past. Moreover, it seems to host the most expensive goods (probably because the US dollar is frequently used causing inflated prices).

It leaves one wondering where all the so-called charm of Cambodia is. At least for me, I think I’ve come to figure it out. I’m the type of girl who doesn’t really like the seemingly perfect, clean-cut, put together kind of guy. I love unconventional and rough around the edges. Overlooked, but once you do look, you’re strangely captivated. And that’s what Cambodia is to me.


For the entirety of our five-hour bus ride to Battambang, my eyes could not leave the scenery outside my window. I loved watching the dirt road in its magnificent earthy red, contrasting perfectly with the lush foliage of coconut trees. Behind it are modest houses built on stilts hovering over acres of rice fields. Above, dragonflies decorate the skyline. On these rice fields, Cambodian cows roam the land, and children run around trying to help their parents mind the field. Mothers rock babies on hammocks. It’s beautiful in all its simplicity.


But it’s also more than this small frame of imagery that makes me love Cambodia. Having ridden the tuk tuk (a motorbike with a passenger cart behind it) a handful of times now, we’ve gotten in the habit of smiling or waving at anyone else on the road. This gesture is almost always returned with a smile or a wave. The Khmai people are a friendly people. If given an ounce of kindness, they’ll return it ten-fold. We’ve visited a few shops, café’s, and Internet places… Each place covers their walls and tables with pictures of their family – of mothers, fathers, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, the whole deal. Although they’ve had such a painful past, they stand today as resilient, loyal, compassionate, and family-oriented.


I realize that all these thoughts may seem abstract to you, and probably won’t make much sense to anyone but me. Cambodia is unconventionally beautiful and I can’t wait to discover what other hidden charms are here. Welcome to Cambodia. Wish you were here with us!

God of this City: Pattaya, Thailand

As we’ve said before, much of our trip is an open agenda. This means opening ourselves up not only to whatever ministries God puts in front of us, but also to whatever cities he brings us to. From the beginning of our time in Thailand, we were presented with a few options – Chiang Rai, to teach about the Bible with an awesome team from LA or to go to Chiang Mai to work with the Karen refugees. Although both of these options sounded appealing, for some reason, one city kept tugging at the both of our hearts: Pattaya.

Pattaya is a fairly well known city – infamous worldwide for being a prime destination for sex tourists. At that, it’s not exactly Disneyland (although, Pattaya is recently being marketed as a family-friendly place). Pattaya was first established as a resort town during the Vietnam War. What had once been a sleepy fishing town transformed into a livelier place due to U.S. Army GI’s searching for some R & R. With word quickly spreading, the town became a hot spot for weekend partying. Decades later, this impression has lasted and has since left the city with quite a reputation.

This reputation mostly sits at Walking Street, the center of Pattaya’s nightlife. Go-go clubs, bars, and sordid massage parlors line the mile-long street accompanied by scantily clad girls, dancers and a large handful of tourists. It has become so notorious that locals and tourists alike have labeled it as “Amsterdam times ten”. Because of Pattaya’s already negative status, much of sex tourism and seedy activity is quarantined to this city. The government views this type of lifestyle and tourism as inevitable, and their solution to managing it is to let such activity happen in a small area (i.e. Pattaya) where it can be controlled.

As you can imagine, our desire to visit this city was not always well received. Two girls traveling to this city alone seemed dangerous. One local friend frowned upon it warning us that since we both looked Thai, men would approach us asking, “how much?” Although we understand this cause for concern, when God places something on your heart, you don’t seem to have any other choice but to follow (a theme that seems to run throughout our trip). Without any connections in Pattaya or a place to stay, we just knew we were going to end up there. As usual, God provided. Our connection came in the form of Mercy Center (read MERCY CENTER blog post).

Although most of our days were spent at Mercy, through a series of divine connections, we were able to spend a day downtown and a night at Walking Street with our own personal driver and a Thai tour guide. In broad daylight, this city does not try hard to hide much. Amidst the groups of sunbathing families, we found swarms of men of all ages either with or in pursuit of Thai women. Walking Street by night is a long stretch of neon lights and chaos. Girls stand outside beckoning for men to enter their club, pole dancers can be seen out in the open, girls wearing short skirts and revealing tops dance on balconies above your head. These sights no matter where you look surround you. Never before had we seen such a concentrated presence of prostitution. Unlike what we had expected, the visitors of Walking Street come in many colors… young, old, men, women and children from all over the world. I wondered if this street had come to desensitize families that it didn’t matter that images of sex and prostitution were so obviously displayed in front of them.

With impressions like these, it’s easy to view the women who work in these areas as dirty, a disgusting choice they’ve made. Often, they enter this line of work because they have no choice. Poverty and greed have a nasty way of making individuals do whatever is necessary to get what they want or need. Unfortunately, the girls are victims of this increasing problem. It’s a sad reality, but it’s what these girls have to face day to day. Sometimes they are in this sex trade out of their own consent to help support their families. Other times, family members sell them as a commodity for extra income (sometimes sold for something even as little as a television). Tragically, this is a hard life to escape, as many are held captive by debts owed to brothel or bar owners. This was a lot for us to take in, walking down this street, passing by many beautiful girls. In my head, I silently repeated to each girl I caught eye contact with, “You are fearfully and wonderfully made”. I couldn’t help but wonder what each of their story was...

Although we didn’t get to hear any personal stories of these girls, there is one story that we came across and often like to tell. At a youth conference called Passion World Tour, we first heard the song “God of This City”, a worship song that has been made famous by Chris Tomlin. The song was actually written by a small Irish band called Bluetree in a small city called Pattaya. Before coming, they didn’t know much about the city, but soon heard countless stories of girls in the sex trade, sold as young as the age of 5. They came to this city to attend an event called Pattaya Praise, to worship God and to show his light in a dark place. Wanting to play more than just the event, they found a bar in the middle of Walking Street that would let them play worship on the condition that they would buy bottles of coca-cola all night. Although nervous and uncomfortable at first, they begun to play and soon enough, felt attune to the music they played. In the middle of this set, God spoke to them in the form of a spontaneous song.

In that moment of worship, they saw God’s heart for Pattaya and the words came out easily. In Bluetree’s own words, “Amidst the depravity God says, ‘I’m the God of this City, I’m the King of these people and Greater Thing are Yet to Come, Greater Things are Still to be Done HERE”. This song had not been written before that night, but Bluetree came out of that bar having God’s song – a song that has made its way from Pattaya to around the world.

We’ve always loved this song, but having been to places as dark as Pattaya, this experience has given us greater meaning to this song. Even through the darkness, there are still glimmers of hope and we’ve seen this firsthand. God has blessed this city with his people – missionaries, NGOs, a house of prayer… All these things remind us that our God is a big God.

“You're the God of this city. You're the King of these people. You're the Lord of this nation. You are. You're the light in this darkness. You're the hope to the hopeless. You're the peace to the restless. You are. For there is no one like our God. There is no one like our God. Greater things have yet to come. Greater things are still to be done in this city. Greater things have yet to come. Greater things are still to be done here.”

[Check out our Pattaya video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsJtaVxp5IM ]

Community Garden

Like we've been saying in the past few blog posts, Mercy is an amazing organization - slum visits, orphanage, church plants, prison visits... and a garden project, something we had the privilege of taking part in. At this garden, community members are to grow vegetables, perhaps to sell at a local market. This had been made possible with the help of a landowner who had graciously donated this small plot of land rent-free. It had first began as a small initiative to help one member of the community and has since expanded into a venture aimed at bringing together and helping the entire community. It hopefully will foster growth, relationship and community within this slum.This project is a symbol of hope for each member who has gone through a lifetime of difficulty – each person with his or her own unique story. Even though their stories are very different, they are able to come together with joint purpose and create bonds that will tie them together. This creates a sustainable future for the members of this slum and their families.



We first heard of this project at the Mercy Center. We had been told by one of the staff that today was its first day the garden would be put into effect. She had asked if we were interested in going along to take pictures for them. Excited, we agreed and took a ride to the community. What's really comical here, is that we had no idea what we were getting ourselves in to.

After a quick tour of the community, we were stopped where the garden was to be planted, our host revealed a couple of hoes. She smiled and offered them to us. We carried them, unsure of what we were supposed to do with them. Blankly, we watched her take her hoe and start taking out the weeds and thick foliage surrounding the area. We finally clued in. They wanted us to help! Never having used a hoe before, we tried to imitate what the others were doing. We watched them raise their instruments, drop it to the ground, and blam - the weeds were gone. Likewise, we attempted to do the same only to end in confusion. No matter how hard we'd hit the ground, it seemed incredibly difficult to get rid of these weeds! The locals noticed and began to laugh, amused at our effort.

With the language barrier, they tried to show us repeatedly how to take the weeds out, but I don't think either of us really understood it. After a couple of failed attempts, both of us were soaked in sweat and dirt, feet covered in ants, and a bunch of new mosquito bites. We were a wreck and compared to the locals, they looked as if they hadn't even started to work. It was hilarious on both parts. I guess we just weren't made for this! We felt bad that our efforts fell short and had to take breaks, but it was such a sight to see them take a jungled mess and transform it into a top soil that would produce a beautiful garden. In a sense, this seemed metaphoric to me - through the chaos of poverty, together, they were going to clear that mess, till it, mind it, to grow together in community and result in a beautiful kind of love.
Although this farm is only in its initial stages, it is evident that excitement and hope lingers with the people. Already, they go together hand in hand to prepare the land for future growth. While the land waits for seeds to be planted and for water to make their crops grow, so they too wait for their work to harvest and bear fruit.

Food bags and Pattaya slums!

Having spent a week with Fred, one of Mercy Center’s directors, there are a handful of stories he likes to repeat. Like a typical grandpa, half the time you’re not sure where he’s going with his story, but endearingly, you listen along because inevitably, it’ll be a pretty good story…

“In the annual bed race,” Fred would say, “Mercy entered!” Confused, we later found out that various companies compete in a media-covered race within Pattaya. Each organization enters by decorating a mattress to race down a hill. Strangely, this race is another testament to how God has been blessing Mercy Center. Through this event, Mercy was able to get press to check out their orphanage and some of the other ministries it dips its fingers into.

With that, we rubbed shoulders with CNN as we handed out food packages in some of Pattaya’s slums. Although I never got to talk with this journalist, I admired his desire and purpose to covering Mercy. With the recent political crises that Thailand has undergone, there are many negative images of the country (so negative that people had previously begged us to stay away from Thailand during our trip). He wanted to document something different – a glimmer of hope in a torn country. And in Pattaya, Mercy is definitely an organization that stands for hope.

Early in the morning, some of the volunteers formed an assembly line making dozens of tightly filled food packages made up of rice, noodles and various canned goods. With sacks of food packages, we loaded them into the song thaew (pick-up truck with two benches!) and headed to the slums Mercy visits on a weekly basis. In fact, some of the kids at the center came from these slums – either abandoned, neglected, or their parents just did not have the means to support them. Getting to know some of the kids, it was really neat being able to visit where some of them came from.

Our first stop was the smallest of the three slum communities. We parked the truck so that its back faced the dirt pathway that led to a handful of homes. These shacks were made of flaps of scrap wood probably found on the roadside and pieces of corrugated tin that act as a roof. We arrived welcomed by a few people who were excited to talk to the Mercy staff. If there’s anything any of them need, the staff were available to help them in whatever capacity they can. Slowly, families would emerge from their homes to receive their food bags. One of the staff members would call out their names, and we would hand them bags. Each person would gratefully accept their pack and walk home.

As we drove in to the second slum, we met a few children riding their bicycles with their pants barely staying on playing a nice game of bumper bikes (attempting to collide into one another). Because there were so many kids here, we were able to hand out little bags of chips and chocolate milk drinks. It was incredibly cute distributing these snacks and watching kids smile and prompted by their parents, thank us by giving a wai (the Thai greeting of slightly bowing, palms pressed together raised at mouth-level).

Following the same formula, the staff would call out names and people would come up to collect their packages. Sometimes, parents would send their children to collect the food for them. We were so amused seeing these cute kids try and carry the packages. As soon as we would let go of the bag, the package would fall straight to the ground and the kids would try and drag the bag to their mom or dad.

At the last slum, the shacks looked similar and the community alike. One of the houses had a newborn baby inside. They invited us to see this beautiful baby. Like most homes at the slum, their houses are very modest and not any bigger than my bedroom at home. In this small space, a bed takes up most of the area, with their small piles of stuff pushed to the side not leaving much walking room. On this giant bed was this tiny baby – so cute and so still, with her father looking on adoringly. Above the bed was an opening in the wall that acts as a window. Beside the hut was an open fire where some of the members of the community were burning garbage. The smoke seeped in through the open window flooding the room in clouds.

We stepped outside the house and began distributing food again. As they called out more names and handed out packages, I saw an older lady crouching in her home. She sat peering outside her door so that half of her face was exposed, just enough to sneak a peek at us. Her friend collects her food for her. She smiled gratefully.

In our course of time in SE Asia, we’ve seen many slums and have heard many hard stories. Unfortunately, not all of these poor communities have many resources to assist in their living. Mercy has been in and at work with them, planning different projects to help further the people and get them out of poverty.

[Check out our video on this post coming soon!!!]

Mercy Center

If your looking for stories of hope, some remnant of sanity in this Insane world, and a clear demonstration of LOVE, look no further than the Mercy Center located in one of the seediest cities in Thailand: the most famous destination for sex tourism, Pattaya.

We came in contact with the Mercy Center's founders and directors Fred and Diane, through a former employee of theirs who now works as a translator in Bangkok. A phone call to Diane brought the open door to Pattaya that we had been waiting for. It just so happened that the day we had planned to arrive, a place to stay became available in one of the Center's apartments. Literally, the long-term volunteer that normally occupies the place had left just hours before we arrived. With a place to stay, and an organization to work with, we came to Pattaya.

Fred and Diane, in all appearances look like, talk like, and hug like the grandparents everyone has always dreamed of having. Their story, and the story behind Mercy, however, reveal that being a grandparent is just one part of their job description. At the age where most couples are cashing in their pensions and getting ready for holiday cruises to Bermuda, they were picking up from their home in Canada and moving to Thailand, where they would start a center to house at-risk slum kids who needed a new home. They saw a need, felt a calling, and met it. This was years ago. Today, the Mercy Center houses 17 children and has plans to build a new Center by the end of the year, that will have the potential to house 50. To describe the Mercy Center as an orphanage would be putting it lightly. The minute you step into the Mercy Center, you feel like you've gone home.

The Center doesn't just care for the children, it seeks to provide a permanent home for the kids, paying for their schooling, their clothes, their food, their medical bills, everything. While occasionally, in the best case scenario, the kids are reunited with their families, in most cases, these children come from homes where either their parents have abused them, neglected them, or even outright abandoned them. Mercy has become family for these kids, particularily for those who don't have any. Spending a little time with these kids, you soon realize that they have found family with each other. The older kids take care of the younger ones- even if it means holding their hand or teaching them how to use a new toy. There is a definite presence of love in these children's lives.

While providing a home for these kids is a large part of the ministry, Mercy also has separate programs including slum ministries, and prison ministries, and a sponsorship program.

In our week at the center, we were able to witness firsthand the fruit of Fred and Diane's step of faith . While Mercy is openly a Christian organizations, I was amazed to hear that 80% of their funding come from non-Christian donors. The Mercy Center is real-life evidence of God's faithfulness.

For more information on the Mercy Center and how to donate, visit their website at http://mercypattaya.com/