The Rise

Imagine if Mitt Romney or Barack Obama admitted to having been raised in an orphanage.  Would it blemish them?  Would it affect your decision to vote for either of them?  Would you still think they’d make a good leader?  Do you think it would it wreck their campaign or help it?  What about this: would you feel lucky to be in an orphanage?  As Americans, we’d probably all answer “No way” to that question.  Yet, here in Cambodia, the day a child finds out that they have been accepted into an orphanage is the happiest day of their lives.  Why?  Because it means there’s finally hope.

Cambodia is very different from the U.S. in a lot of ways.  For example, here orphans are the lucky ones.  The children in orphanages, not only in New Life orphanages, but Asia Hope or World Vision or Compassion International or any of the others, are very fortunate.  The poverty is so pervasive in Cambodia that children in families are forced to work to help out financially; they work in the rice patties, they stitch clothes in the factories, they sell items in the family store, they pan-handle on the streets, they beg near the tourist attractions, or all too often they sell themselves…or even worst they’re sold by someone else.  Yes, the life of a child is very hard here.  But imagine if you were an orphan?  These children receive a roof over their head, food on their plates, clothes on their backs and maybe the most important vital necessity of all…hope.

As far as I know, there isn’t a mission statement for New Life orphanages; but if there were it would probably read something like, “To teach children about the redeeming love of Jesus Christ while also equipping them to become the future leaders of Cambodia.”  When older Cambodians speak about the Khmer Rouge’s overthrow of the government in 1975 and the genocide that followed, they refer to it as The Fall.  These orphans, yes orphans, when they grow up and finish school and spread the Gospel, they will become the next generation of Cambodia.  They will be part of The Rise!