Dear family and friends,
Our family is on a new path.
God is leading us in the direction of Asia. I’m sure this is as surprising to some of you
as it was to us. Let us give you the
back story…
Paul has been on many mission trips during our fifteen years
of marriage, but Diane has only been able to join him on a couple of them. Every trip since our wedding has been to a
Spanish speaking country. Paul’s fluency
in Spanish made Latin America the obvious choice when we felt ready to pursue
long term missions. It appears that God
had other plans. We started looking
around to see what might be open to us.
Instead of an open door where we thought we’d find it, we were asked to
consider Cambodia.
While it wasn’t where we expected God to put us, we felt
drawn to find out more. Cambodia is a
country that has been torn apart. It is
still recovering from the Khmer Rouge genocide that killed approximately 1.7
million people around 35 years ago. Long
years of continued fighting left the country unsettled and unable to regain its
footing. Much of the population is
living well below the poverty level. The
cost of education is out of reach for many who are struggling just to survive. This leads some families to desperate
measures, even to the point of selling their children into sex slavery. Sometimes they are tricked into thinking a
good job is waiting for their daughter, but all too often they know that she
will be trafficked in order to provide for the rest of the family.
We are going with the goal of preventing child trafficking
in Cambodia.
Once the girls are
trafficked, it is very difficult to find them and even after therapy, keep them
from returning to this means of survival.
We will be working with organizations that are already helping to combat
poverty and child trafficking.
We hope
to support those programs with a good track record and duplicate them in areas
where more help is needed.
Forging
relationships with the local people and showing them God’s Truth is a large
part of our plan.
We are praying that
God opens doors and softens hearts.
We
have Operation Child Freedom
http://www.operationchildfreedom.org/ which is a campaign
of Million Kids.
The goal is to spread
the truth about child trafficking around the globe and provide a way for others
to join us in the fight against it.
Moving half way around the world is a big change for anyone,
but especially children. Please be
praying for our family as we transition.
I am sure we will benefit from being all together more often. But life will be difficult in a country where
the culture is so different, and we don’t yet speak the language.
We would like to ask all of you to pray for us as we get
ready to follow God’s lead in this new adventure. Thank you all for being a part of our lives. Please contact us if you would like to hear
more about what we are planning.
In Christ,
The Fleenors
Paul, Diane, James(10), Hannah(9), Louise(6), Benjamin(4),
and Georgia(2)
