Our letter

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)