Cambodia Day 1.

Okay. So I'm finally getting to this. I didn't mean to put it off this long, but life is a little crazy. But first: a quick flood update. The water is expected to be here in about 4 hours; it is water that has washed through the majority of Northern Thailand; overwhelmed sewage plants, flooded chemical plants, and washed through contaminated areas. Unfortunately, the result of this means that the water not only holds nasty stuff, it is fairly unhealthy to be living in. So please pray for people as the water comes in, and invades their neighborhoods.

Cambodia. Okay.

So we landed in Phnom Penh at about 10 in the morning. After we unloaded our stuff at Ken's house, we got in the car, and headed downtown Phnom Penh. In the center of the city, there is a compound that was once used as a high school. A little bit of history will help this make more sense. Just remember high school. The Khmer Rouge was a result of a coup that led to Cambodian Communists being in power. Pol Pot and his associates had trained and been educated in France, but adapted China's version of Communism, with one goal in mind; to go back to Year 0. They thought that the world was messed up because of technology, education, and people not settling for what they had. Cambodian politics were filled with corruption; those who were rich were dirty rich, and those who were poor were living in unbelievable poverty. The rich treated the poor people horribly; in the young Communists mind, they had the solution for this massive problem.They would rid the country, and eventually the world of rich and poor, of technologically advanced, and of education that led to more power. Everyone would be a rice farmer, work for their living, and everything would be equal and good. Sounds somewhat ideal when you look at it from their point of view. However, the way they went about this "great plan" was atrocious. First, they rid the city, and the country of technology. They got rid of clocks, telephones, cars; anything that wasn't from there at the beginning of earth was unnecessary. They told the people living in the cities that Americans were on their way to drop bombs on the cities, and had them evacuate the cities. They arrested rich people, educated people, and anyone who they considered a threat. And here is where the High School in Phnom Penh came in. The S21 center was a place where they brought people to be tortured, and then brought to be killed. They started with people who were educated; Doctors, Teachers, Artists, Politicians, Clergy. They brought them to Teul Sleng, the High School, and they tortured them; demanding names of other people, demanding confessions for things that never happened, anything. After they got what they wanted, they brought the people to the Killing Field, an old Chinese burial site, where they chained everyone together by their hands, blindfolded them, and smacked them on the head with a tool. If the blow didn't kill them, they slit their throat, and tossed the string of bodies into a ditch in the ground. More on the Killing Field later.

At S21, also known as Teul Sleng, there were 4 buildings. When the Vietnamese came in and stopped the Khmer Rouge, they preserved the site exactly how they found it. When they got there, there were 14 bodies that hadn't been disposed of, one a girl. They put the bodies in concrete graves above ground as a memorial, and opened up the site as a historical site. The first building was three stories high. The first two stories had rooms; each with one window, one bed, and some type of torture tool. The beds didn't have mattresses; they were just iron frames with metal strips woven together to support a body.  Some had iron crowbars on the bed, some buckets that used to hold water, and some with ammo containers. These rooms were for the more "important" people; high officials, particularly smart professors, etc. They were tortured in the rooms, then brought to the third building, which was also three stories. Most people didn't stay in S21 for more than a few days. If you were important enough for your own room for being tortured, you were important enough for a four foot by three foot room to spend the night in by yourself. The third floor of each building were used for less important people; they lived, tortured, and killed in groups.

Sorry if this is too gory. It's hard to even imagine that this possibly happened; try walking through, and realizing that these people that are buried in mass graves outside the city, with their bones poking out of the ground, would likely still be alive today with kids and grand kids if this hadn't occurred. This was only 30 years ago.

The bottom floors of the 2nd and 3rd buildings were filled with pictures. Each person brought in to S21 was given a number, and had a picture taken with their number. There were men, women, teenagers, kids, and babies brought through that place; each with a picture memorializing their life. You are walking through huge rooms with hundreds and hundreds of pictures filling each, staring into their eyes, wondering what they were thinking. Some of their eyes were blank; they had seen too much, knew it was hopeless, and were simply waiting to die. Some, particularly the kids, looked scared; they had been ripped away from their home, their family, and now were in a place no person should ever walk through. Some of them looked defiant; teenage boys with their chins high, and their eyes hard. The ones that broke my heart the most were the ones who were smiling. They couldn't have had any idea how they were about to spend the last days of their lives. It was a picture! You say "cheese", right? The last pictures were accidents; they had tortured them too much, and didn't yield a confession; the victim had died in the torture room; the torturers had to prove that they hadn't escaped.

Another room gave you an idea of how they were tortured.... I won't get into that here. Let me just say that there are images burned into my head that will never ever leave.

We walked through the torture rooms first; the first room I walked into made me numb, and that feeling didn't leave until the next day. It's impossible to reconcile the fact that humans can do this to each other in my mind. How can one person do such a thing to another person?

On Sunday we went to the Killing Fields. I had been dreading this since I heard that we were going. I don't like dead things; I didn't want to see bones and teeth all over the place, and at that point, I didn't want to think about it any more. But it wasn't as horrible as I thought it was going to be.

In fact, it was somewhat peaceful. There was grass, and trees, and flowers, and butterflies, and birds, and animals. The hardest part was looking at the ground. Every once in a while, there would be a bone sticking out of the ground. Rain and time was washing away the dirt thrown over the victims, and clothing was surfacing. There was a lot of plaid fabric peeking through the grass and the dirt.

There were two trees in the vicinity that had particular impact. The first one looked over a small creek type of thing- next to it was once a pit. To save bullets, the soldiers would grab the babies and small children by the legs, and swing them against the tree, smashing their heads, and then toss them in the pit.

The second one was what finally brought the tears- for a somewhat dumb reason.

The tree wasn't used to kill people. The only thing it did was hold a loudspeaker. They soldiers would play loud sounds or music to cover the sounds of the moaning and screams as people died. Why bother? Everyone knew they were dying! There was no one in the vicinity that would care; no one that wasn't participating themselves in the murder of thousands. Why bother? If you're going to do that; man up. Listen to it. Let the impact of your decisions be heard; let it be seen.

So that was the hard part of our trip. It raises a lot of questions. In the beginning of the week, my question was why? Why would people do this to other people? What could possibly justify these actions to anyone? How can people live with themselves knowing that they participated in these actions?

The biggest thing I struggled though was with this: There are men, some of whom are still alive, that intentionally made the decision to do this. They forced other people, including small children, to do this to their relatives, neighbors, and fellow countrymen. Yet, if they asked, God would wipe their slated clean. Even though He hates their actions, God still loves them. He loves Pol Pot. He loves the Second Brother. Just as much as He loves me.

How is that fair?

So I prayed about it. I read, I prayed, I thought, and I talked about it. And finally, God got tired of my ranting. The conclusion that came to me was this. If God refused to grant these evil men His forgiveness, His grace and mercy, and the life of His Son, would be cheapened. It would mean that we can earn His love, His mercy, His forgiveness. If horrific actions mean that we don't get forgiveness, then that means that we have the power to earn forgiveness. If we can earn God's mercy, then we don't need Jesus to have died for us. It has to be all or nothing. We need to live our lives glorifying God; not condoning murdering an entire population. But at the end of the day; we've sinned. Each and every one of us have sinned. I have screwed up. But Jesus did come to earth. He did die. He died as much for me, as He did for Pol Pot, Hitler, and Genghis Khan. He died as much for them as He died for Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther, and for George O. Wood. We can't buy His love, or his forgiveness any more than I can buy a Ferrari. It's impossible, which makes it all the more valuable.