Under the Bridge November 10, 2009
article and photos by Paula Guest
Thailand is across the bridge. To a people who have nothing, that bridge looks like hope. But under the bridge is where greed and poverty intersect, and exploitation begins. And a steady stream of human tragedy flows.
When I went to Cambodia in October of 2007, our team was the first to set foot on the land purchased through the efforts of Northshore, working with World Concern. To set foot on that property was to set foot on Holy Ground.
Ps 18:16,19 He reached down from on high and took hold of me. He brought me out into a spacious place, He rescued me because He delighted in me.
We ‘helped’ them build a road into the property – one stone at a time, with the help of one ancient wheelbarrow. We ‘helped’ them make bricks for the first house – one brick at a time. All by hand. No electricity. (And I am quite sure they could have worked much faster without our ‘help.’)
I was privileged to return eighteen months later, April 2009, for the grand opening of Safe Haven. And grand it was. No human will could have accomplished this in so short a time. God is working. He is ‘arising.’ Four houses ready and waiting to receive children. With, as Chomo so eloquently put it, room for ‘rolling’.
And Hope has a foothold in Poipet, Cambodia. 
But the bridge is still there. And the lure, and false promises of a better life still attract a steady flow of victims. Children are a very marketable commodity. You can only sell a weapon once. A load of drugs once. But you can sell a child over and over again.
As we left Cambodia, and walked over that bridge into Thailand, a very young girl, maybe three years old, sat on the side of the road, cradling an infant. She was rocking back and forth, back and forth, softly keening. That picture is indelibly burned into my heart. Safe Haven is open. But we are not finished.
And neither is God.
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