Recovery is Messy

After being at Hagar for only 5 weeks, one of the things we have realised is that working with broken people is extremely difficult and often painful.

Recovery at Hagar is messy. The mess isn’t simply something that happened in a girl’s life, it IS the girl's life.

The mess is self-contempt, hopelessness, bittersweet pregnancies and children born of abuse, calls from family asking you to go back to the brothel to earn money so you can feed them, flashbacks, post traumatic stress disorder, STDs, being in love with your trafficker... 

It’s the boy at Hagar that won't make eye contact, who stares at the wall most of the day because he was raped daily by a foreign pedophile.

It’s the girl who left Cambodia for Malaysia, to get the best job in the world, who returned home raped and pregnant.

It’s the 3 children at Hagar that can't go home, because their trafficker is out of prison after 3 years and has moved back in with their mother.

It’s the girl who runs away from the girls shelter regularly to sell her body but keeps coming back.

  

Recovery is often one step forward and two steps back, yet our skilled team... armed with hope, full of love, and fueled by passion and commitment, are seeing some beautiful things happen.

Within these complex situations, there are some incredible stories of hope and restoration.

Last week I had the privilege of visiting one of Hagar’s foster families. They are a loving family, rice farmers, living on a dirt road in rural Cambodia about an hour from Phnom Penh. They have taken in, loved and cared for 5 kids "The "Vorns" -  3 brothers and 2 sisters, between the ages of 9 and 16 for the last 3 years.

Their mother died when they were very young, and their 18-month old sister died a few months later.

Their dad was a drunk and couldn’t care for them, and the kids were found living in a field with no food, little water and having never attended school. They were brought to Hagar, and undertook an intensive rehabilitation program. They had to learn how to live, eat, communicate -  even get used to living under a roof. 

Now they are clean, healthy and know they are loved. 

They have hope. They attend school, and are part of an acceleration programme. Both older boys want to become doctors when they leave home. It was awesome to meet them, and I was really humbled by the situation. They live a simple but happy life. We ate with them, followed up on how they are doing at school and vowed to return with a soccer ball as their ball was flat.


It's the stories like this that keep the team going. You can view more stories of hope here 

Love restores and empowers in even the worst situations. We understand more of that now.   
- Logan