We Love Kids

Truly Free!

admin — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 02:42:19 +0000

Some of you may remember one of our girls, (not named) who we at WLK have worked with for over 5 years, and who has a very troubled background, came to the Lord and was baptized about 2 years ago. Her mom, though not a Christian, even came to her baptism and was “cheering her on!” We hoped this was the happy ending to her story! However, enter the older siblings who were determined to bring temptation into her life. Although we had enrolled her in a Christian hairdressing school, and she learned a trade over the next year, the family’s influence was strong. She decided to follow her older sister’s advice and went into a coffee shop, at the age of 16. Over the next few months, we pursued her, and tried to persuade. However, we lost touch with her when she changed her phone number. I told my heartbroken staff, “we still have the power of prayer- God will bring her back!” And that is exactly what happened: a few weeks ago, one of our younger students saw her working in a small hairdressing stall in the market and came and told us…When we went to find her, she was excited to see us, and has come to our center on Sunday evenings since then…we can only thank God that when the temptation came, she made the right choice! Rejoice with us!

A New Life for one of our boys!

admin — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:55:15 +0000

Sok comes to Phnom Penh to go to school

Sok, one of the boys from the Kratie slum, is going to school! He is supposed to be 12 years old, and has studied almost nothing…he follows his father to the construction sites to earn .50 cents to $1.00 per day doing manual labor, hauling gravel and rock for the construction crews. These crews are ususally verbally abusive, and one of my staff told me, “they speak to him like he’s a dog”. Because of a consistent presence in the Kratie slums, Sok’s father has come to us and told us that he “doesn’t want his son to grow up in such terrible poverty”, and he allowed my staff on site in Kratie to bring him down to Phnom Penh. We’ll start Sok in 1st grade, far behind his real grade level, but there’s nothing we can do about it. Better late than never! But we are all rejoicing that he is able to finally leave the horrible environment behind and come into a normal setting.

One of our beautiful girls! How a year of good nutrition can make a difference!

admin — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 20:49:48 +0000

The little girl above, who I’ll call Mai (not her real name) was born HIV positive. Several of her family members are also HIV positive. She lives with her grandparents, and has not seen her mother for many years. She lives in one of the worst slums I have ever seen. About a year ago, I put Mai on our special Kratie Kids feeding program, then added breakfast as well as a mid-day meal. Mai was always frail and sick, with swollen glands (common in HIV positive patients) and on the anti-retroviral medications provided by a generous international health agency. When we took her to doctors in Phnom Penh, they weren’t terribly optimistic. At that time, Mai’s grandmother, doing everything she could to survive, would take Mai with her into the garbage dumps to find anything that could be recycled. We instructed the grandmother to stop doing this, since Mai already had continuous infections, and was weak and tired all the time. She never ran or played like other children her age. Our wonderful staff on-site in Kratie, Mrs Sambath, has tirelessly watched over Mai, and her grandmother has a little job at Sambath’s house doing cleaning, earning $20 a month (seemingly a fortune for folks like these!) The picture above is Mai today, one year later. She has dramatically improved, though sometimes still tired, she smiles, has gained weight, and eats and sleeps normally, and even plays sometime. God is good! Pray for us as we reach out into more homes in the Kratie slums. We have just, by faith, increased our Kratie Kids Feeding Program to 15 children. We hope to increase it even more in the next few months.

Mai one year ago:

Mai with her grandmother in their Kratie slum house

According to UNICEF, 1.2 million children are trafficked each year. What can we do about it?

admin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 01:31:47 +0000

The WE LOVE KIDS fundraiser two weeks ago was a great success! Lots of people in the Kansas City area got to learn about our work in Cambodia at our We Love Kids center, and how exploited children in India, Burma and Nepal are being rescued and protected. But everything we are doing is just a drop in the bucket! What will it take to reduce the numbers listed above by UNICEF? If this is not the responsibility of the global church, what is?

One of our girls who doesn't have to go into a coffee shop to survive...she is now in high school!

We LoveKids Dinner Presentation-Join us!

admin — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 18:20:40 +0000

According to UNICEF, two children per minute are trafficked for sexual exploitation – 1.2 million per year.

Human Trafficking is a global problem: What is the response of the Church?

Join We Love Kids in cooperation with Vision Beyond Borders for a dinner presentation on their solution in SouthEast Asia

Join an intercessory prayer network to pray specifically against human trafficking, both locally and internationally.

Join a short-term team with Vision Beyond Borders to work with We Love Kids and other anti-trafficking ministries in S.E. Asia.

Partner with We Love Kids community program for children at risk in Phnom Penh Cambodia

Date: Friday, February 3, 2012 from 6:30 – 8:30pm

Location: The Barn at Life Church 16111 Lone Elm Road ( Lone Elm exit and I-35) Olathe, Kansas 66062

Cost: $15.00 – A catered Vietnamese buffet will be served.

Tickets may be purchased through online by clicking the “donate button” (please contact us on our contact page so we can send you an email ticket)

Or by calling:

Pat Shaw, 913-663-2128 or email: sbshaws@mac.com

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from We Love Kids in Phnom Penh Cambodia

admin — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 23:34:17 +0000

Merry Christmas from We Love Kids, and a Happy New Year!

Preventing Trafficking: One Life at A Time

admin — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 04:14:42 +0000

Sophea (not her real name), lives in the Vietnamese slums of Kratie, right above the banks of the Mekong River. Her mother has recently opened a secret brothel in this small market town, and her two older sisters both serve clients there. One of them is HIV positive. Living in this sort of hell, what hope is there for Sophea’s life? Yet, in the midst of this, God has brought into her life a wonderful young woman, Sambath,who has taken on the task of not only of planting churches in this unreached area, but of helping kids like Sophea. Due to Sambath’s influence in the slum, Sophea’s mother agreed to place Sophea in a local hairdressing school, which is a paid apprenticeship: meaning that her mother had to lay out money to get her into the program! Due to this, Sophea is now living in a totally different environment, with several other Christian girls, and receives her meals there as well (she was previously one of the children in our feeding program). *PRAY* for this young girl that she continue to be trained, and trained by Sambath to become a dedicated Christian. Sambath visits her as well as many other children in our programs in Kratie.

Battling for a Girl’s Life

admin — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:54:29 +0000

Thu, the 16 year old girl featured in the last 2 blogs is still on our hearts in a big way…as I mentioned in the last blog, we (that is myself, Joni and my wonderful staff of Vietnamese people at our center) were delighted that Thu told us she had STOPPED working at the coffee shop and started coming to our Sunday cell church again. However in the last few weeks she has suddenly stopped showing up again. My staff coordinator, Trang went to her house and met her older brother, a drug dealer….he refused our help to have Thu registered in a special job training project and insisted that “Thu’s family would care for her”…However, looking at his occupation, we have serious doubts about that! Vietnamese families are bound by confucian ethics, and no matter how desperate they are, they will never admit that they need help. Battle with us for Thu’s life that she will come to a truly realization that she must break free from the dysfunctional family ties that will turn her life toward darkness..

Stand with us in the battle!

A Girl’s Journey Part II – What brings REAL transformation?

admin — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:18:25 +0000

Several months ago, I penned the story of a 16 year old girl I’ll call Thu, who comes from the Boueng Tra Bek slum in Phnom Penh. Thu, though Vietnamese, was born in Cambodia, as are thousands of other young Vietnamese, born in exile, far from the country they call their own. That in itself creates a feeling of alienation. Their parents, as Thu’s parents struggle to survive in horrific slum environments. The Boueng Tra Bek slum, a festering sore in a developing Asian city, is filled with open sewers, (in the tropical heat) filth (due to lack of sanitation) rats, and at night, heroin addicts roam the streets with knives, looking for a “soft touch” or anyone who might have a few dollars on them. Recently, a elderly street beggar who had a sum of money from several weeks of begging was killed in a scuffle with addicts desperate to support their habits. Thu’s older brother died of a heroin overdose, and another older brother is dealing it- something we have figured out in our dealings with Thu’s family. Thu’s mother, who told us that her family had always been fortune teller/shamans by background, fears leaving her practices because the demonic forces will cause sickness, even death for family members. Thu’s father was a severe alcoholic who, in a drunken rage, fell down the steps of their shack, hit his head, and died. Thu came to us at 12, totally illiterate. We Love Kids helped Thu to receive a second grade education in Vietnamese, and then she seemed to vanish. My wonderful foster mom, Trang, and I, (Joni) kept praying and visiting their room in the slum. Suddenly, Thu reappeared, and began coming to our emerging cell church on Sunday. Soon thereafter, she asked to be baptized. We then managed to place Thu in a wonderful Christian hairdressing school, in spite her 15 years. Thu graduated a year later, but still too young to legally keep a job, she began to flounder. We applied to another agency, and was rejected because of her age (she is now 16). However, the dark pull from her family background exerted its nefarious influence- her older sister, in the coffee shop/prostitution world, persuaded Thu to start working in a coffee shop for $70 a month. This is a huge salary for a girl her age. Out of options, our We Love Kids staff and I just KEPT praying, and seeking Thu out whenever we could. We even hunted down the coffee shop that Thu worked at, even though she wouldn’t tell us clearly where it was, due to an uneasy conscience on her part! Several weeks ago, Thu of her own accord, came back to our Sunday cell church and tells us she has stopped at the coffee shop. We can only credit this to two things- LOVE and INTERCESSION. Thu knows we truly love her and want the best for her…..IT”S ALL ABOUT FAMILY.

Please, continue to pray!

The real solution to human trafficking: it’s all about FAMILY

admin — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 12:23:55 +0000

: WLK kindergarten

Many folks have likened the stopping of trafficking to “trying to kill a snake with seven heads”, if you chop off one head, another one grows in its place- or, closing the barn door after the cow gets out. Since most trafficking starts within the family, what can an agency or an organization, even as well intentioned as most are, do to REALLY prevent a girl from being sold? This is hidden in such a way that by the time an anti-trafficking organization finds out, it’s too late…the girl has already been persuaded to follow a sister into the same lifestyle, or sold without her knowlege and consent. Are there really any viable solutions within a society that doesn’t enforce its own anti-trafficking and prostitution laws? In a society which doesn’t care about marginalized groups that don’t have legal status, and are virtually stateless peoples? Girls who are forced into prostitution usually, if not always, do so to reinforce dysfunctional family relationships. What is the real solution to this? One day, it came to me: the real solution is a new family: one that is based on what families are intended to be built on: unconditional love and virtue. One that not only trys to help you become the person you can be, but provides real accountability and sets the boundaries of right and wrong…in other words, a loving family community. That is what We Love Kids began building in Phnom Penh Cambodia in 2005. It’s been a battle: one of the kids in our family has begun taking drugs. One of the girls, under severe pressure from her older brother and sister, has gone into a coffee shop. On the other hand, many children have become Christians and are living stable, happy lives. They join our cell church/youth group every Sunday. We go swimming, bowling, have Bible study, VBS, Christmas parties, Vietnamese New Year parties and trips to the beach. WLK gives kids a loving environment with foster moms and big brothers and sisters. For four years, our Vietnamese teachers have faithfully taught kindergarten, helped mainstream kids into school at the proper age. Literacy and higher level classes are taught during the week. These kids’ parents may be alcoholics, gambling addicts, prostitutes, junk recyclers, construction workers. One of our children lives with her grandparents since her mother died of AIDS. Upstairs in their little apartment, an illegal gambling den thrives.

In the midst of this sad world, , We Love Kids is trying to build a city on the hill, be salt and light in a dark place. Stand with us.