“This is where we run our day centre,” Thomas continued. “Upstairs we have housing for emergency placements. Our day centre is where we run our prevention and rehabilitation programs and where we try to help victims of sex trafficking overcome their pasts and give them hope for a better future. We also teach parents and children to be aware of the dangers that are all around them, and how easy it is for the unwary to get entrapped in the sex industry. Prevention is always better than cure.”
The photos of young, innocent faces flicked across the screen, some so young, it broke Nicholas’s heart. It was too much. He couldn’t sit by and watch any longer. He knew then what he’d do. He’d not just give money, he’d volunteer. He could definitely use a break from both work and family, and it was more than time he did something more meaningful than sit in a fancy office playing with figures.
Chapter 4
Disembarking the plane at Phnom Penh International Airport, Phoebe stepped into a wall of suffocating heat. She was used to warm temperatures, but this was different; it was so thick she could almost hold the air in her hand. But she and Holly were finally here in Cambodia, about to start their adventure, so she shrugged the discomfort off. They’d get used to it, along with everything else.
Having never been to an Asian country before, they were both excited about experiencing new things, and as they joined the line to pass through customs and immigration, Phoebe gazed around her, watching and listening. So many different languages, and the outfits were so vibrant and colourful. It was a feast for her senses and the buzz was contagious.
The line took less time than they’d anticipated, and once they had their passports stamped and visas confirmed, they found their way through the crowd to the outside of the airport where they lined up for a taxi to take them to their hotel. The line moved quickly and soon they were seated in the back of an old taxi with a driver who spoke little English.
Phoebe tried to take it all in, but there was so much to see. The traffic was unbelievable. Cars, trucks, bicycles, three-wheeled tuk-tuks, and motorbikes carrying everything from huge boxes to entire families, all jostling for space on the busy road.
Finally, the driver pulled over and stopped. The girls looked up at the building and then at each other. “Is this it?” Holly pulled her itinerary out and glanced at it.
“I think so,” Phoebe replied. It was smaller than it looked in the photos, but she knew that a lot of hotels used that marketing ploy. Flattering photos attracted customers.
They paid the driver and carried their bags inside. After checking in and settling into their shared room, they found that even though the hotel didn’t quite live up to their expectations, it wasn’t so bad. It had two single beds which were neatly made up, a bench with a kettle, two mugs and tea and coffee sachets, a small television in the corner, and a tiny balcony overlooking the busy road. Most importantly of all, it had air-conditioning.
Collapsing onto her bed, Phoebe placed a hand against her sweaty forehead. “I think I’ll be staying inside for a while to cool off.”
“Come on, Phoebes. It’s not that hot. We’re in Cambodia. We can’t stay in our hotel all day,” Holly said, gazing through the glass door to the street below.
Phoebe sat up. “You’re right. I’ll take a shower and then I’ll feel better.”
Holly turned around and smiled. “Good plan. Um, what’s this?” She stared at the piece of paper she’d just picked up from beside the television.
“What?” Puzzled, Phoebe stood and moved closer to see what Holly was looking at. “Oh my goodness!” Her hand flew to her mouth. It was an advertisement, on hotel letterhead, for a local brothel offering girls for any customers who wanted them. A variety of ages and price points were available, and discretion was guaranteed.
“We need to stay somewhere else,” Holly said, tossing the paper aside like it was poison. She quickly grabbed her bag. “I don’t know how we made such a huge mistake.”
“I don’t know either.” Phoebe grabbed her bag, too, stuffing the items she’d already unpacked back into it.
“All the reviews were good,” Holly added.
“We know how they can be skewed.” Phoebe zipped her bag up and then ran her hand across her limp hair. “What are we going to do, Holl? We thought this hotel was going to be all right. How do we know they’re not all the same?”
Holly flopped onto a chair. “You’re right. We need to think this through.”
“Maybe we should pray about it,” Phoebe suggested quietly.
“Good idea. Let’s do that,” Holly replied.
The girls bowed their heads. Phoebe took a deep breath to still her heart before she began. “Lord, we’re very aware that we’re in a foreign country, but we need somewhere safer to stay. We don’t feel comfortable staying in a place where sin is so blatantly encouraged. Please help us find somewhere more suitable.”
Holly also prayed, and after they finished with a quiet ‘Amen’, she suggested they make a list of nearby hotels.
“Maybe we should call the place where we’re volunteering. They might have some recommendations,” Phoebe suggested.
“Another good idea, Phoebes. We should have done that in the first place.” Holly sounded despondent.
“We didn’t know, Holl. It’s okay. We’ll find somewhere.”
Holly gave a grateful smile. “You’re right. I’ll give them a call.”
Phoebe listened to Holly’s side of the conversation, stifling giggles as her friend tried to make herself understood. When she got off the phone, Holly relayed to Phoebe that the woman at the organisation had agreed to send their driver to pick them up and deliver them to a better hotel.
Phoebe smiled. “That’s great, Holl. You did well.”
“Thanks. I just wish I knew more of the language.”
“You know more than me!” Phoebe said, heading to the door.
Holly laughed. “That wouldn’t be hard.” Having studied Asian languages at university, Holly was reasonably fluent in Vietnamese and Chinese and muddled through with Kmer and Thai, which Phoebe was very glad about.
Phoebe let her speak with the woman at the front desk when they returned downstairs to check out, offering support by standing beside her and nodding when she thought it appropriate. Holly stood a good head and shoulders above the short-haired, middle-aged Cambodian woman, but she didn’t seem intimidated by Holly’s height. At one stage, Phoebe thought it might end in an argument, but Holly remained calm and the woman finally agreed to refund them all but one night’s tariff. “You won’t find any better,” she called after the girls as they headed for the door.
Holly turned and smiled. “We’ll see.”
They waited outside for almost half an hour and were growing anxious by the time the driver arrived, especially as daylight was fast fading. Bunroeun was a sweet, older man who quickly loaded their luggage into his car. “We get you to better place. This place not good,” he said in broken English.
“Thank you so much for coming for us. We’re very tired,” Phoebe replied.
“You have been travelling all day?” He looked in the rear vision mirror as he drove, a perpetual smile on his sun-beaten, friendly face.
The girls nodded.
As they drove along the streets, Phoebe looked out the window and realised with dismay that many of the young women weren’t just girls going out in the evening as she and Holly did back home. They were looking for customers, and possibly also recruiting for their brothels.
“Why do so many girls get caught up in trafficking, Bunroeun? There seem to be so many of them.”
Turning his head slightly, his jaw tightened. “Many families rely on their daughter to support them with money they earn. And oftentimes, the mistress buy girl with promise of more, or they tell girl and her family from other country that they will become rich here with good job.”
While his voice remained even and factual, Phoebe had no doubt that it broke his heart to see the children of his country exploited
in such a way.
“Many girl are told that if they bring new girl, their time will be less. They can go home to their family sooner. So they bring new girl. The house mistress very clever,” he added.
“That’s terrible,” Holly said, sounding grieved and a little angry.
“Yes, very terrible,” Bunroeun agreed.
They reached a hotel that from the outside looked much nicer than the previous one. At least the paint wasn’t falling off, but appearances could be deceptive. Bunroeun assured them that the price was comparable and the owner was one of the men working with their organisation to fight against the local trafficking. “You will be looked after here. No worries.” Although his smile was genuine, a horrid thought ran through Phoebe’s mind. What if he was part of the racket? She pushed the thought away. They had to trust someone, and they’d prayed about it. Surely he was on the level.
Her concerns were forgotten when the manager greeted them warmly and showed them to their room, which was larger and far nicer than their previous one, making Phoebe wonder if they’d been upgraded.
After unpacking and showering, she settled in for the night and fell asleep immediately. She dreamed of waking in the morning and being surrounded by Cambodian children like the ones in her kindergarten class, but instead, she woke to a horrible itch around her left eye. She immediately thought of bed bugs, but when she looked in the mirror and saw it was just a little puffy and red, she figured she’d had some sort of allergic reaction to the pillow and vowed to wrap it in a T-shirt for the rest of their time there.
“Put this against it,” Holly instructed, handing Phoebe a small bag of ice cubes she’d found in the freezer.
“Thanks.” It felt instantly better, and by the time they were ready to go down for breakfast, the puffiness had all but disappeared.
“So, Bunroeun is picking us up again and will drive us to the complex for our English classes. I’ve been assigned a fourteen to sixteen-year old class, and you’ll be with the eight to ten-year-old class,” Holly reminded Phoebe.
“I can’t wait to meet them,” Phoebe said.
“Neither can I, but it’s going to be challenging. We’ll have a training session first because so many of these kids have been traumatised, and they want to be sure we won’t do or say anything to trigger any memories and such like. We have to be careful with how we interact with them.”
“But my students are so young.”
“Phoebe, your students aren’t from the prevention centre. They’re from the rescue centre, just like mine.”
Phoebe couldn’t have been more gob-smacked. How had she missed that? Why had she assumed that because the children she’d been assigned were so young that they hadn’t been abused? They were eight to ten-year-olds. Little children. Mostly girls, but also a few boys, and they’d already suffered such horrific things.
“Sorry, I thought I told you that we’re both in the rescue department while we’re here,” Holly apologised.
“Somehow I missed that bit of information.”
The day seemed to be a whirlwind of activity from there. Bunroeun collected them and drove them to the centre. It was called ‘Hesed’, a Hebrew word reflecting the loyal love people committed to God should have for one another. After their initial briefing with Donovan, ‘Hesed’s’ director, Phoebe met her class of twenty students.
The little faces broke her heart when she thought about the terrible things they’d experienced. So many children and so much hurt and heartache. She made every effort to make the class fun, allowing them to make up stories in broken English, sing English songs, dance together. She had so much fun with them that for a while she forgot about the tragedies they’d suffered in the past.
But would a few English classes help them to forget? Would the children ever be able to move on from the horrors they’d experienced? It could take a lifetime to heal, but like her with her grief over losing Reed, it was a process, and every step forward would help.
After the three days of English classes, the girls were assigned other odd jobs around the complex. They also learned about outreach to the pimps, where these men and women who were responsible for ruining so many young lives were encouraged to leave their lives of trafficking and abuse behind and open their hearts to God.
The girls were impressed that anyone who needed assistance was welcomed into the centre. No one was excluded, and the centre was doing a great job, but after two weeks, they started to discuss where they should go next. They’d set aside three months for their travels, and it was becoming clear that although they felt welcome at ‘Hesed’, the centre didn’t need them. Teaching the English classes had been a great experience, but there were regular teachers who could teach the students. They agreed it was time to move on.
Phoebe took a sip of water as they sat at a table in the local café they’d been frequenting, waiting for their meals to arrive. “This experience has been amazing, and if we want to continue volunteering, Thailand has several places we can go.”
“The ones Donovan mentioned?” Holly asked.
“No, these are ones I know about from church. There’s one we support, along with a few other churches around Sydney. ‘Regenerate the Nations’. It sounds like an amazing place, a lot like this one, and we’d probably get assigned some classes there. I can send an email and ask,” Phoebe suggested.
“Sounds good.” Holly smiled and then thanked the waitress when their meals were delivered.
Within two hours after sending her email, Phoebe received a reply saying they’d be more than welcome, and she and Holly immediately set about making their travel arrangements to fly to Bangkok.
Bunroeun was sad when he heard they were leaving and invited them for dinner at his house the night before their departure. “You going to be missed,” he assured them. His wife didn’t speak any English, but smiled delightfully all evening. Phoebe felt certain she’d never seen such joy in a woman.
As she witnessed the love Bunroeun and his wife shared, she felt a fresh twinge of pain in her heart. She’d done well so far on the trip. Helping others had certainly helped take her mind off her own troubles and sadness, but seeing this loving couple together brought everything back.
Reed was gone and she knew it, but with God’s help, she was starting to move forward, and she had hope that by serving others who’d suffered more than she could ever imagine, her own grief would lessen.
Chapter 5
“Oh, nice! A vacation in Thailand?” Alden echoed. “Great choice. Beautiful women, great city life. I didn’t know you had it in you to do something like that, big brother.” Alden slapped Nicholas on the back, a roguish grin on his face.
“Well, you know, I just need a bit of time off.” Nicholas had no desire to tell his brother and sister exactly what he was planning for his time in Thailand, but he knew it was good timing. Charity was returning from Bali in a few days, and a week later, he’d take off for Thailand to volunteer with ‘Regenerate the Nations’.
The night of the benefit dinner, Thomas had stated that they were low on staff because they didn’t have enough financial support to hire as many full-time workers as they needed. Too many of their employees, believing in the good of the work, were covering multiple positions and working longer hours than they should.
Arriving home, Nicholas signed up on their website to be a regular donor. While he made a generous donation, he refrained from making it too generous before he’d seen the work for himself and could satisfy himself that the money was indeed going to where they claimed.
Several of his senior staffers hinted subtly that taking a whole month off from work when they were so busy was a little crazy. Nevertheless, they were excited for him, knowing that he worked hard and deserved a break. If Charity and Alden could take time off, as they often did, he should be able to as well. That reasoning was working well in his favour and he was thankful that most people thought that way.
But he was concerned. Other people from Sydney would be working
at the mission, like Thomas and Judy, and possibly more. He didn’t want to be known as the billionaire taking a few weeks off to do something philanthropic to make himself feel better. This wasn’t the first charitable cause he’d cared about and given to consistently, but this was different. It would be the first one he’d personally be visiting and actually working at.
After he made the announcement, he could hardly walk down the hall without someone making a comment about how jealous they were or what a good idea it was for him to take a break. He was beginning to feel frustrated, but he tried to ignore it. No one knew his real reason for going. They thought he was going for the girls, the night-life, and the shopping. He couldn’t blame them for that. It was his own choice to keep his real reason quiet.
But he needed a way to keep his identity hidden. A beard, perhaps? Thinking it might help, he stopped shaving a week ahead of his flight, and as expected, received relentless teasing from his siblings and a few colleagues, but most thought it looked decent on him.
He decided also to shorten his name to Nick, like he’d done at church that night. He could do little about his surname, but he hoped that wouldn’t pop up too often, if at all.
The week before he was to leave was spent busily preparing. But as he bought toys to give to the children and packed them in his bag, he began wondering what he would be doing there.
“Oh, you know, just touristy stuff,” Nicholas answered his sister when she asked him the same question after returning from her trip and hearing about his.
Billionaires with Heart Boxset: Christian Romance Series Page 3
