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Bophal’s
Story
I was born on the first of in
early 1971 in Svay Rieng Province close to the border of Vietnam when the war
with America was just winding down and the war with the Khmer Rouge was
cranking up. It was in the midst of the
chaos of ear splitting artillery barrages, food scarcity, fire fights, rampant
disease and internally displaced people that I entered this world. Being close
the border, my two older brothers, my sister and I got the worst of both wars
at once. When I was a year old, my father, a soldier of the Khmer Republic, was
killed on the battlefield fighting against Khmer Rouge forces. After my father
died, my mother took all four of us from Svay Rieng, inland to Kompong Cham
because in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took power, we had to flee because if they
knew we were the family of a Lon Nol senior officer, we would all have been
killed. The Khmer Rouge in other sectors who didn’t know our background,
conscripted my mother to work long hours in the hot sun planting and harvesting
rice. First, she injured her hip, and then came down with malaria and died in
1977 around her 30th birthday.
My siblings and I went to live with a neighbor lady and it was our job
as little children to forage for food in the rice fields for the neighbor
woman, mostly catching land crabs. She regularly beat us and accused us of stealing
what we foraged for her, and so she also cut back what little food she gave us. Another woman in our village saw how we were
being treated and had compassion on us. She did not have children of her own, and
invited us to come live with her.
One day her husband heard that the Khmer
Rouge knew of our history and wanted to kill us kids, and she secreted us away
in the middle of the night to Kratie province.
When we arrived in Kratie we found my aunt and she asked for us to be
turned over to her care.
I did not want
to leave my adopted mother, I cried and clung to her leg tightly, but at the
same time did not want to be left behind as my other siblings agreed to go with
my auntie.
When I was with my auntie for
a short time, I got very sick and my brother brought me to stay at the hospital
run by the Khmer Rouge.
But as soon as
we got there, the Vietnamese began shelling the area, and my brother grabbed my
hand and we ran for our lives. I remember running so crazily I lost my shoes. I
was terrified of the noise, the explosions, the fire and smoke. Artillery shells
were erupting all around us. The hospital was hit and burned to the
ground.
The whole area was engulfed in
flames and chaos from the shelling.
We all
headed back to Svay Rieng province and tried to swim across the river but the
Vietnamese trained their weapons on us and we returned to travel by the road
again. They asked my brother to climb the coconut trees and pick them coconuts
to drink. They in turn, let us go and gave us the coconut meat to eat so we had
some bit of energy for the rest of the trip.
We made it back to our home town,
and lived with my mother’s older sister.
By that time, the Vietnamese (Dec 1978) had just invaded, propping up
the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. At
home it was crowded that my uncle took to state orphanages to house and feed
us. We walked for days but the centers were all full and I cried and begged my
aunt to let me stay with her. She said there was no food feed to me, so I
promised not to eat too each much. This
particular traumatic event was the inspiration that caused me to entertain the
vision of someday in the future taking care of children who had no home or food
to eat. God used this terrifying experience to plant a tiny seed in the life of
a small child.
When I was 7, I was
enrolled in school as a first-grader and was very happy to have many playmates.
Very soon, I realized that I was a good student. Things went well until fourth
grade where I had a teacher who hit the students. If we made a mistake he would
take a stick and whack our fingers very hard, which happened to me on one
unfortunate day. He struck me and I screamed loudly in front of the whole
class. I cried and embarrassed myself. His corporal punishment was not out of
cruelty, but he was old school and wanted us to do well. In spite of this incident, I was the best
student in the class.
Before the second exam of the
year, I fell off a water buffalo and broke my right hand and I did not go for a
school for two weeks so I didn’t get to take my exam and I had to repeat my
fourth year. I was very upset that I had to repeat the year.
I finished my secondary education
and when the time came, I passed the exam to enter high school, but my entrance
exam grade was low so I was not allowed to enroll. It was by now 1989, and I
was 18 years old and extremely discouraged that I couldn’t enroll in high
school so I was put in charge of herding water buffalo. I had lots of time to
think and reflect on nature, etc., and my thoughts came around to; “Did someone
create all this?” I really wondered about where the things of nature came from.
When I failed the exam, I went to
live with my oldest brother so I could learn English. My brother paid for my
English but during the day I would do all the house work and yard work. When I
returned from school exhausted and hungry, his wife, who resented the fact my
brother paid for my classes, would not save me any food. I had to secretly set
aside some food for myself in the morning before I went to work or I would have
starved. What little I had to eat in the
morning would have to see me through the whole day.
After a few months, my second
older brother saw that I wasn’t in school, so he brought me to Phnom Penh to
learn how to sew. But instead, I become
their house help but asked him if I could go learn English. My brother wasn’t home much, as he was soldiering
in Kompong Som. I was left in the hands of his abusive mother in law and wife. Soon
then I found a job working in a government printing house to pay for my English
lessons but got ink poisoning on my thumb and had to stop. I still suffered terrible abuse my brother’s
wife because she was angry with my brother for being away for so long at times. Sometimes she would dump rice on my head and
chase me with a knife, trying to stab me. I ran through the neighborhood,
jumping fences, and doing whatever I could do to get away from her.
One day in 1990, the mother
in law went missing for a day and at night she turned up with my aunt, Pastor
Im Sithan. She asked Pastor Sithan to help my brother’s wife who seemed to be
suffering from the demonic or psychotic episode. My aunt led church members to
pray, sing hymns, etc., over her. When
this happened, it seemed to soothe her. Two weeks later, I went to see my aunt
the pastor. I asked her the same
questions I asked when I was tending the water buffalo, “Who created the whole
world?” Her husband said out loud, “What a great question!” They opened the
Bible to Genesis 1:1 and I read it. They explained to me in a simple way that
God created the world, and I told them about my situation and the questions I
had as a young girl. I asked them if I
could be in the Jesus faith, and they led me to pray the sinner’s prayer. That same week, I heard someone singing a
hymn, ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus.’
I listened and began singing along to the song. Then I heard a voice calling my name, I ran
to ask my cousin if she called me. No,
no one called you. I heard someone call my voice three times, and I kept asking
her who calling me, but they began to call me crazy. I told my aunt (the pastor) and her husband
about this and they in turn told me about the story of Samuel and told me that
I probably really did hear the voice of God calling out my name. This made me think, “Wow, God really is with
me and near me and is comforting me.”
They gave me a Bible to read, and so I read Psalms and memorized the 23rd
Psalm. Before I believed, my brother’s
wife called me to sleep on the porch with her where it was cooler. During the
night I suddenly woke up because she was beating me and choking me with all her
strength, but after I believed when she called me to sleep near her, I did not
go, but instead prayed through the 23rd Psalm. When she heard me recite the psalm, she would
say, “Never mind, keep that Jesus stuff away from me.” I began to pray a lot during that time and
soon my unstable sister in law was sent to a psychiatric center, and then I was
able to begin attending church where I made many new friends. That was 1991,
and I was baptized that year.
At church, I met Ms. Alli Blair who seemed to know my name
and take an interest in me. How did she know who I was?
She told me she heard about me from my
relatives. She asked me if I wanted to come be her house helper.
I said, “Yes, I do.”
After church she gave me the tour of her
place and showed me what I was expected to do. She asked me, “Do you need a
week to think about it?”
I told her,
“No, I will start tomorrow at first light.” Alli was so kind to me, and even
offered to share her meal time with me.
Every meal she would set a place for me and when I saw that, it brought
tears to my eyes, as rarely had anyone valued me in the least over all the
years.
She treated me like sister and
listened to all my heart aches and cried when she heard about all I had gone
through. She would also teach my friend Ms. Vuthy and I the bible once a week.
Once when I had typhoid fever, I was so sick and wanted to work but Alli made
me rest. She came to check on me from work every hour, and made sure I had what
I needed.
In 1993, she asked me to come work with her at World Vision
but I told her about the vision had since I was a young girl, that I wanted to
work with children at risk so she led me to World Concern where I was trained
to be a trainer of trainers for Sunday School teachers. I was
trained by WC at their day care center for a year, and then Alli left to serve
in Rwanda. When Alli left, I went to live with Marianne Stattin of World
Concern. These two women showed me what warmth,
care and love really were because I never really experienced such concern and
care before from anyone.
Marianne befriended
me, mentored and coached me in my personal and professional life. She took care
of me when I got sick. I was with her
from about 5 months until I moved into the day care center with a girlfriend. I
worked there from 1994 to 2000.
In 1991, there was a Cambodian
man who was interested in me and I was open to considering him as a future husband
but he strung me along for almost ten years. In 2001, he wanted to get engaged but I heard some
disturbing things about him, so I told him we were done.
In 2000, World Concern
discontinued the project and but gave me some equipment and left over funding. We
began with 15 kids and the parents paid $15 per child per month and they received
day care and two meals. In 2001, we
started Center of Peace with 15 children at risk who needed refuge from
domestic violence, or whose mothers were widowed and could not care for them.
In the beginning, I just had my
older sister to support me morally and physically. We had many needs during
that time but I was happy that my vision was beginning to take shape and in the
second year, we were providing for 50 children in recovery. Our budget was next
to nothing and I had to sell all my jewelry to keep us going. We had one or two
foreigners who helped keep our doors open, and Sister Kiko, a Japanese missionary
was one of those who helped us from right the beginning up until now.
In 2003, I was
married to Kosal. On the day of our honeymoon, there was a big misunderstanding
concerning our trip which put a big wedge between us that could never be
healed. It was over even before it
began. We struggled together for a year
and half, and in 2006 he left. We signed the certificate of divorce in 2007. After that I was seriously discouraged by
this turn of events and did not accept any training invitations like I normally
did and cut myself off from the larger Christian community and my friends and
family. Soon my faith began to wane. It was a rough few years for me. In fact, it was a rough life.
As Kosal left in 2006, I adopted Johnnathan when he was one
year old. His grandfather brought him to
the center and said he’d drop him off for a week but he never came back for him. Johnnathan had been physically abused and had
bruises and contusions on his face and body so I agreed to take him into my
personal care. I tried to contact his
family but the grandfather gave me a false address so here he is, with us until
this day.
I got my high school diploma 2006 and I immediately started
a B.S. in Human Resources and finished that degree in 2010. The next year, 2007, was when
I was visiting Svay Rieng and one of our staff saw a mother trying to bury a
tiny infant alive, and they stopped the women in the act, saving the baby from
a imminent death. I took that baby girl
and gave her the name Pich. She was only a week old when I adopted her.
Also during that
time, I began to attend church again and that next year I enrolled in a number
of short courses, but a very significant event in my life was my enrollment in
Peace Bridges, a local NGO started by an Australian expat where I learned
family mediation. It helped me to process much of the trauma of my past, and brought
healing to my heart and soul. I was grateful to God for Peace Bridges, especially
learning how to listen and trust another (a couple mentors) with the deepest
parts of my soul.
After things settled down and I began to feel lighter in
spirit, and no longer hated men, I met Brian through pastor Seila. Brian was a
friend of my many relatives who worked at World Vision, especially Aunt
Molly. Though I saw him in 1990 at my house with my aunt, we only met officially in 1996 when he invited me to teach children at the Evangelical
Fellowship of Cambodia. He often invited me to teach at youth camps, youth
seminars, and the Diamond Program Leadership course Level 2 , but we never really talked until the
day Seila re-introduced us late in 2011.
We dated about two years, and were engaged on December 22nd
2012.
When I enrolled in the Diamond Project Leadership
training offered by Dove and finished at the top of my class. This course helped encourage my faith and
helped me process my whole life by having me make a time-line during our
Focused Living Block. This enabled me to see how God shaped me in a unique way
through all the hardship in my life to make me exactly the person I am today,
with the talent and capacity to love and nurture children at risk. Looking at
his work in my past shows me that he will continue this good work in me into
the future in good times and bad. DP
also arranged for us to have a personal quiet retreat for few hours which
opened up a whole new window of hearing God’s voice. Another great impact on my life was field work
where we went to serve and do projects in squatter villages where the people
had next to nothing. They were evicted from their homes and dumped in some rice
fields. It helped me realize that there
were others who maybe have had it worse than me, and I stopped blaming God for
having taken my parents away, having been born in the midst of a regional war,
and for being sick and abused by many adult figures, etc. Thank God for all the
people he brought into my life, for helping me see my vision fulfilled, and for
healing in my soul.
On December 7th, 2013, Brian and I were married in a
semi-traditional Khmer Wedding ceremony that incorporated key parts of typical
Christian ceremony. It was purely religious ceremony. Everything was nearly
perfect and we had a nice honeymoon in a nearby hotel. On June 14th, 2014 we were married again in
Bellevue, WA, in civil ceremony, making our union legal in both the US and
Cambodia. I am now in the US working on
permanent resident status and will return to Cambodia in October of 2014.
Yos Bophal,
Bophal@coporphanage.com
