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Berkeley Grad Reverses Family Migration, Ministers to Prostitutes in Cambodia

By Mark Ellis Senior Correspondent ASSIST News Service

IRVINE, California (July 27, 2001) - Tammy Fong's parents came to the United States seeking a better life for themselves and their family. The Asian immigrants worked and saved so their daughter could attend a prestigious university.  Then, their daughter foreswore the American dream, and returned to the seedy streets of a world they left behind, ministering the love of Jesus to children caught in a web of prostitution.

"It's very hard for them that I'm there," says Fong, 36, now home on furlough. The Sacramento native has long dark hair, and a graceful, orchid-like beauty. Her Buddhist parents don't seem to understand her decision to minister to prostitutes in Cambodia. To them, it appears she has given her life away. "I'm the black sheep of the family," she says.

Already a Christian when she arrived at Berkeley, her faith deepened as she got involved with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. "I read a book by John Perkins and saw Jesus in a different way," Fong says. "I saw Jesus living among the poor, loving them, and spending time with them," she says.

Studying social work and psychology at Berkeley, she decided to accept a summer internship working among inner-city children in Southern California. During the internship, "God started to open my eyes for the poor," Fong says. "By the end of that summer I was convinced that to minister to inner-city kids you need to live among them," she says. Her heart was drawn primarily to African-American and Latino children.

After graduating from college, she was part of a small group of InterVarsity students considering work among the poor. At the Urbana Missions Conference of 1987, she first learned about a ministry to poor ethnic Chinese in the Tenderloin district in San Francisco. "First I said, 'No, God is calling me to work with African-Americans and Latinos.'" But the more she prayed about it, the more she felt God saying, 'Don't box me in about who to serve.'  By the end of the missions conference, she made a commitment to serve among the poor-wherever that might lead.

Soon a naïve college graduate was working in San Francisco's gritty Tenderloin district under the auspices of InnerCHANGE, a division of Church Resource Ministries. "It was infested with prostitution and drugs," Fong recalls. "It was the red light district-like Skid Row, and I was scared witless," she says. "It was very hard."

Fong and her team members adapted quickly, however, and organized a Christian summer camp for inner city kids. "It was fun," Fong says. "We'd walk down the streets of the Tenderloin singing and shouting about Jesus," she says. There were only a few instances where Fong felt threatened as a single woman.

"I had two confrontations in the streets where I recognized I could get hurt physically," Fong says, "but the Lord has always protected me." One team member was accosted on the way to his apartment. "He had a knife held to his throat and they took his wallet," she remembers. "It was awful-really scary."

"Suddenly it hit me," Fong says. "This is a part of inner-city ministry. God protects you, but evil things still happen to people," she says. "I felt very strongly that my body is not my own."

About 1992 Fong began to pray that if God wanted her overseas in a Third World country, He would start preparing her. "The thought of going overseas was somewhat scary," Fong says. "I knew I wouldn't have my culture, my language, my family or my friends," she says.

As a first step, she visited Vietnam with a short-term missions team ministering to the underground church. "I realized I wasn't ready for a Communist country-doing all the cloak and dagger stuff," Fong says. She settled on the next closest opportunity-Cambodia. Fong set out for Cambodia on her own, independent of any missions organization.

After arriving in the nation's capital, Phnom Penh, Fong realized the conditions of San Francisco's worst neighborhood had only partially prepared her for life in a Third World country. "The conditions were somewhat shocking," Fong says. "I saw evil in the Tenderloin, but here it was so raw," she says. "I remember driving into town wondering to myself, 'Could I really live here?'"

But soon she was drawn to those God placed closest to her heart-children at risk. "Child prostitution really broke my heart," Fong says. "Some of the girls are very young," she says.

Buddhist cultures in Southeast Asia seem to be more accepting of young girls being sold into the sex trade, according to Fong. Marriage is often a contractual arrangement, and men find sexual fulfillment through prostitutes. Virgins are highly prized in the sex trade, and men pay large sums to procure them, which drives sex traders to find younger and younger girls.

Fong remembers one set of twins who were 14 years old. Fong spent time with these and other young girls, trying to develop relationship with them, despite her own limited language skills. Fong began working with a secular, government-sponsored organization trying to help the girls by providing them an education and vocational training.

"I would spend time talking with them, coloring, doing arts and crafts," Fong says. "I tried to understand what their lives might be like," she says. At one point one of the girls said, " You're very good to me."

"I said, 'No, Jesus is good-I do this only because He loves you.'"

At the time Fong arrived in Phnom Penh, there were 17,000 prostitutes working their trade, and over 42 percent were infected with the HIV virus. Over 40,000 men visit prostitutes every day in Cambodia, according to World Health Organization figures. Many of these men transfer the HIV virus to their wives and children.

"Southeast Asia is where Africa was a few years ago," Fong says, referring to the ballooning number of AIDS orphans being produced.

Fong remembers meeting one young prostitute whose age was very deceiving. "I looked at her face and she looked really old," Fong says. "She had wrinkles-you could tell she had gone through a lot," she says. Fong was trying to determine her age so she could address her respectfully, as befits Cambodian cultural tradition. Fong, then 30, addressed her as someone older than herself. Then she discovered the truth.

"She was only 20," Fong says. "I realized her life must have been hell to look the way she did," she says.

Fong had a growing conviction that the church needed to be involved in the problem of child prostitution. "If a non-Christian organization could get funds to do a program for these girls, why not us who serve a God with all the resources of the universe?" she thought. "In the end, if they don't know Jesus, all that government sponsored training does nothing for them in light of eternity."

Returning to the U.S., Fong wrote a proposal to her former team members from InnerCHANGE. Fong's vision was to create a "House of Hope" for girls aged 18 and under who have worked as commercial sex workers (CSWs). Up to 20 girls would be able to stay in a safe haven for 18 months, where they would find restorative healing through Jesus Christ, as well as educational and vocational training.

Her vision quickly caught fire. Through providential circumstances, several who would soon join her team had already learned the Khmer language by ministering to Cambodian refugees in Santa Ana, California.

"God developed a great expatriate team of women who had a desire for this," Fong says, referring to the all-female international staff which came together. "I really think it was birthed through prayer," she says.

The house her team located is two hours north of the nation's capital, in Kompong Cham city. Fong and her team members do extensive networking to find the girls who will enter the House of Hope.

"Girls come to us through the police, human rights organizations, churches, hospitals, AIDS clinics, and village leaders," Fong says.

One young girl named Eith came to the House of Hope when she was 17. "Her mother died when she was a little girl," Fong says. At 14, her father thought she should work, so he sent Eith to live with her step-sister, saying she would be working at her restaurant, helping with cooking and babysitting.

When Eith arrived, she realized the step-sister ran a brothel, not a restaurant. "She was inaugurated into a life of prostitution," Fong says. "Her step-sister was very cruel and would beat her often," she says. "She was emotionally damaged."

"She received a lot of men," Fong says, referring to a steady stream of customers, which included businessmen, soldiers, and visitors from other countries.

"One day her sister beat her pretty severely with a butcher knife," Fong says. "She was bleeding and somehow ran away to the police station, begging them to help her," she says. "The police took her to the hospital on a Sunday, and shortly after that we visited her and she came to live at House of Hope."

When Eith first arrived at the home she was tormented by her memories. "When she would hear a loud noise she would cower, she was really afraid," Fong says. "It was really hard for her to stand up in front of a group," she says.

But the healing touch of Jesus has made a real difference. "She has really blossomed," Fong says. "It's really amazing." After 18 months at the House of Hope, where she received a cosmetology certificate, Eith was placed in a transitional home for a year.

"We helped set her up in her own business," Fong says. "She's started to develop confidence, basically taking care of herself," she says.

The House of Hope provides help to the girls in all areas-physical, emotional, vocational, and spiritual. "Christianity is woven into normal life," Fong says. "We have devotions every morning, and Bible Study," she says. "The staff weaves the scriptures into the curriculum when they can."

There are 12 Christian churches in Kompong Cham, and girls are given the freedom to choose where they want to attend. "Some of the girls go to an Assemblies of God church, and some go to a Vineyard offshoot," Fong says.

Churches nearby have been challenged to stretch their thinking about ministry. "People watched from a distance," Fong says, when the girls first attended a local church. "Many wondered, 'Who is this group and why do they work with prostitutes?'" she says.

"Most church members would probably not allow their son to marry a former prostitute-but that's true anywhere," Fong says. "It pushes them to extend God's love to prostitutes, and then make them a part of your life," she says.

"But when they see them change, when they see them singing worship songs, it causes them to rethink who God is and what God wants his people to do," Fong says. "The church is learning to love girls who have been thrown away," she says, " and that's exciting."

Fong's sense of calling to the poor in spirit continues with undiminished zeal, wherever that may lead. "I don't sense I'll stay in Cambodia my whole life, but my call to the poor will be life-long," Fong says. "My life is really very rich," she says, "not monetarily, but experientially, spiritually, and with the wisdom that comes from loving people."

Mark Ellis is a Senior Correspondent for ASSIST News Service. He is also the Assistant Pastor at Calvary Evangelical Free Church of Laguna Beach, CA. He grew up in Southern California and worked for 18 years in the commercial real estate industry before entering Christian ministry.

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