Marion's Story

It is a well known fact that land mine victims can be treated like lepers, even in the communities in which they live. This was made clear to me when I visited Cambodia four times between 1997 - 2000. In the churches that I was visiting, I noticed that there were no landmine victims in the congregations.

What was a real shock to me, was the fact that the local pastors who translated for me would not speak to the limbless beggars on the streets, and no church outreaches were planned for these poor rejected people. When I asked one pastor about this, he told me that local congregations would not accept landmine victims if they came to their churches. He explained the rejection by the local people was part of the Buddhist mindset that sees imperfect people as worthless. When I heard this it nearly broke my heart. I challenged this pastor and his church of the need to reach out to these people, but subsequent visits showed me that nothing had changed. The plight of the landmine victims became a deep concern in my heart for years; but I wasn't sure what to do.

One Sunday morning in June 2000, I was at church and I had a vision of a large area of vacant land that I recognised as being similar to land that I had seen in Cambodia. I saw a factory appear on the land and later a dormitory-style housing block and finally a church appeared. In seeing this vision I felt that God had challenged me to establish a sheltered workshop factory for people that are disabled by land mines, to give them quality of life, meaningful employment and assisted living. I believe that through the resulting love and care shown to these people, a Church fellowship will develop that will not reject them, but include them and give them full expression of their love for God.

This vision was the birth of what has become known as "Reverse The Curse Of Landmines". Reverse the Curse has the potential to become a prototype for other places to emulate in their care for people with land mine related disabilities.

Not much is currently being done to give amputees employment and self-esteem in Cambodia and other countries where there are land mines. Usually begging is their only source of income, if they cannot work on the family farm, but it is soul destroying and with the ever-increasing instances of injury being suffered through landmines, there are increasing numbers of people begging in the towns and cities all over Cambodia.

There are currently more than 300,000 victims in Cambodia, with and increase of approximately 500 per month. At the current rate of detection and demolition, it will take more than 40 years to eradicate all the land mines in Cambodia. As you can see, this is a serious long-term problem that cannot be ignored. This whole situation has impacted me greatly.

I visited Cambodia in 2001 and again in 2002, when I contacted Cambodian Government departments and received their encouragement for Reverse the Curse. Plans and cost estimates for the factory, disability housing and training centre have been drawn up in Cambodia and RTC are praying for God to draw together a team of staff, which will include factory management, production, marketing, administration and of course, finance.

The Reverse The Curse project in Cambodia will commence operation by producing a range of high quality confectionery made from dried fruits and nuts. These product will be marketed first in Cambodia, and later exported to the West. Each item will have distinctive packaging, so that the consumers who buy it will know that they are assisting those with land mine related disabilities.

Reverse the Curse will train Cambodian staff in management; production, marketing, accounting and office procedures so that ultimately the amputees can run the whole project themselves. The centre will be a contact point for other amputees and will offer development courses that will cover areas such as health and hygiene, living skills and access to trauma counselling. In the long term, a local Church in the community of the disabled will be established.

To begin, Reverse the Curse will need to buy approximately 2 hectares of land on which to commence this project. Reverse The Curse will promote locally based micro entereprise projects that will encourage the production of crops such as cashews, peanuts, dried mango, pawpaw, pineapple and coconut. Thus the local community will also prosper through their assosiation with the Reverese The Curse factory. Funds raised through the project will fund other factories. The estimated cost of this project is US $500,000. It is amazing how many people have already shown their support for this vision.

My local church (Morphett Vale Baptist) has made Reverse The Curse (Of land mines) project one on the ministries of the Church. We hope that other churches will also follow suit. Reverse the Curse is in need of your assistance in prayer, in giving and in helping us to get the message out about the plight of landmine victims in Cambodia. If you can help, please contact me at the address below.