Canadians pioneer pro-life message on the mission-field
“Cambodia isn’t necessarily pro-abortion, it’s that there’s been no teaching on the life issue”
PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA—A group of Canadian women are combining international missions with a pro-life message. The group recently returned from their second trip to Cambodia, where they supported local agencies combating human trafficking and worked to impart a value for life.
“We began to realize there is a massive link between human trafficking and abortion,” says Faytene Grasseschi. “Most women who are trafficked are not only being pressured into sex, but also forced into abortions, so we realized there is a huge mission field in terms of saving women from the horrors of abortion.”
Grasseschi formed the original team, called the Back To Life Walkers, in 2013, for a 200-kilometre prayer-walk and awareness campaign, walking from the Henry Morgentaler abortion clinic in Montreal to the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa.
Andrea Aasen, a fellow Canadian and a missionary in Cambodia with XP Missions, contacted Grasseschi a few months later. Aasen shared with Grasseschi her concern that although many organizations are working to end human trafficking in Cambodia, even the church there seems completely ignorant to the evils of abortion.
“Cambodia isn’t necessarily pro-abortion, it’s that there’s been no teaching on the life issue,” Grasseschi explains. “So we sent a team to do pro-life seminars in churches and hospitals. After the seminars, there was hunger from the locals across the board to get even more understanding and see the message brought even further. That’s the reason they went back this year.”
In addition to the seminars, the team prayer-walked a 20-kilometre circuit around the city every day for seven days. They also helped with food distribution and humanitarian work in the slums, volunteered with XP Missions in their program to help restore women leaving the sex-trade, and invited 50 women from a local slum to a multi-course banquet to honour them and share God’s love. This year, they even got to see some of the fruit of their previous trip.
KC McLean, one of the trip’s organizers, says they met “two women in a program to restore [former prostitutes] who had been at the woman’s banquet the year before. Just seeing them moving on with their lives and being restored was so exciting.”
Aasen adds, “While sharing the message of life [last year], several women who were pregnant and considering abortion, or had abortion appointments scheduled, decided to keep their babies. We had four women share that this was the case and we know that several women were impacted this year, as well. Many were healed and given hope as they heard about fetal development and human value.”
While there is only so much a team can accomplish in a two-week mission trip, McLean says the key to making a long-term difference is using such trips to support ministries, like XP Missions, that are serving the communities on a daily basis, building relationships and gaining trust.
“XP missions has done that. They are there in the community doing food distribution and offering opportunities for the women to go into social enterprise. They have a sewing program, for women who are ready to come out of prostitution, where they get sponsored with an income while they learn sewing skills. And they’re not just learning to sew on a button like in the factories, they’re working with high-quality silk and learning how to design and market their products.”
Grasseschi, who was unable to join the team because of family commitments, says she is so proud of how the team is pioneering pro-life missions and how they’re invested for the long-haul. When she thinks about the work they are doing, she says she feels God’s heart.
“Our God is the God whose heart bleeds for the broken, the oppressed, the widow, and the orphan; it’s all throughout Scripture. If even one life is saved, they’ve made enough difference to make it worth it, and we know from last year that lives were saved through the seminars.”
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