Cambodia was once ravaged by civil war and the brutal “Killing Fields.” Today disease and poverty wreak havoc on the nation. The wholesale of death of adults is leaving thousands of orphans to wander the streets and beg in villages. It is estimated there are 90,000 orphans in Cambodia wandering the cities, begging (or stealing) food, and sleeping under bridges.

In Cambodia orphans are scorned and socially outcast. The Cambodian people superstitiously believe that abandoned children somehow deserve the misfortune they experience. So people avoid orphans like the plague. They do not want to be affected by the orphan’s “bad karma.” The extended family and the small number of those willing to help can not cope with the number of orphans in Cambodia. So orphans become stray dogs. They fall prey to a variety of exploitation schemes as well as to disease, exposure, and poverty. In 1997 when missionaries Ted and Sou Olbrich arrived in Cambodia their assignment was to establish new churches. Yet when they witnessed hundreds of orphans wandering the streets of Phnom Penh (Cambodia’s capital city) they quickly realized that establishing new church congregations would have to wait. First they had to address one of Cambodia’s most crying social needs. “As Christians we are called upon to minister to the whole person,” says Ted Olbrich. “In this situation we had to touch their lives beginning with their physical needs. Only then could we reach and win their hearts and souls.”

Ted and Sou Olbrich decided to construct an orphan home in Phnom Penh. They contacted Kids for the Kingdom for help. That began a ten-year partnership that has resulted in the construction of 84 orphan care homes and the daily care for 3,450 orphans. “God has used the orphan homes to bring the Gospel to entire villages,” Ted Olbrich explains. “As we demonstrate Christian love [by caring for the orphans] the Cambodians realize our faith has substance. In some cases we have seen entire villages give their hearts to Christ.” As a result each orphan home serves a dual purpose. Orphan children are housed upstairs. On Sundays church services are conducted on the ground floor of each orphanage.