The Healing Fields

Setan Lee travels so much in his Christian ministry that his suitcase has a permanent place in the entryway when he's home.

Everybody just steps around the luggage without thinking. But adjusting to Setan's long absences as a father and husband has been more complicated, and each member of the family has handled it differently.

His wife, Randa, is the keystone. She has been breadwinner, head of the household, and mother and father to their two children - once enduring three years without Setan being home. She has made an American life for her family in Aurora while sending her husband halfway around the world to carry out the work they both vowed to do for their native Cambodia. Only now and then has she been able to do it herself.

Yet she knows they made the right choice.

"God called him to do his work, and I'm going to sacrifice myself to let him go. I'm going to handle this," Randa says.

Their son Ben, 19, has grown up apart from his father, often left to rely on his grandfather and uncles for the guidance a father would give. But Setan's dedication also gave Ben his own sense of duty to help others. And Ben found a dream of his own after years of saying goodbye at airports and wishing he could fly his father around the world himself - he wants to be a pilot.

Ben's sister, Sandra, has learned the comfort of a close-knit extended family, too. She has witnessed her mother's devotion to her children, her willingness to make sacrifices for a cause greater than herself. At 14, Sandra already shows glimmers of her mother's grace and humor, as well as her commitment to helping the less fortunate.

A mission of healing

Setan, 47, who long ago dreamed of a life as a doctor, does healing of another kind now.

He's in Cambodia two or three times a year for months at a time, managing the organization he founded in 1995, Kampuchea for Christ. He trains Christian leaders and oversees the trade school, the orphanage and the women's center where prostitutes - or young women at risk of taking that path - can learn a new way of life. He evangelizes, too, offering spiritual healing to former Khmer Rouge soldiers by converting them into the service of Christ.

When Setan isn't in Cambodia, he's usually traveling the world explaining his work - in Russia, Africa, Europe, China, Japan, Korea. And Canada, where he admits to being something of a celebrity on Christian television stations.

"I'm very popular in Canada right now," he says with a sort of wonder that his message has such power. The last time he was there, more than 5,000 people lined up to talk to him after his speech, he says. He shook hands for more than three hours before his hosts rescued him.

In the U.S., he spends as much time in Washington, Texas, Florida or Virginia "giving testimony," as he calls it, as he does in Colorado - where he long ago planted the first seeds of support, which still flourish.

Though his organization relies solely on donations, Setan says he rarely asks directly for money when he speaks. "I give the facts to people," he says. "I share the testimony of what is happening in Cambodia, our work in the ministry. I say, 'Put yourself in their shoes. I'm not going to answer for you. You have your own answer.'

"People in this country have enough intelligence. But their heart is half-empty. I speak from the heart to the heart."

Setan personifies "absolute devotion and dedication," says his friend, Jim Groen, president of Global Connection International, where Randa works part-time. The Christian humanitarian agency, based in Greenwood Village, is a major contributor to the Lees' projects. "He has come through these horrific experiences," Groen says. "He has the potential of a great leader."

A good husband

When Setan is back home with Randa, though, he has more potential as a dishwasher and grocery shopper.

"I don't know how to cook," Setan says with a smile. "I do whatever Randa tells me to do. I wash the dishes. I clean the house. If she goes to the market, she likes me to come along. We pick things out together."

Randa, 41, praises Setan for such non-Cambodian behavior. "In Cambodian culture," she says, "men don't do anything. Setan is a good husband, even when he's not here."

Sometimes he just stands at the kitchen counter and talks to her while she prepares dinner, the rice cooker going, as it does every day, all day, the air fragrant with the smell of steamed chicken and stir-fried vegetables.

For two people who spend as much time apart as Randa and Setan do, they know each other's lives, asking a small detail about this event or that person, or, as many couples do, finishing each other's sentences.

They try to make up for lost time. The first few days Setan is home from a trip, they stay up all night talking "about life, about the family, old stuff, new stuff," Setan says. "The sun comes up and we never sleep. We just enjoy each other."

Randa and Setan say their marriage remains strong. But they miss each other.

Setan, the romantic, e-mails Randa every day. "I wish I could be with her all the time," he says. "When I'm in Cambodia, and I see a lady with kids, I wonder how Randa's doing, and I wish I could be there. I get lonely. I cry a lot. I just wish Randa was here to hold her. It's like medicine to be around her."

He remembers the day 25 years ago when he first laid eyes on her in the refugee camp in Thailand. "Since the first time I saw her, I never felt any different. I'm in love with her."

Randa doesn't e-mail every day. "I have nothing to say," she says, laughing. "I wait a couple of days."

Randa is warm and gracious, and she gives hugs, even to new acquaintances, at the drop of a hat. She cries easily.

But with Setan, she insists, "I'm not a romantic person. I don't know how to say sweet things. I just ask him how he's doing and tell him to keep walking in the Lord's way."

Setan sometimes returns home exhausted and confides in Randa that he feels alienated or defeated. The work is hard, the failures pile up and some people in Cambodia criticize their work with prostitutes.

"When I first tell people about what we are doing, they say, 'Why are you involved with these unclean people? What's wrong with you?' " Randa says. "They want to know why we associate with women like that.

"I say, 'If we don't get involved with these women, how will they change? How will they build themselves up? How will they get better? How will the country get better?' " Randa says. "You have to go to the people who need help and help reshape them. One by one."

Setan and Randa learned long ago that to persevere is to survive. "You can't look at your current situation and conclude that's what you will be your whole life," Setan says. "Have a dream."

That keeps him going. That and the light he sees in the young Cambodian women at the center.

"They have a future. They have self-esteem. Now they realize they are important beings," Setan says.

Some of them even get married. "In Cambodian culture, when you lose your virginity, no man will marry you," Setan says. But when a man sees the special joy and light in a young woman from the center, he is willing to go against convention.

"I have the privilege of performing ceremonies for some of them, attending their receptions. It was incredible. Just like giving you a million dollars. Words cannot describe the joy that I have, and the girl, as well."

Blessings and broken hearts

Home last winter between trips to Cambodia, Setan proposed a weekend family getaway to the mountains. To his dismay, the kids declined.

"Ben's a college student, and Sandra's in high school now," Setan says. "Now they don't want to go with us. They want to stay home with their friends, or they ask if they can bring their friends along. I miss having our kids without their friends - just us."

Though it breaks his heart, Setan appreciates the irony.

"I realize I missed out," Setan says. "But it's a family sacrifice. Unless they give me their blessing to go, I don't go."

Ben and Sandra say they miss their father when he's gone. But they've missed him all of their lives, and now they have their own.

These days, Ben has a better understanding of the work that takes his father away so often. But when he was younger, "I was always angry that he was always gone. It was almost like living without a father. I've gotten used to it. I don't hate him or anything. I know he's doing good stuff over there. But it was rough."

He's grateful for his uncles and his grandparents, although they could never replace his father. Ben and Setan keep in touch through e-mail. "But I never really talked to him about deep problems because he was always so far away, and it's better to talk in person. So I just dealt with them myself, or with my mom."

Ben has completed his first year at Metropolitan State College of Denver, where he's majoring in aviation technology.

He works when he can to help pay his tuition, car expenses and cell phone bills. He played hockey at Hinkley High School.

And this son - whose parents had never seen snow before coming to Colorado - has a new passion: snowboarding. "I really love cold weather for some reason."

Ben also has inherited his parents' commitment to good works. He was a member of a high school club that planted trees, visited the elderly and read to elementary school students.

He organized a project that raised $2,000 for the David Anlong Veng orphanage that his parents founded in Anlong Veng, in northern Cambodia, for children of the Khmer Rouge. The orphanage is named after Ben's cousin, David Hou, who drowned at Lake McConaughy in Nebraska when Ben was a senior. David was two years older, and the two were like brothers. The loss for Ben was profound. He says simply, "That was hard for me."

Setan, who lost his own brother in the killing fields so many years ago, decided to stay home most of last year to spend time with his family.

"I wanted to be around," Setan says. "I try to make it up (last) year. I know I never do. But at least I have this time."

A world of the past

Ben balks at Randa's efforts to teach him her native Khmer language. "I'd say no," he says. "I'm an American. I'm just a kid. I just want to have fun. I'm no different than the average kid."

And so far, he and his sister have resisted visiting Cambodia, remembering their last harrowing experience there.

In 1997, Randa took 12-year-old Ben and 7-year-old Sandra to visit Setan. Ben came down with a fever soon after they arrived. Three weeks later, Randa and Setan decided they had to get him to a doctor in a modern country.

Hoping to fly standby out of Phnom Penh, they rushed to the airport and found it eerily quiet and empty. Soldiers with automatic rifles milled around.

As soon as the Lees boarded a flight to Singapore, Ben's fever started to go down.

When they got to the Singapore airport, every television was airing scenes of Cambodia at war, grenades exploding, burning cars and buildings, soldiers firing at each other, wounded people.

Ben tugged at his father. Look, Daddy, they're showing The Killing Fields.

But it was no movie.

A fierce battle between the country's co-prime ministers had led to a coup by one of them, Hun Sen.

All of the phone lines were disconnected, and the Phnom Penh airport was destroyed. The Lees had taken the last flight out.

And the Lee children have never returned.

American teens

"Maybe when I'm older," Sandra says when asked if she will go to Cambodia.

She is her parents' primary concern these days. Randa and Setan have agreed that when one is traveling, the other will be home with Sandra.

"She's 14 now, and she just started high school, and it's important for one of us to always be here for her," Randa says.

Sandra has settled into the life of a student at the new Cherokee Trails High School, where her favorite subjects are science and art. She loves basketball and volleyball, and she hopes to make the tennis team.

She's played piano since she was 3 and still tries to practice every day. She's won her share of ice-skating competitions, but she had to miss a year when the family couldn't afford lessons.

Her passion is Japanese animation, and if pressed, she'll shyly show off a notebook filled with intricate pencil drawings of Japanese-style cartoon characters.

She is her parents' daughter. Setan says Sandra befriends schoolmates who have mental or physical handicaps and helps them however she can.

Sandra misses her father, but says, "I got used to it. I'm close to my mom. And I talk to everybody." Between friends and cousins, there's never a lack of companions.

All 25 members of the Lees' extended family in the Denver area attended Sandra's 14th birthday party.

For the Lees, Setan says, "The beauty of being alive is to be close to our family and our friends."

Strong family ties

When they're together, the Cambodian-American Lees do what American families do. They watch the Broncos on a big-screen television in the family room. They go to hockey games. Randa likes baseball. Setan doesn't understand it. They visit the family, go to church, rent videos. When they eat out, they're as likely to choose a steakhouse as a Chinese buffet.

Randa, remembering when she lived without food, admonishes the kids to take no more than they can eat and to eat everything on their plates.

Setan wasn't home when Randa bought the house a couple of years ago in the Vista subdivision in east Aurora near E-470 and Smoky Hill Road.

The couple wanted the larger home in a new part of Aurora to house the Kampuchea for Christ offices, and to make room for the steady stream of students and other visitors from Cambodia who stay with them.

She picked out everything: the model, the raspberry carpeting, the paint colors, countertops, cabinets and tile - all the details required to build a new house, including finding the best mortgage rate and locking it in.

Randa, who works wonders with the family's tight finances, saved the down payment from her $2,200-a-month salary at Global Connection International, where she's worked for almost four years.

She and Setan had met Jim Groen, GCI's founder, at their church, Faith Presbyterian, and he took an immediate interest in their work.

Randa was reluctant at first to accept Groen's offer of a job as his assistant. She had taken computer and general office courses, but she'd never worked in an office.

"I said, 'Are you sure you want me to work for you? I might wreck your office. People won't understand what I'm saying.' "

But Groen insisted. He sweetened the offer by giving her a flexible schedule so she could keep taking classes and travel to the women's center.

So far, Randa hasn't wrecked the office. But family responsibilities and money have limited her trips to Cambodia.

Randa finally brought her mother to the U.S. in 1995. She lives with Randa's sister in California. Randa's stepmother also lives in California.

Still in Cambodia are two brothers and two sisters, including "the one after me," who kept her promise and never married. They visited the Lees in Aurora once.

Randa doesn't talk much to her children about her own father or the killing fields. She doesn't want Ben and Sandra "to have that sorrow in their mind."

Neither she nor Setan pushes the children to follow in their footsteps. Both Ben and Sandra go to church, but it's one with later Sunday morning services than Faith Presbyterian's. What the Lees want most are for their children always to practice compassion, mercy and grace.

"That's the theme for our family," Setan says.

In courage, a future

Randa is the only one of the six Lee women of her generation who will drive by herself to South Federal Boulevard to the Asian markets. She gleefully remembers once trying to find her way to downtown Denver and ending up in Boulder.

But with Setan gone so much, if she didn't drive, she would be marooned.

She has succeeded at her GCI office job, too.

"I'm not very good with grammar. I still ask Jim (Groen) why he hired me. But he said, 'Everything I give you to do, you finish.' "

One night, Sandra decided she wanted spaghetti for dinner. Fine, Randa told her, you can chop the onions, green peppers and carrots. But Sandra was squeamish about using a knife.

"I told her, 'When I was in the concentration camp, I was younger than you. I didn't know how to chop or cook. But I had to learn. I had to do it or they would kill me.' "

Randa pauses, a twinkle in her eye, the timing of a comedian.

"I say, 'Now, Sandra, I won't kill you. But you still have to learn.' "

Despite her independence, Randa understands the importance of a helping hand. She remembers working in the killing fields, trying frantically to distinguish young rice plants from weeds in the wet paddies. Others taught her: One was round at the end, the other flatter. Without their guidance, she would have been killed.

Reminders of the killing fields are never very far. Neither are the lessons - never give up, stay hopeful and strong, be grateful for kindness.

While once she had to learn the difference between rice plants and weeds to live one more day, Randa now helps keep track of a dozen aid projects and fund-raisers in an American office.

She escaped through the jungles of Cambodia, scrambling from gunfire, racing for freedom. Now she gets lost on her way downtown. But she's still the one who drives.

She might even go to college one day. Not for a while. But one day.

She plants roses in her new garden. She teaches her daughter to chop carrots in the warmth and safety of her own kitchen.

And Randa and her husband, Setan, take pleasure in a future measured in more than minutes.