My mother, Cherie Clark, grew up in the cornfields of Indiana. She moved to Vietnam during the war to do humanitarian work, adopted 4 children, 3 of whom are half black ("war babies"). She had to leave Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Heartbroken and lost, she moved to India. There, she met my father, founded the International Mission of Hope, worked with Mother Theresa, and saved countless lives in the 12 years she lived there. In 1988 she was finally able to move back to Vietnam to continue her work, and I was lucky to have been able to move there with her. I grew up in Hanoi but now live in Colorado and work as a high school English teacher. Since 2000, my mother has worked extensively in the middle east, mostly in Palestinian refugee camps, and she even, against our wishes, traveled to Iraq at a most dangerous time.
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