I never thought I would find myself in jail let alone a jail in the Philippines. The drive to the jail I spent in prayer. When we arrived and passed through the first gate I was asked to fill out a paper. My hands wrote down my name, age, date of entry, and reason for entry. My thought process was something along the lines of, “What am I doing here?”, and “How will I relate to these women?”. As I entered through the second gate with 3 other world racers we were greeted with smiles and 78 welcomes, I began to relax a little. Thank goodness this was a n all women’s jail.
Did I fail to mention that this was my ministry for the day? Whoops. My bad. So I wasn’t in jail because I did something wrong. I went to the jail to do ministry and it was awesome. We went on Tuesday, but that was not my original plan at all for the day. I was going to go do feeding ministry, but since 40 middle school students were going I would just be one more person. Angie invited me to do jail ministry with her Addie and Abby 20 minutes before they left. I had no idea what the game plan was, but I just went with.
The women all gathered into this big room and after introducing ourselves they started us off with some worship. Then Angie stood up and preached on the story of Joseph emphasizing forgiveness and the goodness of our father who will work in every circumstance and meet us where ever we are in life. Then Addie stood up and shared her testimony, which really resonated with a few women. After that we broke up into 4 small groups to talk. Lord please help me was my thought because I had no idea what that was going to even look like.
Once again proved how good he truly is. I opened my group up in prayer and then just let the spirit work from there. Some of the women shared their testimonies in English. My heart broke, but in that brokenness I began to feel joy. The Lord began to reveal to me that he was working in their stories and he loved these women so much. One lady talked about how she hated her second husband, but she didn’t want to and wanted freedom from that. Another young lady talked about how she was a “naughty naughty girl”, but when she gets out she wants to go back and help her mom out. And another girl younger than me confessed to committing crimes, but was in jail for a crime her “friend” committed and one she did not participate in. Then they asked me my testimony so I shared about 10 minutes of it.
I talked about how a few years ago after a broken engagement and 10 deaths in two weeks I questioned if God was really real and if he even cared about me. I told them how I pretty much walked away from him. At one point I even tried “fake it ‘til you make it” thinking that if I went to church enough and talked about him enough eventually I would start to believe that he loved me. I talked about my first summer working at Camp Geneva and how when I stood up to give my testimony of how I saw God working in my life the past year I broke down and confessed I didn’t. The people I worked with came beside me and loved me for who I was and where I was at. I began to see that God would meet me at wherever I was and he put people in my life who loved me for me and were willing to walk with me.
The woman all agreed with me and confessed that they believed that too. I told them that their stories, although they broke my heart, they brought me joy knowing that God was working in each story and he would meet them wherever they were when they were ready to be loved by him. I told them that I saw God in them by how they loved each other and how the older ones mentored the younger ones. I told them how beautiful they were no matter the color of their skin, their shape or size, or how big their eyes were because I could see how much God truly loved each and every one of them and he created them perfectly in his image. We shared in laughter as they tried to teach me some tagalog and they kept asking if I would be coming back to visit. I said I would try, but I couldn’t make any promises. We took photos as we said our good-byes. (They will be up soon because they are still on Abby’s camera.)
I wanted to go back today, but being sick and needed rest has kept me from that. These women and their stories I hope to never forget. I bought a ring the other day at a different ministry site after hearing some more stories from women who were trafficked or trying to get out of prostitution to remind me to pray for them and to remember their stories.
