As some of you may or may not know , last month instead of spending the whole month in Nepal , I got sent back to India with 2 of my squad mates and one of our squad leaders with the intention of further discipling some people there.
Upon returning to India we met some amazing missionaries there doing evangelism and outreach in the red light districts of Calcutta. We were blessed with the opportunity to join them and the result of that was pretty impactful for me.
Over the past month I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain and share with you what I saw in the Red Light District ( RLD) and what God showed me during that time.
If you know me, you know that I’m not much of a journal-er. Its a practice I’ve been trying to work on the past few months , but my entries are still pretty random and sporadi
When I was I India however, I journal-ed A LOT about my experience, and as I reflect on the entries from that time it occurred to me that sharing some of them would be the best way to share that with you.
Prior to heading out the first day into the area I remember praying for God to give me His heart for the people there.
What followed next was exactly that, because as we walked the streets of one of the largest RLD’s in Asia and saw the woman literally everywhere and lined up in rows I would have expected that my heart would have broken for them, and it DID.
But as I walked the streets and our group would stop to talk to woman or men it wasn’t the woman who were catching my attention the most.
The perspective that came from my time there and the ideas and thoughts that I am about to share with you can only be attributed to God and Him being so amazing in sharing His heart with me.
April 18, 2016
Today we went to a brothel here in Calcutta. 12 thousand woman work there.
That fact alone blew my mind before going there. We arrived and the first woman we talked to had 3 or 4 children walking around the street where she was. I’m pretty sure that the street was their home. As our friend talked to the woman, who was very much high on something , the children quickly surrounded me and we attempted to talk and play games that didn’t require the same language.
The oldest girl was 12 years old. I wondered to myself if she would be or was already being sold like her mother.
Later I would find out that girls as young as 6 years old are sold into this industry.
As I sat there, I looked around at the amount of children all around. Young Girls walked around holding babies…a responsibility they have no right having yet.
Where were their mothers ?
I looked at one of the boys in the group and wondered what he thought about this lifestyle of his mothers ? Was it normal to him? …. What would be his view on women when he is an adult?
I also noticed a good amount of pregnant woman walking around….Not a surprising thing since that is what sex results in sometimes
I wondered if they were still being sold during their pregnancies? How do they even feel about their pregnancies in this environment?
As we moved into the “busier” part of the RLD I was overwhelmed with the darkness of it.
The darkness here lied in the lack of hope and life.
As I walked down the street I looked around and saw men everywhere.They were passed out in random corners or even on the side of the road. In the middle of the afternoon , there were men stooped on the curb , on the verge of slipping into some sort of alcohol or drug induced coma.
As I walked the streets pretty much every man would lock their gaze on me , very obviously undressing me with their eyes. It was super uncomfortable because their gaze would appear almost animalistic at times. I even had one man proposition me. As I would see these men, my initial reaction was that I wanted to punch them in the gut…. But then as I would see some of their faces and the lack of joy I began to think about how they are just lost.
I began to think about sex and why God created it. How it is a gift intended to bring enjoyment joy to us marriage.
But there was no joy in these men’s faces. I looked at their faces and saw emptiness. They where there looking for things to fulfill their desires. Just like with drugs or alcohol, sex was being used to get a quick fix or high in a sense… To maybe give them the feeling of being loved wanted or loved…To make them feel good , if only for a short time.
They need the love of Christ just as much as anyone else.
While we were prayer walking through another area, I felt the urge to go down one particular street.
At the end of the street there was a room full of young children in what appeared to be a daycare center maybe.
My heart longed to go in there. I had the thought of , “what if I created a safe place for all these children to go to here ?”
That was just a little bit of what I experienced the first day we went into the RLD, but I don’t want to drown you with every little detail of it.
The most important thing though is , that after my experience there though I literally could not stop thinking about all these things I saw and experienced. I couldn’t let go of the thoughts I had had or the things I had notice.
Emotions of sadness and anger haunted me.
I thought surely there is more that can be done here.
What about all those kids? How can this be fixed ? Is there any way to even fix it??
The problem is SO huge. This was just ONE city. There are so many more like this. Why isn’t there more people doing something about this ? Why have I been so oblivious to this until now?
Thoughts like these overtook me until I took it to God, and then it all made sense.
One of the biggest things I have come to realize during my time on the world race is to recognize that most of my passions or convictions are not really my own.
I’m not compassionate enough of my own accord to be so impacted and moved by something like this. This was God.
And once I took it to him, “What can be done about this?” , turned into
“Do you want me to do something about this? ” and then
“What can I do about this ?”
And with THAT question it all made sense.
Why I was brought back to India … Why we had met these wonderful people that invited us to do ministry with them.
Why prior to even leaving for the race God had been placing woman’s ministry on my heart and revealing to me how my testimony could be useful in that area.
Why I’ve even had certain dreams recently.
A few weeks after all this , I began a journal entry titled: SEX TRAFICKING NEEDS . I believe it is the beginning results of this revelation and where I believe that God is taking me with all this.
SEX TRAFFICKING NEEDS
Children
- Get the children out. Break the cycle from within!
- There are children running around everywhere! Who watches them ? Are they getting an education ?
- Start with the children… If they know the Love and freedom of God they can influence their mothers. ( a mothers heart is for her children)
- They can grow up and do something about it..They have inside perspective
- Break the thought cycle. Woman DO have worth. They are valued , and treasured.
Men
- Men are vital in this ministry!!
- Just like Alex and Jeremy did with us , men act as a buffer or safety for woman to go into areas to do ministry…They give woman more freedom to do ministry.
- Men also need ministry !! ( ex: Seeing Jeremy talk to and pray with men while we talked to the woman. Also, This is a great way to distract the men who are being nosy about what we are doing)
- They are broken and looking for a fulfillment of desires. Jesus is the answer. Most of these men don’t know any better. Culture and religion and upbringing have made this “normal” I their world. They need examples of something different and a challeng to their mentalities … MEN’S MINISTRY.
- Men can also be vital in woman’s healing (In the right timing and context) . Woman need to know that a man CAN respect them and that they are valued and seen as a treasure.
- A tangible expression of Jesus and His love from a man …. Example : story of “Woman at the Well”‘… My testimony
Healthcare
- Good way to get into districts
- regnant woman – need prenatal care … Do they have safe deliveries ?… midwives ?
- Children need healthcare / check ups
- STD’s ? .. Education ?
Educations / Life skills :
- woman think they don’t have anything to offer as a skill or something of value except their bodies
- most women also never receive an education in this world and they can’t read
- therefore they can’t read Bibles even
- Help woman find their giftings… Each one has them!
- START A BUSINESS (Create or find jobs for them, also will help to fund ministries)
- ex: Coffee shops ( cooks, bakers, waiters etc ) , bakery’s/ restaurants, beauty salons / spas , handmade goods ( jewelry , clothes etc) –> boutiques, daycare’s / nurseries
Safety / Freedom :
- Freedom from “pimps”
- Woman are seen as “property” . Losing a woman means losing money. Must find ways to safely extract woman or children….. ” How much is a life worth ? “
So now I am on a journey of different questions as to HOW I will do something about this new desire God has awakened in me, but I know that as long as I continue to seek , He will continue to answer. I’m not really sure what exactly the future holds for me in this department but He does.
Click here for a instagram post about my first day in the RLD
