This month I am working at Remember Nhu ministry in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
I absolutely LOVE serving here!
Rememeber Nhu is a Child Sex Trafficking Prevention organization
that rescues young girls and boys who are at high risk of being sold into prostitution, sex slavery, and trafficking.
This organization rescues these children from these situations and gives them a new childrens’ home to live in with local Thai Christians being house parents for them.
Most of the children come from the hill tribes of Thailand.
Here, most of the time, children are sold into prostitution by the parents or other family members so that the family can get the money that they need. In this culture, it is most important that the family is honored. One of the primary ways that a family is honored is by the esteem of money and prestige that the family has, and so just as long as the family gets money, the family is honored and supported — it doesn’t matter so much how or where the money comes from, so prostitution isn’t a major concern, especially for girls who often are not deemed valuable anyway. Sometimes, a child is sold because they are just unwanted. Sometimes a parent remarries and the new parent doesn’t want the kid, so the parents relocate and the child is left effectively orphaned.
We had the opportunity to visit a hill tribe that many girls have been rescued from. We met the chief of the tribe and got to walk around.
This is what most of the houses look like in the village.
But there was one house we were told about before we got to the village.
It is this stunning house made of complete mahogany wood, a beautiful exterier.
This is the rich facade of sex. The story behind the image?
We were told that although we could take pictures of this house like we could with the other houses, not to pay special attention to it.
The reason is because the mother who lives here sold her daugher into prostitution in the city, and that daughter is sending money home for her family.
That is why they have the nicest, richest looking house in the entire village.
Since Remember Nhu has gotten involved in this community, there has not been a single child in the past 2 years sold into sex from this vilage. But the children here are still in danger. That girl that is working as a prostitute in the city gets more money if she can get more girls working for her.
I want to leave you with two other images. Two other images of the sex industry.
These are two of the little girls that we get to play with and love at the childrens’ homes.
Some of the girls here are teenages, but these two little girls have captured my heart.
As this is manistry month, one of the guys in my group was saying how this month is an opportunity for us not just to grow as men of God, but also to learn what it means to be good husbands and fathers someday. We do manual labor in the mornings and afternoons, working out in the 100+ degree sun, and then in the later afternoon and evening we get to play with the kids. It is like being a father, working in the day to provide for your family and children, and then in the evening spending time with them loving them.
This girl captured my heart. When I took that picture, I was thinking how I would have adopted her right then and there if I could have. God has granted me the heart to be able to love her with the love of a father–truly with the Father’s love.
And this girl.
Typically, Remember Nhu doesn’t even take children as young as she is. But when someone from the organization was walking through the market and saw a 15 year old girl trying to sell this little girl (the 15 year old ended up being this girls mother), how could you not be moved to reach out and help. The organization cannot buy people, but they did talk to the mother and got her to release her daughter to the home so that the organization can take care of her.
These two precious little girls, who are even too young to even know about sex let alone the implications of it all, could have also been the faces of child sex slavery.
Look at them again. Look at their faces. Look into their eyes.
These girls were the potential face of the sex trade, which the sex industry has produced from prostution and pornography, which so many of us has supported out of our depravity.
But for these girls, the story does not end in chains. It ends in freedom.
Praise be to God and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen.
