The Girl From Amri Tola

I played volleyball all afternoon Thursday, and I could have played much longer. Not ordinary volleyball though, volleyball in a dusty courtyard, with a sagging net and about 30 extremely excited school children.

 

This little dude got his Blue Steel on. 🙂 

 

During the few days of working at the school, we helped with the morning worship services by singing songs and sharing testimonies. (Yup, I even spoke!) While the children studied, we visited villages and toured the grounds until after lunch. Then, we played with the children until they had to go home at 4. Thursday, though, was different. After the morning worship, we sat in the director’s office as he passed around a paper with the history of Amri Tola and one of the children’s testimonies. (The same history that I described in my last post.) I almost started bawling right there in the office.

 

     

This little one stole my heart                                       The pastor, his wife & 1 of their beautiful children that live

                                                                                            & work at the school

I want to share the story I read with you here. Not just as some far away tale to make you cry, but as an amazing testimony of faith and God’s work. GEMS has kept this girl’s name anonymous but I have seen this story in all of the girls’ faces I have seen the village. This kind of bondage is real, it’s happening. Please search out for yourself what God would have you do with this knowledge, and pray. Stories like this don’t happen only in Amri Tola, but all over the world. Even in your backyard. Pray for captives to be released, for bonds to be broken, and for the ways of the wicked that perpetuate this system to be confounded. I hope your faith is strengthened by this as mine was….

“I am 12 years old studying in the 3rd standard. I joined the school when the project began. Before I joined, I used to play with my friends because in the school where I studied, no teaching was going on. The tradition of my village is so bad that a good person cannot stay there. I also was spoilt. After coming here, my head is alright. I want my village to receive the same deliverance. Small kids like me don’t go to school. They are caught in the wrong misdoing of the village. Even in their small age, they are married and they stay in the village. They have no ethics or morals. How God has loved me, in the same way I want to show my love to them. I tell my friend not to dance; she says what will I eat then? She even asked me to pray for her. She is slowly coming to know about Jesus. My sister doesn’t allow me to go out and tell about God She forces me to stay at home.

I like coming to school but I don’t like going for dances. My mother and sister force me to go for dances every Saturday with a group. Sometimes men pull my hand and my mom says we have to bear with such men as we are living in such society. I wish my mom was like aunty and uncle (the pastor & his wife that live at the school). Then I and my village people would all be free but my mom never listens to me.

My sister says “You are the only daughter (left). If you don’t dance, who will take care of old mother and how will your 4 brothers get married?� I tell her, “Even the poor study and get married decently, how do they do it? If they want to send their daughters to dance, they can but they don’t. Why aren’t they sending? Why aren’t they greedy?� They say, “Our village itself is like this. What can we do? Become a prostitute. What else do you think you can become?�

Using me, they earn a lot of money. My mom takes all the money. I have gone dancing in weddings to many places. I feel very bad when I go because I don’t want to dance. I want to do something. I want to become something for God. God has brought me this far so I want to do something for Him. If it is God’s will, He can bring me out of all this.

I believe in Jesus. I believe He can take me out of all this. I have received the anointing of the Holy Spirit and also spoke in tongues. One day I knelt down and was praying to God and crying. That same time God sent an angel who took me and placed me on His lap and gave me something to eat and to drink.

After that, I told God, “Please save me from this hell.� God said, “I will definitely save you from this. Don’t follow anybody else’s saying. Read God’s Word and listen to it and you will be saved.� I tell God, “My village is dipped in sin. Please have mercy and save it from sin.� I believe God will definitely deliver these people from their sin. Someday all who are sinning will come to God. I also pray for the people of Vishrampur (another nearby prostitute village) all the time……

…..I don’t like going home at night. I want to stay in the hostel (ITI school) itself. When I read the Bible, they (family) don’t allow me to read the Bible. When I pray, they don’t allow me to pray. They ask me, “Who is this Jesus?� I tell them, “When you come to know about Him, then only will you realize what I am saying.�

I want to become someone great and do something for my village.�

After reading this, my team still had time before lunch, so Charlotte suggested we go on a prayer walk for Amri Tola. We walked up the road part of the way into the village and started praying. We prayed for over an hour and a half, and it became one of the most powerful prayer experiences of my life. I could just tell God was there. I felt Him telling me that He was getting ready to take back this village from darkness and bring revival. I can’t describe it but I just knew.

 

After lunch, we jumped into playing with the kids wholeheartedly. I’m not that good with kids, so the first couple days had been kind of crazy. They were playing volleyball that day, though, and things just clicked. I played with about 30 older kids. After they disappeared, I kept playing with the little ones. Towards the end of the day, as some of the older girls joined in and played, the awareness of their reality and what they had to go home to hit me. My heart broke for the girls. I became so angry for them and what they are forced to do. I wanted to cry and take them away so they wouldn’t have to ever know that kind of evil again, but that wasn’t possible in the moment. I steeled myself to just keep playing, to keep making them laugh so they would forget, if only for a few minutes, what they were going home to. I felt helpless, but I know that what I cannot do, God can. God doesn’t need me to take back this village. He’s already doing it. He’s using these children to do His work. I’m just glad I got to be a part of it for a few dusty, tiring days.