It’s Wednesday night and it’s time for prayer meeting. I walk outside and am greeted with little girls grabbing for my hand and yelling “aute Stacey, aute Stacey”; they’re so sweet, so innocent. We walk hand in hand to the ministry center and find a place to sit; they scoot their chairs close to mine so they are still able to hold my hand.
At the beginning of prayer meeting, there’s a video clip shown about Threads of Hope. I know the faces, I know the situations, I know the reality, but for some reason the clip strikes a chord within me…I’m caught completely off guard by the fact that I’m having to hold back tears. Then I glance at the two sweet girls sitting on either side of me and realize why I’m so emotional. They are at risk to become one of the human trafficking statistics that are so often talked about; they are the children that are sold into prostitution when parents can’t provide food for their family.
It’s one thing to see a poster with a child’s face on it about the injustice of human trafficking. It’s a completely different thing to hold a child in your arms and look into their eyes so full of innocence, praying that they won’t become one of those statistics.
Human trafficking is no longer a statistic to me. It’s no longer a number. It’s no longer a percentage. It’s the face of a 6 year old girl named Deansey and an 8 year old girl named Ylove; our neighbors that sit with me at church and appear to play “bide, bide, pate” (duck, duck, goose) every afternoon.
Precious girls that live in poverty. Precious girls that build sandcastles and run through the water without a care in the world. At times, I want to ask them if they know to stay away from people that they don’t know. I want to ask them if they know not to sell things on the beach, something that makes them a target for people that “forget” their wallet in their room.
I want to say so many things to them, but they’re so young. So naive. All that I can do right now is smile and hold their hand. All that I can do right now is help carry wet sand to their sandcastle and help them write their name with rocks in the sand. For now, all that I can do is pray and trust that God can protect His children so much better than I can.
