$2.00
What can you purchase for $2.00 in the States?
Two items off the dollar menu at McDonald’s. Hardly a full meal. Maybe a drink, depending where you go. It might buy you a tall iced tea at Starbucks, but most people spend on average double that to get their morning caffeine fix. In California, it won’t even buy you a gallon of gas.
Last night I went to a karaoke bar in Cambodia where we paid $2.00 per girl to spend time with them for two hours. For $2.00, men in Cambodia (whether local or tourists) buy the bodies of these girls to satisfy their lustful desires. The younger girls, as young as 15, are worth more, and once the girls get past the age of 24, they are sold for even less, as low as a quarter. These women are stripped of their dignity and objectified in a culture that deems their worth as …
$2.00
We paid for the time of 10 of these beautiful souls, but we didn’t go in order to take from them or receive anything in return. Our only agenda was to love on these women and show them their true worth…
They are worth dying for.
They have been paid for by blood that is worth more than all the gold and silver in the world.
No matter how dirty, shameful, rejected, discarded, scarred, and hopeless these precious women may feel. Their worth is not what lost men pay for them. Their worth is determined by what Jesus, King of Kings and Lord of Lords has paid for them.
I had the immense pleasure of getting to sing over these ladies. Some of my sisters in Christ who have gotten out of this lifestyle shared their testimonies and loved on these women. We got their contact information. We shared that this isn’t the only way for them to provide for their families. We danced with them. We hugged them. We prayed with them. We showed them love, with no strings attached.
I cried with my new friend who shared how her mother had died 5 years ago and how sometimes she has thoughts of wanting to die too. She has a 9 year old daughter who she only sees every 6 months to 1 year because she can’t afford a bus ticket. Her daughter sings to her about Jesus. And we sang to her about Jesus and held her on behalf of Jesus in the very place where she sells herself to earn money for her daughter.
In the darkest of rooms light shines the brightest. (Sleeping At Last)
In that place of darkness, (both literally and spiritually. Even the physical atmosphere of sex trafficking service places are dark. “Because people want to do things they’re ashamed of in the dark,” said my teammate.) a light shone out.
I saw hope flash in the eyes of one girl where there was previously deep pain. The dawn was arising after the darkest of nights, perpetual night over and over again. The cycle can be broken.
$2.00? You are worth dying for…
