Imagine you’re a 10 year old girl. You live in a small
village, you have 3 younger siblings, and your parents don’t have enough money
to feed all of you. Your parents start to get desperate. They are trying to
send you to school, and you love it, but it is just too much for them
financially. Your mom becomes frantic because she doesn’t want her children to
starve to death, so she meets someone from the city who promises to give her
money if she will sell your virginity. Your mother is heartbroken, but can’t
deny that she needs to feed her family. So she brings you to this man who takes
you for the weekend away to the city. While you’re there you have to do
everything that this man wants you to do. Finally after being taken advantage
of all weekend you get back to your home where you can’t talk to anyone because
you are ashamed and scared. Your parents then realize that they can sell your
virginity multiple times after you get a surgery that sews your hymen back.
After many more weekends away and several surgery’s, the trauma is too great to
re-sew you again, so your family now sells you to a brothel where you can make
even more money, which will be sent back to them so that your little sisters
and brother don’t have to enter into this life as well.
This could be the life of many young children here in
Thailand, but because of Remember Nhu it isn’t! This month we’re staying at a
children’s home where they rescue the children before this has to be their
story. Many parents are in the situation above, but instead of a person offering money for their daughter’s virginity, Remember Nhu’s staff offers to
take their child/children, give them an education, give them shelter, give them food,
and most importantly their child will not have to be sexually abused. I thought that
being here and working against sex trafficking would look like going into bars,
talking with the girls, and trying to bring them out of that life. But being on
the preventative side of things has shown me that this doesn’t have to look
like what I thought it did, and I can save someone from that life before it
even has to happen! These girls’ lives are changed forever because they are
here. If they were not here 85% of them would have been sold by now and living
in a life full of hurt and trauma. Thank God that He not only is a God that
rescues, but He is a God that protects and saves! These girls don’t know what
they’ve been saved from, the life they could have had at 6, 9, 12, 17 years
old. These children still have their innocence and opportunities for a better life. Our ministry this month is not just to another children’s home, it’s to
amazing children who have joy and hope because their Father saved them before they even knew they needed saving!
