There’s a lot this life likes to overlook. We close our doors, keep words in hushed tones, we don’t speak of what happens where we don’t dare to venture because it’s too shameful.
But how is anything supposed to get better if it remains hidden in the dark and where no light can shine?
At one point during these past two months, the girls on my team and I went with a local missionary to a dirty karaoke bar.
At this establishment, you walk in and the girls are all sitting in a fish-bowl like room and you pick which you’d like to entertain you for 3 hours in a private karaoke room.
Yes, places like this exist. Yes, girls are trapped there. And yes, it is actually worse than how I am describing it to you right now.
So that night, we went and and rented a room and a girl. We sang karaoke, we danced silly, we laughed, we had fun, the local missionary talked with the girl the entire night in the local language and then we left, we walked to a nearby coffee shop to debrief the night, and then we broke down.
Overall, the local missionary has been doing this ministry for many many years. She has gone to this spot many times whenever there is a group there to go with her, and she has helped many girls out of the life they have there. However, there are also many many times where she finds that the girl is actually choosing that lifestyle for herself.
We met a girl who was only 19 years old. She had run away from home and took this job to defy her parents and to rebel. She has only been there for 2 months and does not yet owe her pimp anything. So basically, it’s not too late or overly complicated for her to leave at this time.
But over time, women who are booked frequently or who have been there a long time begin to be seen as irreplaceable in the eyes of their pimp. The pimps will arrange it so that the girls owe the club money. That way the girls are financially unable to leave, or else their loved ones are threatened when they try.
It’s a heartbreaking reality to see close up and face to face. To look these girls in the eyes. To talk with one, get to know who she is, learn her real name, and then to walk out free and just leave her there.
The local missionary is very hushed about this ministry. Not many people even know that she oversees these outings and the karaoke bar definitely has no idea that she is the one who is responsible for helping so many women safely leave the club and obtain a better life, or that she is also connected to a business that employs women who are taken out of hard situations and are given fair wages.
Once we left that night, she told us about her conversation with the girl. She was able to share the name of Jesus and the Gospel. She was able to speak truth into her life that she is worthy of so much more, that she doesn’t have to throw her life away, that she can still leave if she decides to, that she is loved by God, that she is important and has so much more to offer the world.
At the end of the night, she was able to exchange numbers with the girl, and the girl is interested in meeting up with the local missionary later on for coffee and conversation.
Please Pray:
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For the girl: that the tears she shed while learning about the love God has for her will encourage her to actually meet up for coffee and will leave the situation while it is easy for her to do so.
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For the local missionary: that she will continue to see the Lord move through nights like this, and that her purpose there will continue to remain hidden to the public eye.
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For my team of girls: it’s really hard to experience something like this. Please pray that God would help them learn how to process through every hard thing they have seen and to see God’s heart for the world amidst it all.
Now picture this, you are 6 years old and you are making your family chocolate chip cookie recipe. This is the taste you’ve come to know and love as you get older. It smells like and tastes like your childhood. You learned how to bake with these cookies, how to crack eggs and to measure ingredients. You learned how each ingredient affects the cookie and even did a science project on what the cookies do if you leave out one ingredient as a time.
It was the smell you would come home to after a long day of elementary school that would bring joy and the sense of being loved. Your mom made you these cookies. She wanted you to appreciate them and to give you a gooey gift.
And now it’s 18 years later and you haven’t made that recipe in years. You can’t remember what they taste like. But you prepare the same cookies in a foreign country for girls that spend their nights working in the Red Light District.
You try one again for the first time and it brings you back to childhood. Back to a time where life was simpler and less complicated and the worst thing you knew was arguing with your sister over who gets to lick the spoon.
And now you are walking the paths of the park where girls and their pimps are stationed periodically and where the only love they receive isn’t true.
The girls on my team and I have been visiting these girls, sitting with them, and just hanging out. From week to week, they remember our faces and they light up from excitement to see us. During my first visit, we made those cookies with love and painted cards with encouraging words and verses as a way to connect that love given back to Jesus.
One girl in particular, had a little son and she slept where she worked, in a wooden shack that was probably only 3 feet by 1 feet. He received his first ever chocolate chip cookie that day. He lives this hard life but he still has no idea how hard it actually is. All the while, this mom gives all her love to her son but she doesn’t receive any for herself.
But a stranger gave her son his first ever cookie. It’s such a small gesture compared to what you want to say. But it created a huge reality shift in your heart.
How can I receive the blessing of where I grew up?
As I’ve gone throughout the world then home to America and now back, I’ve seen what a blessing it has been to be able to give and to use that gift of growing up in a good environment for the world. With your actions to speak, “I’ve experienced this good thing so I know what it looks like. Here let me share it with you.”
Because it wasn’t my neighborhood, or my county, or my state, or my country that made my upbringing so great. It’s because I was being loved by people who gave away the love they recieved from God.
And that you can create anywhere and at anytime.
And even though it may seem like not enough at times, I think of the great commandment. TO LOVE GOD AND TO LOVE OTHERS.
Jesus told us, that to love the Father and to love your neighbor as yourself are the two most important commandments. So WHY do we ever feel like loving is not enough. That materialistic blessings would be greater or creating a perfect circumstance for someone would be best.
We know those things don’t fulfill or satisfy! And it’s written in scripture.
“If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” – 1 Corinthians 13:3
I encourage you to ask yourself.
–> how can I be loving the people around me better?
–> is there someone specific I should be loving better?
–> am I taking time set apart with God to cultivate that love?
–> is there anyone in my life that is not experiencing love from me?
Because if i’m called to love and I am not loving, then I am missing the mark of what the Lord has for me and I am not walking on the path that He has carved.
Circumstances like those above exist partly because this word ‘love’ has been shattered and broken.
LET’S REDEEM THIS WORD.
This passage is one you’ve all probably heard many times. But as you read to the words today, I ask that you open your hearts, and you read as though it is the first time you’re reading it.
“Love is patient, love is kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
That’s a powerful description. It is beautiful. It is captivating. It is desirable.
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Love is patient; it doesn’t include worry
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Love is kind; it doesn’t include insecurity
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Love does not envy; it finds all it needs in Jesus
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Love is not boastful; it gives all glory to God
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Love is not rude; it emphasizes the best in others
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Love does not insist on its own way; it follows the voice of the Father
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Love is not irritable; it seeks to understand
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Love is not resentful; it finds joy in every circumstance
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Love does not rejoice over wrongdoing; it mourns over the ways of the world
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Love rejoices with the truth; it seeks to see THE truth!
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Love bears all things; it remains proud of the ones it loves
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Love hopes all things; it trusts in the goodness of God
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Love endures all things; it gives grace
This love is the love I wish to give and I wish to receive in my life.
And that’s the kind of love that I CAN give and receive in my life.
~And you can have that too.
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I am still $2,500 away from reaching my support needs. I ask you consider giving $10 today towards field expenses for my final month away!
