Before I begin, this post ‘gets real’. If
you’re not prepared to learn the realities of unjust actions taking place
around the world, then skip to another blog, or go watch something happy on TV.
If you want to see why Cinthia and I really left our home for 11 months then
continue reading…
As you’ve previously read, this month The
A-Team Remix is in the Philippines. A beautiful country in South-East Asia made
up of over 7000 islands. Our ministry this month is on the amazing island of
Mindoro, just a short ferry ride from the main island.
One of the things that the Philippines is
best known for is their tourism industry which brings countless ‘wealthy’ (by
Filipino standards) foreigners to their beautiful white beaches for a
stress-free vacation. What you may imagine when you think of this is bellow:
Unfortunately ‘wealthy’ foreigners and poor
economy has also introduced a horribly widespread sex industry.
What you see above is barely scratching the
surface of the amount of cases we have seen in our few trips to the nearby
beach. What you need to understand is that here this is the norm.
The Women
If you’ve ever travelled somewhere
tropical, I’m sure you’ve seen the people on the beach selling various
goods/services such as bracelets, picture frames, cigars, massages, etc. As
foreigners we often assume they’re just trying to make a quick buck off us,
sometimes we oblige for that “must-get” souvenir other times we shoo them away
and continue basking in the sun. Our team this month has learnt that (at
least here in the Philippines) the women earn their living by selling
bracelets, and if sales aren’t good, they reluctantly turn to the industry they
see bringing in the money: prostitution.
There are also families that see the
financial potential in prostitution and begin to prepare their daughters or sons from extremely young ages.
The young girls have grown up and now see themselves as worthless, unwanted,
and used pieces of meat; while the young boys have grown up and are now
extremely sexually confused (for a very informative read, check out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakla_(Philippines)).
The ladies on the teams here have had the privilege of
talking to many women who are in this “area of business” and have shared with
them how much God loves them, and we’ve been able to let them know that He
see’s their beauty no matter what they’ve done in their past. Through this
simple testimony we saw one girl leave her “job” and return to her family after
being here for only a few days. Through similar acts, Threads of Hope (our
ministry this month) has seen hundreds of women saved from similar fates.
The Men
Now it’s really easy to look at the women, and feel pity for them (trust us,
our hearts break every time we walk down the beach) and at the same time look
at the men and want to rip their genitalia off; however God’s been working in
us tremendously this month and He’s allowed us to see more of the full picture.
Above, I mentioned a girl who we saw
leave the sex industry, the same day some of us began to build a relationship
with the gentleman she was “helping” (2 completely unrelated meetings, God’s just
that good that He made the 2 stories overlap like that). This gentleman shared
with us his loneliness and his inability to find a wife for over 40 years. You
may be saying to yourself “of course He’s
going to say that” and maybe your right, but there’s something more going
on here, trust me.
Prostitution (as we know it in North
America) is (speaking from my knowledge fully based off movies such as Pretty
Women) primarily a 3-stage process, you pay, you receive, you/they leave. Here
in the Philippines however, the men spend the entire day with the women, sometimes even weeks, we’re
talking meals together, walking hand-in-hand, buying clothes/jewellery, etc.
While we’ve been here we’ve heard some men try to use this as an excuse, saying
that the women are using them just as much as they’re using the women. I wont
go into that debate at all here because the truth of the matter is that the men are hurting just as much as the
women are. The men are either alone, or they’re relationships are so broken
back home that they feel a pressing emptiness, an emptiness that they choose to
fill with what their physical bodies turn to first, sex.
Both the women & the men are victims in
the sex industry. In the one corner we’ve got women who need to provide for
their families so they feel pressured, or are forced into the sex industry;
what they really need is to turn to God for their strength and boldly choose a
better lifestyle for themselves despite what others might say about them. In
the other corner we’ve got the men who are so empty that they’re trying to fill
themselves with physical pleasure when what they really need is to feel God’s
presence in their lives since it’s only by his love and grace do we
feel fulfilled.
As a group we discussed it a few days ago,
it’s a two-sided problem, we have wealth on one side, and poverty on the other,
and nothing will change unless both
sides do something about it.
If
you want to help women get out of the sex industry, and at the same time give
them an amazing opportunity to learn about & build their relationship with
God, please support Threads of Hope by buying bracelets that we’ve sent back to
Mississauga; or just go straight through Threads of Hope. You can comment/reply
to this and I’ll help you get in touch with Cinthia’s parents, who are in
charge of the sales.
