Are
you ready for some more unrefined honesty? This week I hit a rough
spot. I’m talking, bottom of a
treacherous hole and no visible way out. I don’t remember the last
time I felt so trapped…so useless. In fact, this may have been a
first. At least to this extreme.
Sometimes
(okay…ALL of the time), I want to be out there-changing the
world. I want to be holding orphans, cleaning wounds, calling people
into greatness, digging ditches, riding 57 hour African buses, and
living without electricity. I want to bring clean water, remove open
sewage systems and educate about human trafficking and basic
community health practices. I want to bring the real hope
and deep love of my
Jesus. I want to be on the front lines.
sometimes I don’t get to do those things. Sometimes I sit in the
background and spend my week in Georgia making it possible for other
people to go out and bring change. And change is
exactly what’s happening.
is a glimpse into my incredible squad from this week alone:
Currently
six of the all-women teams are working directly with sex-tourism
throughout Thailand. The average age of the girls in these brothels
continues to drop-in 2003 it was hovering at 13 years. Four years
later, girls were being sold
as young as three.
I
have received stories from the teams that have literally stopped me
in my tracks these past few days. Stories of street boys being
transformed into women against their will so that they could be sold
for sex. Stories of a family being so desperate for money that they
sold their two-year-old daughter for cash. Stories that are real and
messy and happening right now.
me leave you with one (or two) snap shots.
One
of the teams came upon this situation as they were walking down a
street within the red-light district. They encountered an
older man on a motorcycle stroking the hair of an eight or nine year
old girl. He was smiling at her and reinforcing that it would
stop hurting soon. He
encouraged her in the job she had done and told her the
first time is always the hardest.
The girl’s pimp
laughed alongside him as the little girl stood there-crying.
