The “Butterfly Girls,” as I’ve so fondly referred to them this month, have been my ministry focus here at Destiny Rescue.
Here’s a little background on the project:
Destiny Rescue’s Jewelry Project began in Chiang Rai, Thailand as a way to rescue young girls from the life of prostitution. The Phnom Penh Center saw a need for the teenage girls in the slums, and expanded from the Project in Chiang Rai in October 2008.
dump, and they count on their children to bring in an income. Being illiterate, with little or no education and not having official documentation leaves these teenage girls with very few alternatives. They are too old for the children’s learning center, and prostitution is the next easiest way to make money. The Jewelry Project keeps the girls off the streets and provides them with a safe working environment. They have their own work room in the learning center building, with the hope and dream that they can learn enough business skills to some day branch out on their own. Along with jewelry making and butterfly creations, they attend Khmer language lessons or computer lessons for two hours in the afternoon. The best part is that they are in an environment that is filled with the hope and love of Jesus Christ.
So…. Here’s where I came in: the butterflies.
See, the jewelry project was SOLEY a jewelry project in its origin… until the girls ran out of beads. Since they make wholesale pieces of jewelry for specific companies, they depend on people/teams coming to and from Chiang Rai to bring the specific beads back and forth.
So… in between having jewelry to make, the girls really needed something to do to make their time profitable, since the project is paying them wages and is supposed to function like a business.
So… the girls had a massive bag of thousands of these butterflies and I was supposed to figure out what to do with them.
Oh man.
It seemed like a fairly fun and simple arts and crafts task at first… but it’s seriously been a month of really hard work, mixing my scrapbooking skills with marketing and productivity thinking. Yep- my Business Master’s degree is ACTUALLY BEING USED on the race, Mom and Dad!!! J 
Long story slightly shorter…we were sold on the idea of gift tags. They are REALLY cute, anyone can use them on their gift wrap, they are perfect for advertising more about the organization, they are light weight for packaging and sending overseas to be sold, the materials are readily available for a good price, and the girls can make good quality in a short amount of time.
for supplies to make samples, creating templates in publisher for them to print and use, finding the best place in the market to by materials, getting them equipped with the few extra tools they would need to make it all happen, and all of this and more without having any idea how to speak their language. Things like color cordination with ribbon color, paper color, and butterfly color became an all day task. I had fun identifying each color and counting the butterflies one day. Can YOU decide which pink would be called Pink Panther and which one is Salmon? And… how would YOU explain that using hand motions? 😉
The best part of my month was the last week, when I actually got to start interacting with the girls and teaching them the way to make the gift tags. I realized that making a “product manual” wasn’t going to cut it. Most of them cannot read… and plus they don’t speak English, anyway. Bonnara, the Khmer lady who is in charge of the girls, understands some basic English, but still doesn’t speak the language. So, I made a
large sample board with a “good” tag and a “bad” tag, pointing out all the things they needed to check for before they packaged them. They had a good time laughing at my failed attempts to speak Khmer. We never really did communicate via words… but somehow it all worked out! They picked up on the process very fast, and I was totally pleased with how smooth the teaching transition went.I would totally be lying to you if I said this was a perfectly peaceful, fun loving month. This was definitely an emotional and spiritual rollercoaster for me… more so than I’ve experienced in a VERY long time. (I’ll leave that for another blog). The added tension of constant work kept my stress level pretty high, and it felt like a battle most of the month.
I worked on this up until the very last day before we left. Friday afternoon came,
and I handed Pat (our contact) the finished brochure, a gift display sample plus a big box of 200 handmade gift tags to be sent to Australia with a team on Sunday. The first box of many more to come.
Finally… I could breathe.
Finally, I felt the peaceful victory that I had completed the task set before me.
Finally, I could take a step back from the front lines and see what God had been up to this month. Wow. I don’t know if I can really explain the feeling. I’m still trying to figure out all of what exactly transpired this month for me on a personal level. However… this isn’t about me. This is about them.
Here’s what I know for certain happened at the end of this month:
These girls were shown a little more hope for making it out of the generational trap of poverty and prostitution; one more step into the freedom that God has for them.
The atmosphere in the butterfly girls’ room changed dramatically over the month we were there. They went from barely seeming like they were doing anything to recognizing that what they are making actually has a purpose; that people wanted to buy it and genuinely liked what they were making! 
There was a team visiting the learning center for a day, and they were the first to see the gift tags in their final product form. The team absolutely LOVED them and wanted to take some back with them to sell in their church in Australia! The butterfly girls were totally blown away by their excitement, and I think it gave them a sense of pride and accomplishment that they hadn’t felt before.
They have a purpose, and I got to be a small part in God’s plan for their lives. I got to help give them back their wings.
