This last moth I had something called Manestry It’s where all the guys on the squad get together and do ministry as men. We worked with an origination called Remember Neu. What they do is they go to rural mountain villages and they befriend the people there and they also educate the community there. They then look though the village for at risk kids. They then ask the person taking care of them a series of questions like “Has someone come to offer to buy your child?”, “Do you have jobs?” “What do you do for fun?” Not all the questions are the main questions they need answered before taking them in to their care but some are and they mix them in with answers that do not matter as much just to make sure they are not just giving them the child so they will have a better life. Some kids sold when they are as young as 3, then when they become 13 they are taken from their families.
When the kids arrive and the location where they life they get a house mom and dad who are both Christians. They get 3 meals a day, and lots of brothers or sisters to play with. They also get an education when they get there and they can go all the way though collage for free. Some of the kids are too old when they arrive and cannot catch up to where they need to be or they can’t keep up. For those kids they give them job skills like farming, fixing cars/trucks, taking care of fish and how to take care of land. It is also much cheaper to save them before than to help them afterwards. The ones who were in the sex trade have mental issues, health issues, and they need counseling, and education to get them to where they can be productive members of their community. The biggest thing that they get is a Christian education, and that leads to a relationship with Jesus.
Some of these girls/boys who are in the trade are there because they grew up in poor communities where there were members that have wooden homes. Wooden homes are a sign of wealth, and most live in bamboo homes. They grew up seeing it every day and they saw it as a beacon of hope for them. But their hope was in the wrong thing. They see it as a way out of poverty but they have no idea of the long term pain and suffering that it causes them to have.
What we did while there was we got to mix concreate by hand with shovels. We also planted some onions that would later be used for food once they were ready to be eaten. We pulled weeds around pineapple (it has very spikey leaves around it). We also cut down grass that was over 10 feet tall to create land that could be farmed and to create part of a bike path around where they lived. We played soccer with the kids a few times a week. We also got to just love on them, this could mean playing UNO for hours with them or volleyball until it got dark or Skipbo or whatever else they were doing or wanted to do.
Many times I wondered why where doing what we were doing. Like why we were the 4th team to clear the same filed with the tall grass. Other teams did it for weeks but they kept having people do it. We were also asked to clear the plants from outside the fence and I saw no point in that. It was in those moments that I needed to remind myself that I was there to serve them, even if I saw no point in it.
