Project: Rescue

It’s been a long time coming.  Four years to be exact, since this dream, this vision; this need was identified and planted in my heart.  Four years ago since I woke to the sound of the Muslim Call to Prayer at 5am and called out to MY God in silent prayer.  Silent because I lay a metre away from another girl on a mission.  Called out because this girl on a mission (me) was being missioned herself.  The mission that went on outside of me reflected the mission that God was trying to accomplish inside of me and that July morning in Nazaret, Ethiopia, the mission was accomplished.

The childhood pain, the adulthood shame; all culminated into a place of purpose.  Unforgiveness I held against my father, my foes, myself; at that point seemed futile.  It paled in comparison to the stories I had just heard. Here I was trying to piece together my story to share.  In trying to figure out what parts I should expose, I navigated through my dirt and my perceptions and reflected them back off the lives of these women.  Nothing that I had ever experienced seemed wasted.  I thanked God for carrying me through.  For “what you [they] meant to harm me, God meant for my good.” But not just my good, the good of others. 

For the time my father told me he would pay me $2 when I ended up on the street.

For the women who had taken away the security of my relationships.

For the friends who turned against me when I needed them the most.

I finally saw the purpose in my pain.

These women I had encountered in Nazaret, their stories broke the floodgates of my tear ducts.  Their testimonies penetrated the defense walls of my heart.  Their children tore down the ideologies I upheld in my mind of what life should look like.  My life was at the mercy of their pain.

Fast forward three years and I find myself walking to church through a hallway of brothels.  This street lined with women and children in the same situation as the women I had met in Nazaret.  Except they lived on the opposite side of the wall of hope.  Hope was not in sight for these women as it was in the Women in Nazaret who were on their way to recovery. 

But one woman found it.  Her redemption had come.  Her grace had been found or GRACE had found her.  I helped to move her off the street and into a new place and received the blessings from onlookers that I didn’t deserve.  I was just a straggler in a bajaj who just happened to be in the right place at the right time to help this woman make the best move she had ever made.  The move first began in her heart though. 

I had been a part of this ministry of Hope in Nazaret and knew that there was more that this woman needed than a conversion and relocation.  She needed rehabilitation. 

Not long after another woman died.  A woman who had cried out for help but failed to receive it before her lifestyle took this mother from her children.  From HIV to alcoholism to prostitution; the legacy she left behind was not one worthy of any accolades. 

Women on the street witnessed two events that MUST have shaken their worlds.  They saw Life and Death pass before them.  Life given and life taken as a result of choices made.  SURELY, I thought, this must have made them question their own decisions to be where they are and doing what they were doing. 

Now that I have seen, I am responsible… There goes that line again..

So I find myself again this year receiving GRACE = undeserved, unwarranted, unexplainable, outlandish UNMERITED FAVOUR.  By this grace, I overcame the temptations that faced me again.  And the Bible says that we are more than conquerors.  I heard it once said that we are MORE than CONQUERORS when WE ourselves CONQUER and then HELP OTHERS to do so!!

So in His time, and by His Grace I set out to connect with these women who God had placed on my heart. 

Last Sunday night my friend and I went out to meet these women where they are at- in their workplace. 

We walked into one house, bar, brothel- whatever you like to call it.  It’s getting dark and the kids are still playing outside.  They take us in to see their families. There’s coffee being poured and a customer is waiting on the bed in the room adjacent to the room we enter.  We sit on one bed which takes up more than half the space in the room.   I can’t help but think of the activity that has taken place on this bed.  My heart revolts.  The nerves soon dissipate into the coffee cup that is always accompanied by conversation; otherwise a spurring on of one is instigated. 

So we talk, play, break the ice with introductions and exchanging of names and glances that signify peace.  Selam new.  It is peaceful on this bed of desperation.  I ask how work is and the young pregnant one says it is good.  The other disagrees and says, No, it’s not good.  "It’s bad." 

She has just been deported back into the country because she had been found illegally working in Dubai.  She was desperate for a way out and we had come with a large signpost showing her which way to go.  So we leave them with a decision and a time and place to let us know what they decide.

Four days later, the word had spread and 18 women come to sign up for the program that was about to take place the next day.  Unsure of whether or not they would all come, we welcome them with open arms and big smiles and sign up their names on a piece of paper.

So Thursday comes and the lunch is prepared by two amazing ladies who, at the last minute had prepared for the unexpected response.  We are waiting for the call and it comes.  First one woman and her baby and then seventeen more and three more babies.  All boys.  All fatherless and yet full of smiles when given a simple toy to play with.

Trust was displayed as they shared their stories.  Short versions to break the ice and to make them reflect, as I did when asked to share my story, about whether or not they were ready to change their lives.  Tears were shed and defences were lowered as they made the first step into the journey that could possibly set them free. 

We heard stories of slavery and bravery...stories of abandonment and desperation...stories of love lost and dead ends that led them to this place they would never have chosen before. Two hours later and we had names to the faces I had walked past so many times before.  Hope made an appearance and ultimatums were given. 

Their stories were familiar yet again so heart breaking.  I have heard them before and I can understand their dilemma in a society where streams of income are not readily available to the uneducated and rejected. 

So we have job to do.  The relationships we have built with people working in the same field will hopefully make it easier for us to do so. This is them...

Yesterday on my way to church, I walked past these women again.  I am no longer a stranger to them nor they to me and they ask if we will meet again this week and I say YES!  They are all planning to come again this week.  Even without promises of money or an allowance or even a description of what our rehabilitation journey will look like.  They come in faith and in hope to receive Love; and the greatest of thing we can show them right now is Love.  Love will Rescue these women.  It’s the only Thing that can.

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Cor 13:1-7;13

This song has been ringing in my ear this week  It’s a song that was written by an amazing girl who came here last year in January with a team from SBU in Missouri.  The lyrics go like this:

Because she wakes up every morning, walks down to the corner, turning every head as she goes; she makes a living with her body, let’s somebody own her, coz that’s the only life that she knows. She doesn’t know what Love is…

So we will sing about ...

(Song by Madi Walker)

LOVE is something worth sharing.