Moving from Shame to Honour

At our project’s new hair school, I found myself sitting in a salon chair staring into the eyes of a beautiful woman who was cutting my bangs as straight as humanly possible. These eyes were huge and full of determination. I was suddenly brought back to the first time I had locked eyes with this bright and confident 30-year-old woman.

We were at a Christmas party outreach our project had put on for women and girls we had built relationships with throughout the year. She had only looked my way in guarded glances. She was wearing revealing clothing, three-inch high heels, and caked-on makeup. She was constantly checking her phone, and although I was relatively new to our project, no one had to tell me she was most likely talking to male customers. We never spoke that day other than a smile and a quick hello in the local language.

We met again at another outreach party the following Valentine’s Day. Again, she was dressed the same and clearly on a break from her work as a sex trade worker. Our national staff had been visiting her beer shop for two years. She had been drawn to the capital city with the promise of an amazing income that would help her family gain status and honour in her village. She left her village with a man and travelled 19 hours to the city where she was then locked into a brothel with no money and a debt to pay the man for bringing her to the city. With no ability to pay him or to travel back to her village, she saw no way out and began to work at the beer shop serving men whenever they came.

Our national staff visited her shop every week with opportunities for her to sell handicrafts for extra income—or even just time spent painting nails—but always with the goal to talk, to share Jesus, and to build trust. After two years, she was ready to leave her known nightmare for an unknown future.

We have countless stories like this. Women and children that, through some way or another, have found themselves in extremely dangerous situations with no seeable way out.

We have shelter homes that provide food, safety, and community for women and girls who leave their work. We seek to care for the body, heart, and spirit of each woman and girl. Our discipleship program is robust and healthy. We are creating a health project that will aim to care for our members as well as those still in the beer shops. We also are starting a psychological program through an organization that works with aftercare in human trafficking.

In our host country and culture, poverty is seen as one of the biggest shames. To be poor is to be cloaked in shame. It is more shameful to be poor than it is to have a daughter in prostitution. Being accepted and having a place in your family is also of extreme value here. If you are not connected to your family, you have no connections. This is vital to understand in our work and ministry.

If we save the individual yet do not give both a community and an opportunity for them to be accepted by their families—even though many times those members were the ones who pushed them into the dangerous situations—we are not helping them completely. Because of this, we believe we need to offer our project members a means to make an income and send money to their families. We attempt to help them reach the education level they want as well as look for ways for them to create and reach big goals. We have birthed a jewellery-making project out of this need, have a store in the city, as well as partners who sell internationally for us. We started a hair school through a partnership with a like-minded organization that builds beauty schools internationally.

Because women and girls can make an income through our projects, they are able to maintain relationships and honour in their villages. We are committed to reconnecting them with family, and we send our national staff with them to visit their villages. This provides them with a reconnection to their home as well as an opportunity to share the Gospel with least-reached groups. They bring gifts to their village and share their new hope. The woman at the start of this chapter went back to her village and shared what she had learned about Jesus. Ten people accepted Him and are growing in their faith!

We are also able to educate villages about the risks of human trafficking. Many villages have been tricked into sending their daughters with the hope and promise of good income. We had one outreach group go to a village and do a two-day presentation on unsafe migration and human trafficking. After they presented, a man came up to them and said, “This is me.” Caught off guard, they asked him what he meant, and he said, “This is me. I’ve sent girls from this village to men who promised good work, and I realize now that I have been working with traffickers.” Through our project, we can teach and be proactive and help stop some of the trafficking that is rampant.

We also have a café that runs as a business and is incorporating an organic farm and store. These were started with the goal to build income for the shelter homes, but we have seen that running a good business is an incredible opportunity for ministry as well as educating and empowering the community.

We are dedicated to using empowering strategies to raise up national leaders in our businesses. It required a shift in our perspective, but it has proven to be a successful and sustainable way of growth for our project. We want to have a healthy mix of foreigners and nationals, but we do NOT want a national group that is dependent on the foreigners forever and unequipped to grow.

Our future hopes and plans are to build a vocational training school that will bring safety and permanency to our shelter homes. It will give us validity in the community and an opportunity to help more girls and women as well as equip them with the skills and experience needed for good employment. We hope that this school will not only educate women and girls but will also be a place where people can come to know the Hope that never fades and the Redeemer who makes ALL THINGS new.

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This is an excerpt from the book Making God Known. Download it here!