I feel the need to write and to share what has been going on lately. Mexico City continues to break me and challenges me to step forward to help the many needs around and among this craziness of uncertainty, God blesses me of time with Him to rest, pray and wait in faith.
Living situation: I will be moving the end of this month. Living among my team outside the city, has kept me from ministry and deep partnership in the city. Early on, God has blessed me with an opening to rent a room with my new adopted Mexican mom this next month. Pray that this transition moves smoothly and that I will still be strongly connected with my team.
Ministry: I am still trying to find my place in ministry. I feel the desire to come alongside Camino a Casa as my main organization, but what about the desire to work with kids? World Vision has not answered my calls... However, God has blessed me with women (about 7) who desire not only friendship, but someone who can help guide them closer to the heart of God in His Word. Your prayers for these women have been abundant! I don’t know how God will use them, but oh how I am encouraged to see great transformation in their lives! I can share with you in detail about each one, but for now, let me share with you a young woman who I JUST met yesterday I will call her Gloria (because you can see the beautiful glory of God in her face)!
Gloria since birth lived in a broken home. Her abusive alcoholic father had left the family and her mother sought for another man to fill the emptiness in her life. She was just 18 years old when she had Gloria and very much immature in the ways of life. She drank, smoked and had relationships with several men who only encouraged this addiction. Many of these guys abused poor Gloria and her older sister by touching them in inappropriate places. Home was very hard full of violence, alcohol, sexual abuse, and a mother who simply denied/ignored the pain that was going on among her very own children.
At the age of 16, Gloria’s life turned from bad to worse. She desired to go to school, to study, this was her first year of high school, but simply couldn’t pay for this. At this time she fell in ‘love’ with a 38 year old man who said and did everything she thought she needed. He presented a job that would pay a little less than $600 a month in Monterrey, Mexico. She was desperate to leave her home situation. He said he loved her and would visit her. This looked like a hopeful future, but it was only a trap for more abuse. She was one of the many that are currently caught into human trafficking. For work, she was obligated to give her body. The extent is horrible. A young girl, 16 years old – trapped! No place to go. Depression sat in. Self-hate increased. It was a pitiful state. This lasted for 5 years!!
As she sat besides me, I couldn’t help but tear up! This beautiful young woman has been mistreated & terribly abused in many horrible ways. And in strength and beauty, she testifies today, that if it weren’t for God working in her life today, she would be in a worse depressed state as she had been. It is only God that has been giving her the ability to continue on and a dream to help heal and rescue the young women around her who has also been trapped in the same scheme. She is currently writing a book of her experience. Her identity is protected for it still goes on, and the network is very strong and well organized! She wants to fight again injustice and perhaps study law! She wants to make a difference!
Simply from hearing her story: My can't help but to think, How can I be part of this? What can I do to love Gloria? In tears she shares that she has been praying for friends who won’t judge her for what has happened, who won’t criticize her or degrade her. She needs friends and I am willing to be that friend for her. Pray for Gloria. It hurts to write the book and yet she knows it must be done. Pray for her family. They still don’t understand why she was gone for so many years and it hurts to be the 'scapegoat' for the pain that goes on in home. Pray for this HUGE ministry that God has placed before her to do, that God will continue to strengthen her work. She has confessed, “I’m weak, it is God that has strengthened me to move forward.”
"You evildoers frustrate the plans of the poor, but the LORD is their refuge. Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion! When the LORD restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad" (Ps. 14:6-7).
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