Building relationships with African refugees trapped in trafficking.
With $25, you help OM team members reach out to women in the trade by providing gifts that open the door to conversation and help present the Gospel.
“Why are you not calling me? You are my Mum here,“ said my friend from Nigeria. I had met her on the street for a walk through the red light district where she works. I hadn’t realized she was waiting for me to contact her, so I called her the following week.
The next day we met in a big shopping mall and found a place to have a meal. She took out her asylum card (refugee ID card) and I noticed it was her birthday. “Thank you God that I listened to YOUR voice and met with her exactly on that day,” I prayed.
We chatted about our favorite pastimes and she told me again and again that she wanted to learn to read and write. She comes from a big family and they couldn’t feed all the children, so she was sent (possibly sold) to work for a lady in the city when she was a child. She never got to go to school. At 17 she left that place, got a boyfriend and became pregnant. Her biggest wish for this child, now 9, is education.
She got to Europe by way of the desert and a dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea, a hardship many Africans don’t survive. She didn’t talk about the years that followed. “For the last few years I have had a good life and I can send money to my family,” was her conclusion, and I was wondering how awful her past must have been to say that life is better now as she is standing on the street, selling herself in below-freezing temperatures. What touched me listening to her story was her joy, her trust in God, and her ability to love and forgive in spite of all the hardships she’s endured in her young life.
This story from an OM team member in Europe is not unique. Most African refugee women have similar backgrounds. Those that are new have to pay back “debts” of $50,000 - $100,000 to those who got them there. The laws forbid them to have access to the work force, but it is legal for them to sell their bodies if they have the necessary papers and regular health exams. OM wants to see women set free.
So this outreach will bring awareness to how girls are recruited, and show men the danger of pornography through printed materials, church meetings, and the enlistment of volunteers. The goal is to connect with 5000 people, focusing on the refugee women trapped in prostitution and brothels.
The OM team has assembled small gifts to use as icebreakers, hoping to meet 1000 of these enslaved women. Getting women out of the trade requires long-term relationship, eventually pointing them toward re-integration shelters and skills training facilities. Each woman learns first that she is loved and created by God, who speaks hope to her hopelessness. She realizes she is worthy to be rescued, a jewel in the night, precious to God. Then OM team members can help each woman work through how she might leave the trade, and how the team can help. Getting out is difficult, as the women are in a network, though it does happen, and the process of liberation is different for each one. But each starts with that first contact, with that small gift which gets the conversation going.
With $25, the team can purchase three icebreaker gifts with an evangelistic booklet. These gifts can be something simple as a mug filled with chocolates and teas on Valentine’s Day, but they go a long way toward making the women receptive to the team. Thanks for your gift.
