A strong cappuccino and a sweet chocolate croissant with my favorite blonde Congolese/Kenyan/Canadian/American girl in a posh cafe with free fast internet and high prices to match. Its so needed. Momentary escape. Momentary release from the real world- from our world where 10 year old little girls sell their bodies for a bag of popcorn.
As most of you already know God totally rerouted me after Mozambique. I thought I was going to Cameroon, but I sit here in Mombasa, Kenya as I write this post. Kenya couldn't have been more of a surprise to me. I've never thought about living in Kenya. I've never even really had any desire to visit Kenya. It simply wasn't on my radar for deep dark nations I wanted to adventure to. But, then Jesus happened. Once again He came in, ruined my life, and wrecked all my plans the way He always does. I love when He does that! And He offered me better plans than I could have imagined for myself. So here I am, in Kenya :)
Before going to the school in Mozambique I had expectations of what it would be like and what me and Jesus would talk about. Well, I was wrong about that too. In fact I had no idea what I was in for. The main topic Papa God and I discussed while I was in Mozambique was quite unexpected: sex. God talked to me about sex for 3 months straight. We talked about good sex and we talked about bad sex... then we talked about really really bad sex. The kind where one person wants it and the other does not. And the kind where one person is the slave and the other is the owner. And the kind where one person is a grown man with lots and lots of money, and the other is a tiny little girl with lots and lots of innocence. We talked about little girls living in cages and working as sex slaves. We talked about brothels. We talked about rape. We talked about prostitutes. And we cried together. We cried for both the prostitute and the pimp. We cried for the rape victim and the rapist. We cried for the sex slave and the owner. We cried for the innocent little girl and the rich man. Then came the best part. We talked about hope.
You see, the truth is that God is crazy madly in love with every single one of these people and He so wants to show them the fullness of His love, and He wants to use people like you and me to do it. He showed me the part of His heart where the little girl lives, the one who had all the innocence before the rich man raped it away. He keeps her there, deep inside of His love along with all the other ones just like her. He told me that He has a plan to rescue all these little girls out of their cages (physically and spiritually) and bring them into their true identity as daughters of Papa God and brides of the Lover himself, King Jesus. But the plan includes people like me and people like you. He's just waiting for us to say yes. So He asked me if I was willing to play my part in His plan. And I looked deep into His heart and saw His daughters and His brides- the ones who used to be slaves and rape victims and prostitutes- jumping rope and laughing til their bellies hurt... and without even thinking twice, I smiled and said yes!
Now I must admit, at the time I didn't realize the magnitude of that "yes". I thought maybe one day far far from now I would be working with child sex slaves or child prostitutes or some group of children who have been sexually violated in some way in some country somewhere doing something. When? I didn't know. Just really far from now. Where? No clue. Just definitely not Kenya. How? No freakin' idea.
But much to my surprise the timing was now. I now live in Kenya in a village called Mtwapa and I am working with a friend of mine named Cassandra whom I met when she came to speak at my school in Mozambique (www.pursuingnormal.com). God broke her heart for this place years ago when she heard about the outrageous statistics regarding child prostitution, child sex slavery, and sexual exploitation here in Mtwapa and along the coast of Kenya. Since then she has been working here part time (she works mostly in Congo starting schools in rebel territory and rescuing child soldiers) in an effort to rescue child prostitutes and sex slaves as well as stop child prostitution and sexual exploitation as a whole... I know, she's amazing! Praise God! Recently she began renting a house here in Mtwapa which brings me to the reason I am here. We call the house "Bella House" and we are working to make the house a rescue and rehabilitation home for child prostitutes under the age of 13. Our criteria for which girls we take into the home is very specific. There are many child prostitutes under 13 here in Mtwapa, but we want to take in girls who are either orphaned and therefore resort to selling their bodies in order to survive or girls who are forced into prostitution by their parents. We are starting with 6 girls and as Holy Spirit leads we will take in more. But we want to start small so we can give each girl the attention she needs.
We are still in the beginnings stages. We literally just put up our curtains last night and at this very moment there is a welder putting a lock on our door, 2 carpenters outside building us a dining room table and school desks for our girls, the bedspreads for the girls beds are at the tailor and will be ready tomorrow, and we pick up our couch on Thursday. Our house mom moved in a few days ago. She is amazing. She is a professional counselor and works with girls with cases like ours all the time. We still have lots to do, but things are moving forward praise God! We have been working really hard to get the home all ready for our beautiful daughters and we hope and pray to have everything all ready for them to move in by this weekend. So this week (along with picking up furniture and bedspreads of course) we plan to really focus on rescuing girls to bring home. We are asking God to highlight the specific 6 He wants us to choose. We went out to the streets last night because yesterday we were informed about a nearby club where young girls are forced to perform in live sex shows and live in a nearby brothel. We are hoping to get some of those girls because that is absolutely not okay with us. But as I said, we are praying for God to send us the specific 6 He wants us to start with so we don't know what that's going to look like exactly yet. So please, join us in praying for our new home, Bella House.
So as I said, Jesus always surprises me and gives me His plans which are so much better and greater than my own. I knew that this time I was coming back to Africa to take in orphaned children. I also knew that eventually i'd be working to stop the sexual violation of children. But He outdid me once again. Not only are we taking in orphaned children, but we're stopping prostitution at the same time, and we're doing it NOW! I'm so excited to continue to see His kingdom invade this place. I'm so excited to bring His little girls into freedom and watch them bloom inside of His love. I'm so excited to see this whole village, this whole nation changed by the power of Love. There is hope! He is our Hope and He is pouring Himself all over this place in all of His glory!
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