Preface: many of these stories
include sensitive information that could jeopardize certain women and
children’s safety. Therefore, all names have been changed and certain locations
have been purposefully omitted. Also, almost all of the pictures I took while I
was over there are unable to be posted on the Internet but I would be happy to
share them with you personally.
___________________
India, home of roughly 1.3 billion people. Though a
beautiful country, India is known to have the highest rates of sex trafficking,
child prostitution, and infant gendercide in the world. It is also considered
one of the most dangerous places for a woman to live. To top it all off, its
1.3 billion residents are located in what is called the 10/40 window- the area
of the world between 10 and 40 degrees latitude- that is in the most need of
the gospel of Jesus Christ. Only 2% of India’s population claims Christianity
with the majority of the population claiming Hinduism. Throw all of these facts
together and you get a huge magnet that was unrelentingly drawing my heart
towards India... and so I went. I went with the hope that I could serve people
in need medically with the gifts and experiences the Lord has given me as a
nurse as well as His daughter.
The only way I know how to properly convey my time in India
is to give you snapshots of moments. Little flashbacks into memories I have already
stored near to my heart...
...Brothels can come in many shapes and sizes. This one just
looked like a shack. The walls were made of a mix of concrete and sheets of
tin. Whatever the roof was made of it was covered by big pieces of tarp that was taped
together. The inside was dark and gloomy with thin mattresses that lined the
dirt floors and ragged blankets that hung in the doorways. Plastic bowls in the
rooms held nail polish and lipstick. The women weren’t chained to the beds but
the longer I was there, the more I realized that they might as well have been.
Some of the women said their husbands knew they worked there... some said their
husbands sold them or tricked them into working there... some said they simply
didn’t have the means to earn money any other way to feed their 5 starving
children at home... one girl motioned over to another girl and said “she told
me there was a job,” but the way she said it made it seem to me that this poor
young girl had no idea this is in fact what the job entailed. The truth is that
these women may not have had physical chains on their wrists but the weight of
the realities of poverty for these girls had them chained with no hope and
unable to afford the thought that maybe one day they wouldn’t have to be
there.... myself and a few others had arrived early in the morning as this was
the women’s least “busy” time of the day with not quite as busy of a “flow” of
customers. We came with the intentions of running a medical clinic and we had a
small window of time before the brothel became busier and was unsafe for us to
be there. The pimps were okay with us coming because they wanted their women
healthy to work. As I was filling out makeshift intake forms I began to realize
that all the younger-looking girls were saying they were “25 years-old” and the
older women were saying they were “30 years-old” as if it was a rehearsed
answer they had given time and time again. As I placed the blood pressure cuff
on few girls I saw self-inflicted injuries that went up their wrists and arms
that stood in stark contrast to the smiles, laughs, and jokes the women were
engaged in. The whole time I was there the stark reality of their situation
didn’t seem to set in. I was in a BROTHEL. Women were being sold for SEX. Why
all the jokes, laughs, and seemingly shallow happiness? And then it hit me like
a ton of bricks. This is their everyday.
This is their normal. They know nothing different- and if they do remember
their former life, they have pushed it far out of their mind as the only way
survive their everyday. As the time went on, I found it harder and harder
to focus on my task. I didn’t want to take their blood pressure. I wanted to
sit these girls down, look them in the eye, and tell them that Jesus loves them
and that there was a way out- but it wasn’t that easy. I couldn’t speak Hindi
(thank goodness we had a few local friends as our translators) and the only reason
we were able to be there at all was because a local woman had spent weeks
forming those relationships and establishing trust with the pimps. One
improper, hasty conversation could jeopardize the whole operation. One girl was
sitting beside me chatting in Hindi with me as my friend translated....
then her expression changed as a man approached her. She took his hand and led
him through the dark door that led to the rest of the brothel. They disappeared
for 10 minutes or so and then they reemerged from the doorway. The man left.
She sat down next to me and proceeded to continue with her conversation. GOD are you here at ALL? I felt
absolutely sick to my stomach.
Later I asked our friend who comes weekly to spend time with
those women how much the women get paid per customer. She told me 200 rupees.
100 rupees goes to the pimp and then they get to keep the other 100 rupees. I quickly
did the math in my head... 100 rupees is approximately $1.50. She sells herself
time and time again for $1.50 each time. She’s told she is worth $1.50, and she
believes it.
...We went back to the brothel the next day to see how the
women were doing with some of the medications we had given them. Also, we came
to bring them flowers. As we came walking up, the women ran to meet us. They didn’t
expect we would come back. I realized they hadn’t had anyone ever care for them enough to come back and not
expect anything from them. As I walked up to some of the women with the
bouquets I explained that these were for them. Some didn’t know how to respond.... some broke off some of
the flowers and placed them in their hair, but this one young girl took her
bouquet, walked to one of the back corners of the brothel and hid it- no doubt
so that it would remain safe until she was done working for the day. My heart
broke... I wanted to bring her a flower everyday. All of a sudden I heard a lot
of yelling and I turned around to see a big crowd of men. We were there a lot
later than when we were there yesterday and it was already becoming more busy.
I asked our translator what all the yelling was about and she said that the
group of men though that us “white girls” were for hire and the women that
worked at the brothel were yelling because they were defending us and telling
the men we weren’t “available”. My heart swelled. Before we left one of the
girls pulled our translator aside and said, “when you guys come I have such joy
and peace... but when you leave, it’s gone. Please come back.”
...We followed the pastor down a long dirt path. He was
explaining that we were on our way to a leprosy colony and that no one really
came to see these people because people in the community were scared of
contracting leprosy themselves. He also explained that when there were political campaigns
going on they would come and drop free medications off to the community, but
because there weren’t any campaigns going on currently, there was no medicine.
We were told there were only a few men still living with leprosy and that most
of the community were just kids of some of the people who had been affected.
When we arrived in the slum I saw a few older men rummaging around desperately to try and
find chairs for us all to sit on. It then hit me that these same men who were
struggling as they adjusted some of the plastic chairs in their efforts to make
us feel welcome were the very men who had leprosy. Their hands and feet were
disfigured and were being eaten away by the disease. My heart exploded.
Fighting back tears I asked if I could pray over them. The pastor explained
that they were Hindu but that they always welcome prayer. I placed my hands on
the men, I wanted to touch them to let them know that I see them and I love
them, and I began to pray....
...It was late at night and we were on the train. Trains in
India are actually crazy... something like 9 people die on trains in India each
day. They are so crowded you can almost not breathe. I looked over at my friend
I had met here in India who had lived here her whole life and was on staff with
the organization I was volunteering with. I laughed at the situation we were
in. There were people everywhere. We were in the women’s car so luckily it was
just women that were pressed up against us, but the men’s car was right next to
us. I said out loud “with this
many people I think we should all sing a song!” (typical statement by me). An
Indian woman who was right next to me said, “go for it! People will join you.”
I looked at my friend, Annie, and asked what we should sing and she said what
about “God of this City?” I then glanced around the train car nervously and
said “can we get in trouble?” We started singing anyway... "You’re the God of
this city. You’re the king of these people. You’re the Lord of this nation. You
are. You’re the light in this darkness. You’re the hope to the hopeless. You’re
the peace to the restless. You are. There is no one like our God. There is no
one like you God. Greater things have yet to come and greater things are still
to be done in this city.” Later a guy in our group told us he heard us singing
from the men’s car. We got some glares for sure but we also got some smiles. That
train car was a light in a very dark place that night.
...“The red light district was right up the road on the
right,” they told me. I made a right turn onto a dirt path and the sight that I
saw stopped me dead in my tracks. I just saw a row that seemed to go on forever
of plastic chairs that were positioned outside of slum huts... some of the
chairs were currently empty, signifying that the woman was currently “taken,” the
rest of the chairs were filled by women waiting for men to make their way down
the dirt path. As a man made his way down I watched as the women fought over
who could have him- the need for money was clear. I waved hello and smiled and
yet I really just wanted to cry. This was a red light district in the middle of
a slum. Many of the women we saw at the medical clinic we ran that day were
older in age. I asked our translator and friend where the younger girls were...
she grimly told me that in this district the pimps rarely let the younger ones
out of their sight (most probably because they were trafficked there against
their will and can’t risk them mentioning that to us. Also, the younger girls
are higher in demand and tend to make more money, and so they couldn't be spared even for a moment). Knowing my love for
children, our team leader suggested that I spend the morning at the slum’s
makeshift school for the red-light-district’s children before coming back to
help with the clinic. I walked up the dirt path and children, whom I had never
met before, began running up to me yelling “Teacher! Teacher!” and they beat me
into the “school” (a one-room cement shack squeezed in between other slum
dwellings). So here I was- standing before 20 children ranging in age from 4-12
who only spoke Hindi... the floor was flooded (its monsoon season in India), it
was dark (we had no electricity) and we couldn’t open the door too wide for
light because it would leave us all soaked from the rain and they gazed up
eagerly at their “teacher” ready to learn. I have never felt so inadequate. God these children are so desperate to
learn, help me to teach them despite all the odds stacked against me. Some
of these children were able to go to actual school after their few hours there
in the morning with me, and some couldn’t afford it. These children were
growing up in a red-light district; almost all of their mothers were most
probably sitting in many of the plastic chairs that I passed on my way up here.
I wanted to cry as I looked at the little girls in the school hoping and
praying that that wouldn’t be their only future.... but who would fight for them?
...The organization I was with rescues many of these types
of children from red-light areas and from backgrounds of abuse. They provide
housing in a boy’s or girl’s home respectively and they also provide the
opportunity for them to go to school. There were roughly 90 kids in total and
approximately 10 had HIV passed down from their mothers. One of our goals for
the week I was there was to treat their hair for lice. All of the children had
lice and it was itching their heads and making them uncomfortable. So we
massaged a liquid in their scalp that would sit for a few hours to kill the
lice and the eggs and then we would comb out the dead lice. I went with a
friend to the “younger boys home” one evening to comb through and wash the dead
lice out of their hair. There were about 25 boys in the younger home so as my
friend and I were walking to their house I told her that I figured we could
comb through their hair and then send them into the shower to wash it out like
a mini assembly line. But when I got there and began combing through their hair
I realized there was no shampoo there for them to wash. I ran back and
retrieved packets of shampoo and when I came back their eyes lit up and they
began jumping up and down with excitement- over shampoo. After combing what
seemed like millions of dead lice out of the first boy’s head I motioned for
him to go wash his hair and he just sort of stared back at me... thinking it
was more a language barrier thing I took his hand and walked him back to the faucet
and I pointed and tried to explain and then it hit me, he had never had someone wash his hair. Change of plans. I then positioned myself in the shower
for the remainder of the evening. As my friend finished combing through their
hair she sent them to me for me to wash their hair. This is the night that
rocked my heart the hardest. As I washed each of their hair, heard them laugh
as they tried to decide whether to hold their breath or not, watched them ask
me to “do it again” when I turned the water off, and then smile confidently at
their freshly clean, lice- free hair my heart actually exploded. I wanted to
stay there forever. After I was
done washing their hair I grimaced a little as they dried their hair off with a
probably lice-infected towel and laid down all together on the floor on most
probably lice-infected blankets. Lord,
are you here? Even when I leave?
When I walked out of the boys home that night that was the first time I
let the tears slip. They had never had
anyone care enough to wash their hair.
...I flew to another part of India for my last weekend in
the country. I spent the weekend in a rescue home for girls who had been
rescued from sex trafficking and backgrounds of sexual abuse. I was talking
with one of the girls who expressed to me her desire to get baptized but then
she became sad and said, “but many things need to be fixed first... I become
very discouraged and sad about my past.” I was then able to look her in the
eyes and tell her that because of Jesus’ sacrifice God already sees her as
clean, loves her, and has fixed all things. I then asked one of the other girls
how she had come to know Jesus. This girl in particular, once rescued, was
placed in a governmental-licensed aftercare home. Because it was licensed by
the government, Jesus and Christianity couldn’t be openly talked about, but ALL
of the aftercare workers just “happened” to be Christians. One night this girl
told me that she was up late crying because she was so scared about facing her
trafficker in court later that week. As she fell asleep she told me that a
demon tormented her at night (which apparently wasn’t new) but what WAS new in
her dream that night was a man that continued to battle against what the demon was
telling her. She told me she didn’t know who the man was but that He told her
“Daughter, do not fear, I am with you now and I will be with you in court” and
He silenced the lies the demon was speaking to her. The next morning the girl
explained her dream to one of the aftercare workers who then told her that the
man in her dream was Jesus. Not knowing who this “Jesus” was, the girl didn’t
think anything of it, but he kept coming back night after night speaking to her
in her dreams, calling her to Himself... “And so that’s how I came to know
Jesus” she told me casually.
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Though these snapshots just barely graze the surface, I
hope they were able to capture some of the real moments I experienced in India.
Many of these moments were plagued with questions that I asked God over and
over:
Lord are you REALLY here? Jesus do
you SEE this? God WHERE are you?
Because to be honest, though there were many good moments,
the majority of the 12 days I spent in India was filled with darkness and
brokenness. And it seemed to follow me home. The day I left India I developed a
fever and 30 hours later I was in the ER in the States with high fevers, chills,
body aches, swelling, a mysterious rash all over my body, and extreme
discomfort. A week later they diagnosed me with Dengue fever that I had
contracted from a mosquito my last weekend in India. The doctor then explained
to me that if I went back to India, or any country that has high rates of
Dengue fever, and contracted Dengue again, that my body would develop Dengue Hemorrhagic
fever in response (since my body has now already been exposed). My body’s
response would send me into almost an immediate state of shock and if I wasn’t
around proper medical care almost immediately, I would die. The questions were the same, just now in a different
environment:
Lord are you REALLY here?
Jesus do you SEE me? God WHERE are you?
The thing is I KNOW
the answers to those questions. I know that Jesus sees that little slum child eager
to go to school who honestly realistically probably never will. I know that He
was in those brothels with me. I know that He’s there when the boys in the
boys’ home lay down to sleep at night with their lice-filled hair. I know He’s
the God of that city..... but I don’t feel like it. I don’t feel like it when I
feel darkness in every corner; when there is a Hindu temple on every street and
over 1 billion people are bowing down in front of demonic-looking idols. I
don’t feel like Jesus has “won” when I watch the teenage girl take a man in the
back only to get raped for $1.50. It’s hard to believe that the lepers in the
colony aren’t forgotten by God when they are literally forgotten about and
abandoned by their own people. It’s hard to see all of the chaos, brokenness,
and heartache in front of my face and still trust that God is in complete control...
because honestly, I don’t FEEL it.
I KNOW that God timed my dengue fever perfectly to get me to
the States in time to receive proper medical care. I KNOW that a million people
(it truly felt like that many) were on their hands and knees praying for me day
in and day out. I KNOW that Jesus healed me.... eventually :) BUT I still, in the
quiet moments, struggle with doubt. Jesus,
did you forget about me? I just wanted to serve You, to tell others about You,
and now I’m faced with a totally unfair ultimatum- travel to those places
again, hold those sweet children in my arms again, and you could die. How the
heck is THAT fair?
This may be the moment that you are expecting me to tell you
that I broke down and the Lord spoke some beautiful new word to me that made
everything magically okay. But there was never that moment. Instead, as I was
tearfully explaining to Him that it wasn’t FAIR, the Lord simply asked me: “Was it FAIR for my Son to die on the cross?”
And in my tears I told Him it wasn’t. He grabbed my hand and
brought me back to that moment:
When Jesus was hanging on the cross DYING it looked like the
Lord was the OPPOSITE of in control... it seemed like, and Jesus even felt
like, He was forgotten. And that bloody cross sure as heck, in my opinion,
wasn’t a picture of a victory.... and yet as I look at the cross, it doesn’t
make ANY of the situations I’ve experienced make ANY sense, BUT it assures me,
through the midst of it all, that there is an unconditional God that loves me-
that loves those Indian people.
I then take a look at the empty tomb and I realize that the
cross is proof that He doesn’t always change the circumstances, but its
proof that He always has purpose....
Suddenly John 9:3 flies to the front of my mind- I resonate
with how Jesus’ disciples are struggling with the fact that a man was BORN
blind. Lord where WERE YOU? HOW did you
MISS THAT?
In their struggle to balance Jesus’ sovereignty and the
world’s brokenness they ask Jesus what this man did to deserve His seemingly undeserved
circumstance. Jesus says, “neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might
be displayed in his life.”
I don’t know why the Lord made Him blind versus something
else. I don’t know why millions of girls are battling for their life in
brothels seemingly invisible to the world and God. I don’t know why the Lord
led me to India and now I have dengue fever. I don’t have all the answers.
But I’m now realizing
that in India, and in the hospital, I kept asking God “where He was” because it
was easier for me to look at the broken situation and pretend like God wasn’t
there (and to ask Him to get his butt there) than to look at the broken
situation and believe that He already was there.
But that isn’t faith.
Faith is “being sure
of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1).
Dengue fever or not, may
the work of God be displayed in my life,
em
