Monday: Emotions were made to execute change
"Because of the devastation of
the afflicted, because of the groaning of the needy, Now I will arise,"
says the LORD; "I will set him in the safety for which he longs."
Hello All!
The temperature is rising here, summer is on its’ way, which
means we have entered into a month of targeted action to the city, and we are all
in that stage of adulting where we enter into arguments about who is more tired
than the last person. But I must say that it has all, so far been very worth
it.
I know I haven’t written in a couple of weeks. This is
mainly due to the fact that I stopped and started a bunch of possible posts, making
it about half way through each before realising that I wanted to write about
something else! And through this process I realised that it was ONE big post
that I should be writing, but perhaps to describe the events that have been
happening over the last couple of weeks and my day to day life, should actually be written up in a little
series of posts covering a week. So, welcome to my trial week of mini-blogs.
So our church is
participating in a movement called GODSTOCK, for the month of November (the
explanation for the name is longwinded and I’m not particularly sold on it, so
we will just skip over that part), this means that throughout the month we have
prepared actions throughout the city to inundate the city with examples of the
love of God. It has been a wonderful throwback to the times that we used to
have with Voz na Rua in the days before we planted the church. The whole fellowship
gets involved with the dream to see a city touched by the love of God through the
local church. 
We started our action with the night of Flowers for Angels,
and what a start this was. I think in describing the night to some of my
friends there in Scotland, I used the phrase “I don’t know if I will ever
emotionally recover from this evening”, and I am fully aware that this is
hyperbole, and I guess what I meant is that I don’t want to forget the way we
felt hearing each of the stories that night. That I don’t want to forget the
reality of the situation of those that are selling themselves on the streets,
the life-stories, the situations, and the plight of women who are desperate to
care for their families, and have found the only way that they feel they can to
be able to do this.
The idea behind this evening in the church was that we would
transform the church back into the restaurant that it was before we started
working on it. We set up a beautiful dining room, with a live band, and some restaurant
quality food and décor, and then we sent 10 couples out on to the street
corners, to invite sex workers to come and spend the evening with us. When the couple returned with the girls, they
would spend the evening having silver service dinner together. At the end of
the evening we washed the feet of the girls, in a biblical show of love for the
girls, and took them where-ever they wanted to go.
This is not the first time that the church has been able to
participate in this kind of work, but it was a first time for me, and although
my role for the night was as photographer meant that I wasn’t able to directly
communicate or hear the girls’ stories, but I got to meet them all, and after,
when I did hear their stories, I was glad I hadn’t been in that situation,
because knowing me, I would have made promises to each of them that I
realistically couldn’t keep. We had
women from many walks of life join us that night, we had girls who didn’t look
much older than 15, we had women in their late 40’s and 50’s. We had women who
were grandparents by the age of 29, and women who were in university trying to
study their way to a better life, but paying the way through prostitution. One
girl was taken to the streets by her first ever boyfriend, who needed her to
pay for his drug habit, which he passed on to her once she was broken from
having to sell herself. The reality is that many of the stories began with a
decision made for these women, by a boyfriend, an abusive family member, or by
a community. None of these women saw this as a glorious situation, and many
were afraid for their families, and for their own lives.
My sense of justice is outraged by the situation of these
women, and I wish I was in a position where I could eradicate this type of
slavery off of our streets, but that wasn’t possible for this one night, but
what we could do is show them love. Many of the girls were surprised by the
care that people had for them, many were as emotional as I was, and couldn’t
quite understand why someone would want to care for them, show the love. For
some it was a simple dream fulfilled to have a fancy dinner, some were sceptical
as well – knowing that one night of care wasn’t going to change societies view
of them.
I wish I could tell you all the stories of all the women we
met that night, I wish I could show you the portraits that I had the honour of
taking of these women, but in order to protect the identity and safety of the
girls. You will just have to take my word for it, - loving the downtrodden and
the outliers is in our mandate, and God gives us hearts changed for those who
need it. We are grateful for this opportunity and for the next steps that it
has led us too.
"He raises the poor from the
dust, He lifts the needy from the ash heap To make them sit with nobles, And
inherit a seat of honor; For the pillars of the earth are the LORD'S, And He
set the world on them.
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