Indonesian shares Christ’s love in brothels
INDONESIA (BP) –- The lines on the face of 40-year-old Tri Hartoyo* disappear when Suh Hasan* pops her wild cloud of hair into the doorway. Hartoyo enthusiastically throws her thin arms around Hasan and pulls her into the house. They settle onto a couple of overused couches with patches of upholstery missing. Women Share Gospel […]
Clinics help prostitutes see Jesus
INDIA (BP) — The smell of cooking okra wafts out to the streets, greeting the colorfully dressed women and children streaming into the backyard where a free medical clinic is being conducted. Fresh-cut flowers decorate the pharmacy table in one corner. Woven mats and plastic chairs cover the rest of the dirt yard. Prostitutes and […]
A prostitute – young & widowed — finds faith
INDIA (BP) — Ajanta Gupta* had nowhere to turn. A widow in her early 20s with HIV, two small children and no job, she was desperate. A friend introduced her to prostitution as a quick way to earn cash to keep her children from starving. So, one year after her husband died of AIDS, Ajanta […]
Prostitute made new in Rio de Janeiro
WEEK OF PRAYER: Human trafficking, amid the despair
SOUTH AFRICA (BP) -- The odors of liquor, smoke and sweat permeate the air. One small bulb lights the alleyway. Traffic is light on the main road, but this side street stays busy.
"Mister!" a young woman yells to a car driving past. "You're the daddy! I'm your little girl and I got what you want right here!" Another woman hides in the shadows, quietly crying. The pimps' laughter rises as they share jokes while smoking and playing cards. [QUOTE@left@180=To read more stories about how Southern Baptists are ministering to those trapped in the sex trade, click here.]Two young women share a bottle of alcohol to give them courage to approach the cars driving through the side street. A client parks in the shade, waiting for a woman to join him in the backseat. Another client follows a woman into her pimp's apartment. Thirty minutes later the man leaves.
One after another, the clients pick up the women; somehow there is an endless supply. As one woman leaves, another arrives. Two young women stand in the shadows, hesitant and afraid. Suddenly a pimp approaches and provides them with more drugs. The women begin to sell themselves again. I was convinced I could never end up in a situation like these women -- hooked on drugs and alcohol, forced into prostitution and sold from one man to another. I could never be a slave. I could never be trafficked. One afternoon with a pimp in the park changed my perspective. I knew who he was and what he did. He knew nothing about me. Diallo* was adept at slyly pulling information about my life and passions. I'm not hesitant in sharing my faith, and soon Diallo learned I'm a Christian. Moments later, he invited me to attend church with him. The scenario is all too common. A strong, handsome young man meets a single woman. He is lively and charming. Best of all, he says he's a Christian. New to the area and looking for friends, it would be easy for a woman to fall into his grasp. The innocence of the moment soon can turn into a nightmare. Just one prearranged meeting is all he needs....WEEK OF PRAYER: Clinic’s care includes ‘The Best Medicine’
HORN OF AFRICA (BP) -- The African air is hot and still, stirred only by people brushing silently by as they are invited into the clinic courtyard from the weary line gathered outside. My wife Jeannie and I are taken by the silence. People who are tired, hungry and ill are often very quiet, even the children and babies. They have long ago given up on mere pleading as an effective means for getting help. The medical clinic "waiting room" is a wooden bench on a shaded porch. Patients are asked to sit, five at a time, while waiting for someone to inquire about their problems. Just being there, where someone cares, is medicine in itself -- and you get the feeling they'd love to linger. But the time is short, and the sun will soon make it too hot to continue. Standing in the doorway, wiping perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand, is a Southern Baptist health care worker, one of six at the clinic today. She, along with a few nationals and volunteers from the States, will treat approximately 120 patients before the day is half done. This is the first of three similar clinics they conduct each week in a joint effort with Baptist Global Response in the Horn of Africa. Toward noon I hear a sudden, excited "buzz" among the Christian workers who motion toward the bench and whisper "God has answered our prayers!" Pausing for a moment, one of the workers draws me aside to tell me that only four days earlier the team began praying for an open door to the Muslim community in a village far from the clinic. "Look!" she exclaimed, "those are eight people from the very village we've been praying about. These people have walked all the way here and are our very first contacts." I look again at the sad group sitting on the bench and clustered beside it. Little do they know that very soon the light of the Gospel will break across the landscape in that distant community … the result of YOUR praying, YOUR giving and YOUR praying some more! Soon they will receive what one Christian worker called "The Best Medicine." Very soon, many of them could join the multiplied thousands turning to Christ with hearts softened by the love of these Southern Baptists who minister in a very hard place. This week is critical to our Southern Baptist ministries around the world. It’s the week our churches focus on prayer for our personnel and give to international missions through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, which keeps personnel on the field. But the world deserves more than a mere week of prayer and giving! And the commission of our Lord, "Go! Teach all nations!" demands more of us than ever before. This past October the world's population exceeded 7 billion people, each of whom will be alive millions of years from now in heaven or hell. The Best Medicine is Jesus! Yet it is estimated that 1.7 billion people will die without ever hearing His name. That is both unthinkable and unacceptable for Southern Baptists who eagerly and sacrificially seek to carry the Good News to the very ends of the earth. As Jeannie and I sat on our bed that evening, we reflected on the importance of praying and giving and praying some more. We must both pray and give with sacrificial determination. But if we can continue wearing what we wear, living where we live, enjoying all that we have enjoyed and going anywhere we want to go … then where is the sacrifice? Sacrifice results in change, a present change in our lives with the anticipation of a future change in the lives of others. It will take sacrificial giving, praying and going if Southern Baptists are to effectively impact the world for Christ's sake.
Gripped by drugs, but freed by Christ
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (BP) -- "When people die, is it like this?" Peter Moreira Esteves wondered. Peter, then 18, was bleeding from a bullet wound in his shoulder as two police officers shoved him against the outer wall of a shack in a thicket.
Brazilian drug lord receptive to the Gospel
WEEK OF PRAYER: Danger on Rio’s streets doesn’t deter him from Gospel witness
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (BP) -- It weighs on his heart: One day, he will go out to share the Gospel and not come back. IMB missionary Eric Reese serves on one of the most dangerous mission fields in South America -- the gang-controlled favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
"I wrote a letter to my wife," Reese says. "I said, 'Honey, if I don't return, be strong. Let the girls know Dad's going to miss them. That God's got a plan for their lives, too.'" [QUOTE@left@180=To read other stories from Rio, click here and here.]Reese's passion is taking the Gospel to drug dealers, gang members and prostitutes. "I want to love and show those people that they're not a forgotten people group," he says. "They're not an unimportant people to Christ. Everybody has the same value at the foot of the cross." Reese and his wife Ramona have served in Brazil since 1999 and have raised their daughters Gloria, 13, and Alicia, 9, in Rio's megacity milieu. The Reeses are from Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga.Ramona works with women in the favelas and other low-income women in Rio. In the past few years, God has shifted her outreach to include middle-class wives and mothers she meets at the gym and at her daughters' school and ballet practices. Though Ramona rarely enters violent neighborhoods with her husband, his being there affects the whole family. "I think I was really naïve and didn't really understand what was going on the first four years," she says. "But then you start seeing people die -- people that you know. And you understand what's really going on...." That reality for Ramona hit home the night the police called Eric and asked him to serve as a mediator in a potential gunfight. He was the only person both sides trusted. She didn't want Eric to go, but she didn't ask him to stay. She told her husband to follow God's leading. "I was so afraid. You know how when you're just so afraid, you can't do anything but pray?" Ramona says. Looking back, the Reeses realize how Eric's decision to go that night opened doors to share about Christ. "I don't find that Jesus said, 'If you've got people with guns in front of you, don't share the Gospel,'" Reese says. "I'm not going to let men stop me from sharing the Gospel. No matter what the obstacles are, you see, the Gospel has got to get to these people."WEEK OF PRAYER: In London’s convergence of cultures, world’s unreached abound
LONDON (BP) -- Descend into the extensive London underground transport system and only station names on tiled walls tell what lies above ground.
