This week we’ve been taking a look at the issue of human trafficking.  I’ve shared some startling statistics, I made some people nervous and lost some followers discussing social justice, and then shared the moving story of a victim of human trafficking in Thailand by the name of Elisabeth.  So, if you’ve hung on for the ride, thank you.  Perhaps this series has tugged at your heart but you don’t know what you can do.

One practical way to help is by supporting the ministry of Women at Risk, International.  My sister attends the same church as the founder of this fabulous organization, so I have been aware of it for a couple of years.  This past weekend we had the pleasure of hosting one of their board members, Sarah Rodgers, as a speaker at a women’s event at our church.

Women at Risk (also known as WAR) seeks to support established ministries around the world and give a voice to the silenced cries of women and children in desperate need.  One of the main branches of what they do is supporting safehouses for women rescued from human trafficking.  All of the safehouses they work with have a clear mission of providing not only physical assistance but also true spiritual hope through the good news of real freedom in Jesus Christ.  This weekend Sarah told us that HALF of the women in their safehouses have accepted Christ as savior!

In the safehouses, women are taught trades such as sewing and jewelry making to support themselves and make them less vulnerable to being caught back up into trafficking.  Some of these women may have lived with traffickers since they were 5 years old and don’t know how to do anything to support themselves.  Others were offered a good job to support their families and ended up deceived and enslaved – teaching them a skill allows them to work with dignity and avoid the false promises of traffickers and their “jobs.”  When you purchase an item through WAR, the proceeds go directly back to the safehouse and the woman who made it.

You can…

*Read more about their ministry

*Browse their beautiful selection of items on their website.

*Hold a jewelry party in your home or church to inform your guests about trafficking and WAR’s ministry, and then support the ministry through making purchases. [They'll provide you with everything you need!]

“When you purchase a product made by rescued or disadvantaged women, know that your purchase empowers a woman to work with dignity.

…When you take that black pearl necklace home and wear it, you are literally wearing a piece of another woman’s story of rescue and redemption. Now you have made her story entwined with your story.

At WAR, Int’l events, women literally go to a display table and just touch things with a far away look on their face, knowing that “this has been handled, carefully made, and crafted by a woman who once was chained to beds of horror and is now sitting in a safe, warm, happy place working with dignity and making beautiful gifts of distinction.”

…When you shop this product you are literally lifting a woman from the gutters of life to stand tall and throw her head back and smile at the world and know that she is valuable for the first time in her life.”

It is a desperation we cannot comprehend.

A state of despair which drives a mother to sell her two week old baby to known sex traffickers, just to feed the other children she has at home.

A sense of hopelessness known by the bar girls of Thailand, selling themselves night after night – because their own families have ordered them to go there, or perhaps have taken them there against their will, to “get a job.”

A plea for help, heard only by God, from a small girl tied to a bed in the backroom of a brothel in Asia.

A gripping fear felt in the heart of a deceived girl from the United States, promised a singing career in Japan, who wakes from a drugged state to find herself as a sexual slave.

I cannot imagine the questions in the minds of these women and girls.

Think about this…

* Each year, around 1.2 million children are exploited in the global sex trade

* It is believed that there are between 12.3 million and 27 million children, women, and men in slavery today – more people are enslaved today than during the whole of the trans-Atlantic African slave trade

*According to the FBI, human trafficking is the fastest growing segment of organized crime.

*Babies are sold into slavery globally for as little as $100.

Tomorrow I will share more about our women’s ministry event this weekend highlighting this crisis… there are things we can do to help. To provide true help to the suffering a world away from us.

In the meantime, please take a few minutes to watch this… and pray.

God, open our eyes to see the silent suffering, open our ears to hear their cries. You are El Roi – you are the God who sees. Show us how to act with mercy and justice on behalf of these precious people you love, people who bear your image, people who have been used, broken, and forgotten by the world.  You never forgot them – may we never forget, either.

Our church has had an annual women’s Christmas Tea for years. We used to hold it at a small local reception venue that would cater for us – it was already decorated for Christmas, so all we had to do was make some favors, plan the music and speaker, and show up! The downside of this option was limited space and having to charge the guests to cover the facility costs.

For the last couple of years our Christmas tea has been growing and has been changed in really exciting ways. Last year we decided to host it at our own church to change the feel and keep the cost down. Those of us on the women’s ministry committee hosted tables that we decorated, provide dishes and linens for, etc.

We also turned this into an event to support our local Pregnancy Support Center by making it a “baby shower for Jesus.” We asked the ladies attending the event to bring something from a list of requested items from the pregnancy center, and during the program we had a song playing during which the hostesses dismissed their tables one at a time to bring their gifts and present them – we had a Christmas tree with a nativity set up on the stage, and we piled the gifts under the tree together.

This was our second year of this “O Come, Let Us Adore Him” event. This year the women planning the event wisely decided to have others in the church sign up to decorate a table or bring food to contribute. Much. easier. :)

It is so fun to see all the tables so beautifully and uniquely decorated.

The food kept coming in:

And so many needed items were collected for the pregnancy support center:

This year the event was also as a natural time for a new ministry in our church to be announced and explained – two wonderful women have felt burdened to begin an orphan and foster care ministry, seeking to raise awareness for the need for adoption, support families willing to adopt and foster, and show God’s mercy and love to children in the foster care system. Next year kleenex will be incorporated into the table centerpieces. :)

It is a beautiful thing to see women who love the Lord gather together for fellowship, but also for a deeper purpose.

O come let us adore Him, for He is Christ the Lord!

Last night our little living room was packed to the gills with 18 women starting our Bible study going through Kathy Howard’s Before His Throne! (We have 3 more coming next week… where will we all sit? This is a good problem to have!) What an amazing thing to have such an awesome group of women excited to meet every week to study the holiness of God and what it means to fear Him – God must have smiled!

It seemed appropriate that I would take today to talk about how much I love women’s Bible studies, because it is Things I Love Thursday! :)

You know what I love about women’s studies? I love having everyone introduce themselves and going around the room hearing the diversity of life situations and experiences in one room. We had women here who have 4 children, 14 grandchildren, some great-grandchildren; then the next person might be a new mom of her first baby, sitting next to a single woman, sitting next to a young woman married with no children!

Our church is large enough that we tend to stay somewhat segregated within our age and life-stage groups. We love our young couples ABF, but sometimes you need to be around some older and wiser women to learn from them as they share their life experience and alongside them from the Word of God. Women’s Bible studies are a great place to have women gathered who normally don’t “rub elbows” within the church body.

I have, from time to time, had young women express frustration to me that no one was stepping up to mentor them. I’ve always thought this was strange that they were waiting for a church program or something to connect them with older women… or perhaps they wanted someone to approach them in the hall and say, “Young woman, I will mentor you!” You want someone to mentor you? Find some older women and spend time with them – and Bible studies are a great place to start.

In the last study I led, one of the girls was sharing some parenting struggles she had been having with their small children. It brought tears to my eyes to hear these older godly women in the room share wisdom and pray so tenderly for her – it was a precious time together.

As we meet together- all different ages, all different levels of spiritual maturity, all different life experience – as we open God’s Word together and discuss the Truth, as we seek Him in prayer… what a beautiful aroma surrounds that place.

How wonderful and pleasant it is
when brothers live together in harmony!
For harmony is as precious as the anointing oil
that was poured over Aaron’s head,
that ran down his beard
and onto the border of his robe.
Harmony is as refreshing as the dew from Mount Hermon
that falls on the mountains of Zion.
And there the Lord has pronounced his blessing,
even life everlasting.
Psalm 133