MATURE CONTENT WARNING due to thematic subject of the worst kind of trafficking
She is 13 years old. She has spent her childhood in poverty, raised in a culture that values sons who can carry on the family name and take care of parents in old age. Her world has a high rate of infanticide, even a medical system that helps give excuses to end the lives of pre-born baby girls, unwanted, unvalued. Girls go to their husband’s families, and dowries must be paid. What family wants girls?
All this, she does not know. She accompanies her father to the market, naïve and very young. When her father tells her that a new “aunty” will take her to buy new clothes, she goes, unaware of what awaits her. Her family, her village, will never see her again.
She does not remain naïve for long.
The term trafficking brings to mind abduction or coercion, horrible terms both, but not nearly so painful as parents selling their own child to the temple for money or giving her away in hopes that her lifetime in the most horrific kind of slavery will gain them favor with the gods.
James 1:27 says, Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
This girl encountered defiled religion, one that preys upon the vulnerable and innocent, one that destroys rather than heals, one that leads to death rather than life. Most girls are offered from the low classes, a terrible irony as those in that class are not allowed into the temples. If they were, and saw, perhaps their willingness to offer their own would lessen.
She is one of so very, very many.
Temple prostitution, using women and girls as objects of worship or “blessing” from the gods, and deceiving people into believing it somehow to be holy, is bathing in sewage and being declared clean. These women and children are given over to the gods as sacrifices, offered on an altar of immorality and spiritual death, but not allowed to die.
The one true God desires living sacrifices, but offerings of choice rather than force, with an eternally significant word that separates defiled religion from undefiled.
… present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy … Romans 12:1
Holy, by definition, means to be set apart for a sacred purpose. These innocents are set apart but for the unholiest of purposes, to be used by the highest priest, then the other priests, then anyone until by age 20 or 30, they look like old women, no longer of worth to the temple that stole their value outside its walls. By then, the children they bore within these caverns of hell, without education or any hope of connection or acceptance in the outside world, have no future but to follow the same pain-filled path, and the cycle continues.
How would such a girl ever become free? Fiercely guarded, hidden behind underground coverups, unimaginable horrors ready if she were to attempt escape and then fail, the girl may try once, but those who own her will make certain she regrets it.
Even if she were to succeed, what life would await an ostracized fugitive? A life in hiding, with no education, no skills, stunted development from the trauma she has endured. How is she to buy food when no job is available to her other than the one she escaped?
She is told a better future awaits her in the next life, if she endures this one without resisting the system that is destroying her body and soul. Perhaps in her next life she will be born a man, able to make choices, able to live free.
But what if one day, as she walks along the few allowed pathways to the market, someone slips a tiny paper into her hands? The person says nothing, does nothing to draw attention, does not look at her as endless others have. She finds a secluded place and reads a message that shoots her heartrate high in fear mixed with a terrible hope. Could it be real? Is it a trap? Could the phone number really be to someone who could help her escape?
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A Source of Light Branch Director in this country partners with a ministry rescuing and helping victims of the evil of temple prostitution, and their children. The deep need for secrecy requires us to abstain from sharing even the most basic specifics of country, religion, or any names. But the little he was able to share, his voice choked with tears, is an evil so entrenched in culture and protected by the corrupt, it seems a miracle that any woman or child is ever able to escape. “It is demonic,” our national partner says with conviction. “Very, very demonic.”
A miracle, yes indeed, that men called to rise and go, do. They are evangelists, but willing to stand silently and wait for those like that 13-year-old girl who needs to hear the Gospel but cannot until and unless they are set free.
These who willingly face incredible risk have rescued, at last record, “seven or eight women out of that horror,” according to our national partner, who himself only knows vague details, since the smallest accidental slip of information could destroy their entire work and land the missionaries in prison without bail. He is able to share some good news: “They hear the Gospel, get saved, sing in church, such a lovely thing to see.”
This ministry has an orphanage with 43 children. A dozen of them are children of the prostitutes. The orphanage is very secret.
Our national partner is helping the orphanage with some money for food, at present enough to feed the 43 orphans for 5-6 days. He would love to do more.
Some of the women’s children were rescued with them, and they are free together. “They are so excited. They don’t need songbooks. They will just sing their hearts out. Just clap hands and sing, that’s the music that they have. Doesn’t matter if they are on the right key or not.”
Rescued women need a way to survive, but what can they do? With no education, some are unable to do the simplest things like reading the sign on the bus to know where to get on and off.
Had he unlimited funds, the Branch Director would like to buy sewing machines for them and teach them to make quilts or dresses or other things to sell.
The children need schooling. An education could break the cycle and give them a future and a hope outside their mothers’ “business.”
So many of the women have AIDS. They need medicine.
They need a kitchen. Right now, the area where they prepare food does not have a decent roof. Lizards crawl around and might fall and end up in the food. They would love a tin shed kitchen, nothing fancy that would draw attention.
Whatever money God provides must be handed over in cash, another layer of secrecy as a bank transfer or receipt could put them in danger.
They need prayer for protection, for provision, and for wisdom. When those 43 orphans reach college age, the forms want to know, “What is your father’s name?” What will they do? What name will not reveal the past and put the entire ministry and their own lives at risk?
The orphanage cannot give new names to the children, but they bring them under the orphanage name. Thankfully, that has not been questioned as of yet.
The physical needs are important, but as the Branch Director expresses, within and beyond any social work, they are “always concerned about the spiritual welfare.” How precious it is to know that this ministry can teach these rejected, abandoned, and abused women and children that the one true God and Creator of all things offers to welcome them into His great family. Any who receive Him are called by His name, sons and daughters of the Most High.
This, yes, is pure and undefiled religion, available and free, but how can it be accepted unless it is offered, and how can it be offered unless there are those willing to rise and go?
Please pray. Pray that God will call more to rise and pray, rise and give, rise and go. Ask God which He is calling you to, and then obey with all your heart. It may make the difference of a woman or child being taken from an unholy temple and brought with love and joy to the One in the Holiest of Holies.
