Yesterday afternoon Gabriela, Jason, Lucy and I went to the Hamptons at Lennox to spend time with some kids. We go every week. Usually we just play games with them, give them a snack, pray with them and then send them home. Yesterday Jason brought pictures back to them of his trip to China.
Before Jason left we told the kids that he was going because there were people in China selling children and that he needed to find out more so that he could help. (If you want to read the specifics about his trip, try three posts back.) Anyway, we told the kids at the apartment complex the children and women in China were being sold. We thought that answer was valid. The kids seemed to be okay with that.
Yesterday Jason begins to show his pictures. He gets through about 30 of them and gets to one about a boy who is 16 whose mother was sold a few years earlier. That wasn't enough for the children in the room. The questions began. Why are they sold? Do the people kill them? Are they used for work?
How do you tell children who are between the ages of seven and thirteen that there are women and children in the world who are being sold for sex? You don't I suppose. There will come a time when they know more than they need to about sex and can help combat the problem. What's sufficient for now though? How do you express to children the reason why Jason had to go to China? How do you impress upon them the severity of the issue?
I see the children that we spend time with every week and I see their naivety when it comes to such things and I realize that children just like them - their age, their size - are being used for sex. It makes the problem of sexual trafficking that much more real to me. Then I wonder if there is a chance that any of these children, sitting in this room, could be trafficked. My heart breaks because I know it could happen. Traffickers don't just live overseas anymore. They live in my city and they probably live on this street.
I've been wondering how much good we're doing spending time with a dozen children each week. We don't teach them Bible lessons or sing Sunday School choruses. We just pray with them and ask them to keep coming. We may not be able to save them from something so evil. I do know that spending two hours with them each week keeps them away from predators for that short amount of time. Meanwhile they are learning that talking to God isn't hard and that they can trust us. Two things that don't seem to come so easily.
I'm now just wondering what more we can do.
Lord, please give us that kind of wisdom to see justice prevail here.
3 comments:
Hey Joy,
I was wondering some of the same things. I wanted to ask them if they knew of any kids who had been given away by their parents. I wanted to ask them if their parents had ever made them do something they felt uncomfortable about with a stranger. I felt/feel that they are vulnerable.
Just before my trip I got a report which outlines how to recognize victims of trafficking. I will send it out to our team. Look for it through interoffice mail.
Also, we are doing "sunday school" like lessons with them on Saturdays. So it isn't that they aren't learning Bible lessons. Its just not the night that you come. But I have a bigger hope for the whole community. I want to see a community of faith built throughout the teens, adults and children in that community. I think your right 2 hours a week is a real slow go. But really it is more like 4 hours a week because of the program on Saturday. My hope would be to continue to expand our influence to new people and age groups and deepen our teaching and discipleship among those whom we are already in contact.
Thank you for your sensitivity to this issue and the lives of those in the apartment.
Hey everybody in the blog community,
I just wanted to clarify my third paragraph. I wrote that paragraph more to you guys than to Joy. As you guys may guess when you start a new community based ministry it is hard to communicate to everyone involved in more traditional ministries that the ministry is teaching the Bible and speaking truth into lives. I think when I wrote the third paragraph I was trying to communicate that more to you guys than to Joy as she is well aware of the ministry involved in the apartment. On a reread I noticed that it looks like I am communicating to Joy but I was just taking every opportunity to communicate to everyone the things that are happening.
Hey Joy,
You don't have to read the Bible and sing Sunday School songs with kids to love them from God's heart. Any other church can do that, but if you can just go and be you, loving them that's Christlike. Be holy, loving Joy and just be yourself around them - like Jesus was Himself around us. I'm not even going to enter into a 'you can't love people unless you read them the Bible discussion' b/c that's not what I'm saying. Just a crowd of you all heading over, being yourselves, in that place, loving kids and showing them what resurrection life is like, even in your smiles and actions, is Good and Godly. All heaven applauds, sister.
Heather
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