Home with Hope

Good day, friends ...
I'm headed back home now, and I come with a sense of real hope and real emerging solutions for the trafficked children of India.   The complexities of this situation, with villages/neighborhoods producing generation after generation of child sex workers, is a short-circuit to the American mind, but God has helped me put a lot of the puzzle pieces together here.

And we have witnessed some great breakthrough in how this can be slowly turned.   First, we have seen villages/neighborhoods where hope has been reborn by our SEED partners.   By establishing schools for the children with loving and mentoring teachers (man, THOSE on-the-ground folks really impressed me with their humility and love) ... they're providing an educational component and planting a hope for the children of a different future.    We saw three of these such operations ... two of which have come online in just the last year, through donations by other Sacramento-area churches.   It can happen quickly, and it's having an evident impact.

Secondly, while we were here, the plight of 12-year-old Prianka - the girl who's unwittingly become the poster child for SEED's effort - helped force a new hallelujah kind of development.   We learned early in the week that Prianka was headed for Calcutta to go into full-time work by the end of March.  Her mother and sisters need the money.   Angel, the team, and Prianka's school mentors anguished early in the week, seeing no answers.   But late in the week Angel helped broker an arrangement with an influential local evangelistic organization, who is going to help build safe houses for girls 12 to 15 years old, when they're most vulnerable to being pulled into full-time prostitution.   It's a complex deal, but the partner is proven, a prototype for the safe houses is already built (six units to a building, each unit housing four girls and two trained house moms), and before the end of the week they'd already received a $60,000 pledge from one Sacramento church to build the first six-unit building.   The work will begin immediately.   And meanwhile, that same partner organization will provide a place for Prianka to stay in the interim and help compensate her mother with donations of food and staples.

We closed our week with a wonderful dinner at a Chinese restaurant last night ... joined by a dozen of the older boys and girls from the first village we visited.   These are the ones that have been in the school program the longest - bright-eyed and hopeful for different futures.   They laughed, made messes, and thrilled at riding up and down in the building's elevator - their first elevator ride, for all of them.  The combination of the kids' joy, and the news of Prianka's hopeful future, really created an emotionally joyous atmosphere.

I have much to share at the India Missions Dessert on Sunday night (6pm at Lighthouse), and I hope you have a chance to join us.   As devastating as it is to understand the horrible plight that some of these children face, it magnifies the awe in your heart at seeing God move and provide a way.   He came to set the captives free, and he calls us to be like-minded ... so I ask for your continued prayers for these kids.

God bless,

Hit the Beach

The movie "Saving Private Ryan" begins with a powerful and graphic portrayal of the D-Day Omaha Beach landing in World War II, as seen through the eyes of one junior officer.    When the gates come down on the landing craft, Tom Hanks' character is hurled into chaos and mayhem in an instant.   For several minutes he watches the carnage in a stumbling daze, unable to process clearly or move, absolutely helpless to stop the massacre that is happening right in front of him.  But then the moment comes when his senses return, he gathers his wits and resources, and resolutely re-focuses on the important objective at hand.  The very real trauma of the moment cannot be allowed to hinder the greater liberation that must come.

God woke me up at 4am in India on Monday morning, with this scene playing in my head.

For me, it’s been one thing to talk about and intellectually understand child prostitution.  Perhaps like you, I have felt the very idea twist my gut repeatedly in recent years.    But it has been quite another thing to actually look those beautiful, little, flesh-and-blood children in the eyes, see their souls, and stand in their hellish streets at dusk while the adult male customers descend.   You think you would never, ever let that happen to a child if you were there to stop it, maybe even at cost to your own life ... but then you’re standing there and it’s about to happen to dozens of children and you understand you are absolutely helpless to stop anything in that moment.  For me, a spiritual and emotional paralysis took hold for awhile.

But then God snaps you out of that daze and points you up the beach.   Liberation must come.   And the ground gets taken a dangerous inch at a time.   Yesterday we visited some locations of real hope.   One village was visited by the SEED Group for the first time just a year ago; a Folsom church committed to sponsor a school project in the village, and it is fully up and running and caring for hundreds of kids a year later.   It is providing education, food, and the gospel and creating avenues for children and families to have different paths.   I’m eager to share more of the details about it with you when I return.  (By the way, we have an India missions dessert scheduled for Sunday night at 6pm at Lighthouse.)

There are several other developments unfolding related to direct rescue - creating an “out” for girls and families ages 12 to 15, the age range where they’re typically carted off to Calcutta or other big cities to earn big monies for their families.   Some key meetings on these possibilities will take place today, so please pray for God’s purpose to be known and the hearts of local leaders to be soft.

I miss you all, but I am well and very much being carried in God’s palm.

God bless,

Real darkness ... and real hope

(Folks, forgive me ... I've taken down most of this post because I don't want to risk having too many details posted.   Please do not re-post or draw attention to these posts and details).

God’s work is breaking through this darkness, and everyone involved agrees vehemently that prayer is the essential that must be increased and maintained.  At my next writing I’ll tell you about some of the hope coming out of the teenage boys in the village, but for now I ask you to pray with all your might for these beautiful children and their deliverance - in every possible meaning of the word.

I am well and blessed, and look forward to seeing you all soon.   I apologize for not posting more often, but my Wi-Fi access has been spotty to this point.

Arrival and Expectation

Let me tell you a little bit about our team, as we've now winged our way from Sacramento to LA to Amsterdam to Delhi, arriving at 2 in the morning on Friday.

Members of a half-dozen Sacramento-area churches make up this team, all of them connected in some way to our cherished friend Angel and the SEED Group.   Three are pastors, three comprise a film crew, one is Angel herself, and the rest are volunteers who have a heart for this good work.   More than half of the team has made this trip before.    Part of our aim is to visit the schools that SEED and its veterans have established in the past, and part is to explore new ministry opportunities in newly-visited villages.    As for the actual work that will end up being done ... well, that's hard to explicitly say in some forums. ;}

We'll be heading out to our home for the week later today.   My biggest problem so far is that I keep saying 'Gracias' to the nationals, who look at me like I'm nuts.   It just slips out.  Pray for my cultural context to right itself!  I blame Peru.

God bless,

Thanks for joining me ...

Greetings, friends, and thanks for accompanying me on a journey for which God has stirred great, and quiet, expectation in my heart.   I depart Feb. 5, 2014, as part of a 12-person team venturing into some rural villages in India, where we'll visit some of the schools that our partners at the SEED Group have helped establish for local schoolchildren.  

I hope to be able to keep this blog faithfully updated during our 8-day journey, and I invite your prayers for the team and even more for the children and families in these villages.