Red Light Mission
Coram Deo is humbled and honored to learn mission from others who are doing it well. Word Made Flesh is an Omaha-based mission community called by God to serve Jesus among the poorest of the poor. They continue to teach us much about serving and loving Jesus in the hardest and darkest places. The following is an essay by field staffer Cara Strauss, reprinted from WMF's quarterly journal, The Cry.
Elisa was the first girl I tried to save.
I met her during my first visit to El Alto’s red light district. It was a frigid night, as always. There were hundreds of men milling in and out of each dark brothel, as always. As always, they stared the girls up and down like cattle. And as always, the girls stood in their doorways, looking defiant or nervous or bored, but never happy. This was my first visit, though, and everything was an ugly novelty. Every woman’s sad, dazed or insolent face added to the knot in my stomach. All I wanted to do was make these women smile, or laugh–anything to take their minds off of what they were doing. So, as I nervously handed hot chocolate to each, I tried to joke in my broken Spanish and invite them to our center, La Casa de Esperanza, where they could share lunch with us.
That first night I met Elisa. She looked nervous. She was young. And she broke my heart when she told me her story. Her father, she told me, had abused her and her 12-year-old sister. When they ran away from home to escape him, Elisa couldn’t find work. She started prostituting to feed her sister. “Now I work so my sister can eat and go to school,” she told me. “As soon as she graduates, she can get a job, and I can stop working.”
“How old are you?” I asked.
“I’m 18,” she said, looking at the floor. I didn’t believe her. In Bolivia, prostitution is legal at 18. But she didn’t seem more than 16.
I asked her how long she’d been working. “A week.”
I suddenly felt nauseous. A week? I couldn’t think straight in Spanish anymore. I hugged her quickly and left the brothel, doubting the sovereignty of the God who had left her therewith no way out. I wanted to save her. This beautiful, illiterate, broken girl was selling her body so that her sister would never have to. I wanted to take her and her sister each by the hand and run away from this dirty city. I wanted to run them a hot bubble bath, wrap them in flannel nightgowns, and make popcorn for us. I yearned to have been there a week ago, to snatch her from the grime of the brothel before she knew the horror and pain caused by the drunken men who paid for her. I wanted to be her salvation. And I did not understand why God had not let me save her.
Elisa soon became my favorite sight in the red-light district. She would break into a smile when I walked into her brothel. We would share a dinner of flavorless hot dogs in the dull red brothel light while she motioned men away. She began coming to literacy classes at our center. She enrolled in a beauty school.
But I never saved her. She is still prostituting. All my fumbling efforts to rescue her have come to nothing. Though it is difficult, I am slowly realizing that I am not called to save Elisa. If I had been called to save her, I failed. But I am not her salvation. I am no one’s salvation. I can do no more than I was asked to do. I was called to show her my Lord, who can and does save. Elisa’s salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given by which we must be saved.
Elisa was the first girl I tried to save.
I met her during my first visit to El Alto’s red light district. It was a frigid night, as always. There were hundreds of men milling in and out of each dark brothel, as always. As always, they stared the girls up and down like cattle. And as always, the girls stood in their doorways, looking defiant or nervous or bored, but never happy. This was my first visit, though, and everything was an ugly novelty. Every woman’s sad, dazed or insolent face added to the knot in my stomach. All I wanted to do was make these women smile, or laugh–anything to take their minds off of what they were doing. So, as I nervously handed hot chocolate to each, I tried to joke in my broken Spanish and invite them to our center, La Casa de Esperanza, where they could share lunch with us.
That first night I met Elisa. She looked nervous. She was young. And she broke my heart when she told me her story. Her father, she told me, had abused her and her 12-year-old sister. When they ran away from home to escape him, Elisa couldn’t find work. She started prostituting to feed her sister. “Now I work so my sister can eat and go to school,” she told me. “As soon as she graduates, she can get a job, and I can stop working.”
“How old are you?” I asked.
“I’m 18,” she said, looking at the floor. I didn’t believe her. In Bolivia, prostitution is legal at 18. But she didn’t seem more than 16.
I asked her how long she’d been working. “A week.”
I suddenly felt nauseous. A week? I couldn’t think straight in Spanish anymore. I hugged her quickly and left the brothel, doubting the sovereignty of the God who had left her therewith no way out. I wanted to save her. This beautiful, illiterate, broken girl was selling her body so that her sister would never have to. I wanted to take her and her sister each by the hand and run away from this dirty city. I wanted to run them a hot bubble bath, wrap them in flannel nightgowns, and make popcorn for us. I yearned to have been there a week ago, to snatch her from the grime of the brothel before she knew the horror and pain caused by the drunken men who paid for her. I wanted to be her salvation. And I did not understand why God had not let me save her.
Elisa soon became my favorite sight in the red-light district. She would break into a smile when I walked into her brothel. We would share a dinner of flavorless hot dogs in the dull red brothel light while she motioned men away. She began coming to literacy classes at our center. She enrolled in a beauty school.
But I never saved her. She is still prostituting. All my fumbling efforts to rescue her have come to nothing. Though it is difficult, I am slowly realizing that I am not called to save Elisa. If I had been called to save her, I failed. But I am not her salvation. I am no one’s salvation. I can do no more than I was asked to do. I was called to show her my Lord, who can and does save. Elisa’s salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given by which we must be saved.
posted by Bob | 4:57 PM
1 Comments:
Sure, I know that I cannot save anyone, it only comes from God. What is agonizing for me is that despite all my prayers , or those of Cara, God may choose not to save those we love. This is what kills me...
Heather
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