We leave for Amsterdam in 2 weeks and Ryan and I are having mixed feelings. We are so excited to be leaving India but have poured so much of ourselves into the work and people here in India, that it will be a little sad to say goodbye. We have lots of exciting news and updates! We wanted to let everyone how the next couple of months will look like for us.
We leave for amsterdam on April 14th and will be there through the month of May. We are so excited to be bringing the alabaster project to The Red Light district in Amsterdam. I wanted to share with you a paragraph a friend of mine had written about an anti trafficking conference she had attended. This is an eye opening account of a girls experience who has now been rescued from the sex trade.
"You know that Liam Neeson movie where his daughter gets kidnapped? Well, that was the PG version of an unspeakably horrific reality that this woman went through. Trafficked, escaped, re-captured, and sent to a warehouse in the Nevada desert where American women and children (as young at three years old. Read that again. Three years old) were shipped out to places like Amsterdam for sex trafficking (check yourself if you think that just because prostitution is legal, it’s voluntary). Foreign women were shipped into the states and arrived at this warehouse to then be transported all over the states. The things that she told us about that place were so horrible – I was reeling. And I have read some pretty rough accounts of the “breaking in” that usually happens when an individual is taken by a mind-bogglingly violent international organization like this one. But this was new. One of the things she divulged was that the traffickers would have documentation falsified stating that pregnant women were given abortions, and then they would let them have the babies. Undocumented babies that no one knew existed who were then incredibly easy to ship off around the world for sex trafficking. The assurance that I was waiting to hear: that the warehouse is no longer there – that the police found it, busted, arrested, freed, convicted … it never came."
WOW, doesn't this make you sick to your stomach to know that this is happening in America and all across the world? I want to be apart of making a difference in these womens lives. Rescuing them out of these aweful circumstances. I know that The Alabaster Project is not an answer to end human trafficking but it can be an answer for one girl or hopefully thousands. Please join in praying for us as we leave India and are in Amsterdam.
After Amsterdam....Well, this is where the good news comes in :) Ryan and I are expecting baby #2!!!!! I am 13 weeks now and have had a very healthy pregnancy so far. It has not been easy dealing with nausua and the tiredness but I am feeling much better as the weeks go on. So, where do we go from here? Ryan and I have been praying about what God would have us do. We committed to work with BFO for 1 year and we will keep that commitment. We felt it was best for us to go back to Houston after Amsterdam and continue working for BFO from there. There is so much we can be doing for BFO in the states as well. We have a friend of ours in Dallas who has secured 8 shops that are interested in selling our jewelry and we would like to do the same in Houston. We are also wanting to let chruches and youth groups know how they can help further the awareness of what we are doing with the Alabaster project.
We ask that those of you who are monthly and one time givers would continue to support us as we return back to the states. Ryan has spoke with HR at Klein and plans on returning to teach this next year so we will be in need of your support through the month of August. But, we want you to be reasurred that we will be working just as hard there in the states as we were here in India and I can't wait to be able to give you all the praise reports of how womens lives are being restored!
