Marzo 25, 2009

REPORT
As we're needing SERIOUS prayer, I wanted to email you with recent prayer requests:

Praise God...
...That two of the girls came to church last night; for one of them this was her second time visiting with her son as three weeks ago four of the girls visited our church for the first time. The gospel was clearly presented last night and one of the girls especially responded so honestly, saying she is one of those "weary and heavy laden" whom Jesus tells to come to Him!
...We continue to see the Lord blessing our visits to them on their turf; we've been going on Friday nights for a month now. Every time we've gone God has been pleased to show us bits of His glory. Sometimes stopping the rain, other times leading our steps so that we meet a girl that he wants us to talk to; other times we are extremely discouraged because of their initial response, and God's Word gives us the power and the joy to go back and continue doing the Work He has for us.
...For the support and excitement our pastors, deacons and church in general have shown toward this outreach. Our pastors are super excited and thinking of ways the church can be more involved; when the girls have visited our church people have come up and shown SO much grace to them and their children.
...For the many providential things that have happened that clearly, clearly show GOD IS BUSY AT WORK.. and we're just instruments. It is SO obvious to us that He is so full of grace and has a plan to show His love to these girls. We have seen it in so many ways. For example, last Friday night just a few minutes before we visited them, another group from another church had visited them also, and prayed with them and gave them a Bible. What is that but that God seems to be trying to use a LOUDSPEAKER to have these girls hear the amazing Gospel of Jesus Christ! So many other things have happened! It would be difficult to put it all over email.
...For the opportunities God has given these girls' "husbands" or partners as well as their children the to hear the Word. At least for two of these girls, their husbands have heard the gospel: one of them came to church and the other one was at their "work" site when we visited them this past Friday. He asked us even to pray for his 14 year old daughter who recently "married" and he is just torn to see her condition. We prayed for her then, and will continue to pray. So you see, this outreach is extending beyond what we originally thought of... Isn't God's grace just simply astonishing?
...For the guys that are acting as our "bodyguards." Every time we go visit the girls we have some of our friends parked nearby watching to make sure we're OK. As you can imagine, there's some risk in being with the girls. The police sometimes comes to arrest them, or people are downright mean to them and throw them things from their cars. An angry client too is also a risk, if they want service and the girls choose to hang out with us. We are usually not there for long because we want to be sensitive to the fact that they are in fact working. The girls, though, are usually pretty receptive and whenever we tell them we want to go so that we don't take up too much of their time they ask us to stay a bit longer. To know the guys are these close by is a comfort, especially because they are there busy praying for what we're doing.
...For the prayer support we have! It is an incredible encouragement to have so many praying for us; when we go out there we really feel we're going in the power and authority of Jesus Christ.

Please, PLEASE pray. There are pretty strong strongholds that we are invading, we very much need to wrestle in prayer! We long to see Jesus' name powerfully delivering these girls from their prostitution and slavery to the devil. But we will ONLY see this was we pray. Please read on to see some of the circumstances these girls are in:
...Two of the girls are expecting a baby. They are about 3 months into their pregnancy. Please pray the Lord would protect their babies, and that God would provide women from our church to maybe mentor or "adopt" these girls and guide them in all things related to pregnancy and childbirth, etc, etc.
...One of the girls is deeply involved in witchcraft. Please pray for deliverance. 
...Several of them are drug addicts, very much enslaved to this. Pray especially for one of them who's a crack addict; she's shown much interest, and yet has also experienced much opposition from the devil every time she's been about to be exposed to the gospel.
...We are hoping to start teaching at least two of the girls how to read and write. We are super excited to see that the Lord was already moving our church in that direction, as there are plans to soon start reaching out to the community in that way. But please pray the Lord would truly continue to open the doors and that very, very soon we may start this with the girls.
...Please pray the Lord would give us much wisdom to discern God's will and the leading of His Spirit. We want to start meeting with a few of the girls in another setting beside their work. We don't want to stop visiting them and loving them where they are, but the truth is that their being at work doesn't seem to be the best place to share some of God's Word with them; they can be easily distracted  while there. So we need wisdom to know when to have that time with them, and who to invite, since we can't have them all at the same time (there's about 15 of them).
...Pray also that we would know how to speak to them God's Word in a way that is relevant and easy to understand. Our language needs to be simple.
...Pray for these girls' children.
...Please pray for us girls because we are aware we too will experience opposition; we already have. Please pray we would be continually seeking all our joy in Jesus, fostering our love relationship with Him so we can truly speak and live before these girls in ways that show that Jesus is our Lover, the sweetest and most precious Lover we can ever dream of. We need to persevere in prayer, truly wrestling for these girls' souls.... Oh that we would not rest in our own strength!