My apologies for this time of radio silence! In August I had the experience of a three night stay in a Philippine hospital. The highlights of our stay included me almost drowning from too many IV fluids followed by intense hallucinations from medication plus Chelsea and I sharing my room with a curious mouse. A few calls to my mom in the middle of the night held all the pieces together. I made it out the other side healthy and sane. Just in time for a team of 40 from the World Race to join Wipe Every Tear for an adventure.
The World Race is one of the Adventures in Mission’s branches. Large teams of people launch every few months to travel to 11 countries in 11 months. At each location they partner with local people to lift up what God is already doing there. At one of the locations they visit there is an opportunity for the team members to invite their parents to join and experience what they are doing. This September we had the privilege of hosting one of these teams of over 40 racers and parents.
With the team full of racers and parents, we traveled on one cozy bus to Angeles City. Angeles has a red light district where Wipe Every Tear focuses outreach to women in the sex trade and trafficking. We checked into a hotel right on the strip and were down to business that night. Our massive group took a walk down through the middle of the strip of establishments to an open air bar for dinner. Not only were we not be missed by patrons and girls alike, but this gave our group an opportunity to not miss anything. They were immediately immersed in seeing young girls everywhere coaxing them into bars or coupled with significantly older foreign men. As you can imagine the initial reaction is anger. Some finding it hard to stomach dinner as the desire to eliminate injustice churned inside.
After dinner we split into small groups to reach out. Each group having two leaders composed of WET staff and restored women from our safe houses. Some of our leaders arriving at our safe house just a few months ago after the girls getaway. In my group was one of these newer arrivals. Her passion for the night’s mission was far exceeding all of us. Her plan to take us to the bar where she used to work and tell all of her friends about Wipe Every Tear.
This bar was actually the first place that Bekah and I went to back in April when we arrived. The very same stage where we sang Jesus take the wheel to a bar full of onlookers. This night I was there with a restored woman and two sets of parents with their twenty something World Racer daughters. Talk about out of place! I would be willing to bet this was the first family unit to enter this building. We ordered some drinks as is required (usually bottled waters) and our group leader started ushering girls over to our table. These parents and daughters jump right in and start talking with the women, getting to know them, asking about their families and even their future dreams. As they loved on the women my co-leader and I started to get these women’s information and invite them to come visit our safe houses.
After a long while the conversation died out. We had spoken with most of the women and many of them wanted to accompany us back to Manila to visit the Wipe Every Tear safe houses. We took our time to say goodbye to everyone we had met and then left. The intensity of being in the bar followed us out into the street. By this time it was fairly late and a light rain was setting in. We stopped under an overhang and took a moment to reflect on the past few hours. The parents recounted the hopes and dreams of the women they had met and how they felt that these women were like their own daughters. With our hearts full, expectant, sad, overwhelmed and everything in between we all took a moment to pray for the women to be freed. Then we headed back to the hotel.
We continued the next nights to do outreach. Many more women were reached in unique and different ways by all of the teams. As a result of our time there 16 women packed onto our bus with us back to Manila with every seat full (even the center isle fold down seats that would never be allowed in the US). Some racers sat on their parents’ laps to allow room for everyone to fit on this bus. People of all ages, different countries, different languages and upbringings all in this one ordinary charter bus. Each of our hearts never the same after meeting each other.
My favorite miracles are always the hearts that are transformed, mine included. It’s perhaps the only miracle that I can’t even attempt to explain with any kind of rational certainty. Our God says that his love surpasses all understanding. That must mean there are some things that we can’t understand, but we have the good pleasure of experiencing them. I am grateful that parents and young people travel here to be a part of the unexplainable things God is doing at Wipe Every Tear. It’s a special and crazy kind of love that says, “hey, I just crossed the Pacific to tell you that it’s not ok what is happening to you and I’d like to help”.
