VOICE FROM THE VOICELESS

Prostitution Definition Prostitution is the sale of sexual services for money. Many trafficked girls and women start out in cheap brothels where they are broken in through a process of rapes and beatings. This process is called "seasoning." 2million girls between ages 5 and 15 are introduced into the commercial sex market each year. 89% of prostitutes want to escape. 60 to 75% have been raped. At least 200,000 women and children work in prostitution in Thailand. 1/3 of the women are under the age of 18, and girls as young as five-six years old work in prostitution. "I found myself dancing at a club at the age of 11...I have had different kinds of customers, foreigners and Filipinos. I tried suicide, but it didn't work so I turned to drugs. I want to die before my next birthday." One time, a doctor counted 35 men using a girl in one hour. When the police raided the brothel, they found dozens of empty boxes of condoms, each box having held a thousand condoms.

God is a righteous judge. Psalm 7:11
Pray: That God would reveal that sexual intimacy is a reflection of his blessings and not a commodity to be bought or sold. That God would destroy this exploitation and degradation of women. For businesses that create alternative incomes for prostitutes.

Act: Form a group of people (or from your church group), go and present a rose to the prostitues you meet in your city. Write our government to ask what we are doing about sexual exploitation at home and abroad.

Excerpt from a book called Sub-merge

written by John B. Hayes,
"...But this is exactly what my mind and body needed to cope with ministry stress. Exercise like this would have been so good for me. You're right. But you were so busy doing ministry that you didn't do any of the very life-giving things that would have sustained you. Isn't that what incarnational ministry is all about? Your ministry is your life? That's how you've been doing it for six years! In fact, the opposite is true: Your ministry is not your life; your life should be your ministry. What's the difference? It's a tiny change in word order, but there's a gigantic difference - one that will lead you to burnout and misery if you confuse the two. When ministry is your life, you will give when you have nothing to give, work when you should be resting, neglect that which should be your greatest priority, and ultimately loathe the very people you are called to love. In short, when ministry is your life, you have no life to offer to others and nothing but ministry to invite others into.
On the other hand, when your life is your ministry, all of life becomes a sacrament before God: your work and your rest, your eating and sleeping, your generosity and your neediness, your care for your body and the environment, your trivial pastimes and your greatest accomplishments. When all of your life is what you offer as your ministry, then nothing is wasted. In short, when your life is what you offer to others as ministry, what you offer is multifaceted and rich with meaning.
Are you suggesting that going for a run with my dog is just as significant as any of my ministry objectives?
No only is it significant, but it is also vital. Without a fully lived life, what you present to God and to others is one-dimensional and incomplete. The lost are compelled to follow Christ when they see how you do life -how you treat your children, where you buy your groceries, how you care for your neighbors - not by how much you do ministry -
So all those times when I skipped lunch and pulled all-nighters for the sake of the ministry -
The people you were discipling saw a man living a life of destruction.
Then what did people learn from me?
How to live an unbalanced, chaotic life of ministry that ruins the soul rather than nourishes it.
And if I had dropped what seemed so important to go for a run or to cook lunch?
Your followers would have seen a man (or woman) un apologetically living the kind of abundant life Jesus calls us to.
I want that kind of abundance. I want that kind of life. My ministry is not my life, but my life can be my ministry."

First World exploitation of Africa's resources

perch fillets are stripped and shipped to europe while the africans can only afford to buy the carcasses. overfishing has caused fish stocks to drop drastically imperiling the livelihoods of more than 100,000 fishermen and depriving local people of food. national geographic 4/07.

this infuriates me. as if they don't have enough to eat already, satisfying our own needs is depriving them even more. you read daily about people in africa dying of starvation where most don't even have fish bones to eat.

this is just another example of we who have wanting more, having more and to hell with everyone else.

we would throw this carcass in the garbage after we had taken the fillets off. hungry people would leave nothing of this carcass. we waste more food in a year than people in africa have to eat in a year. we gorge ourselves, then when we become obese we pay to lose the weight. we are a self-indulgent society, spending money pleasing ourselves buying the latest fashions, bigger houses, bigger toys, more toys, drugs, booze. we spend more on our pleasure in a year than people have to spend on food.

will we never learn? if only we could change places, the have's with the have-not's. if only we could walk in their shoes, live in their homes, eat what they eat, live the way they live. would we learn? wait, they don't have shoes and are dying because they don't have enough to eat.

matt 25:42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. 45" He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

i know so many people that profess to be christians and wonder how they can make that claim when their lives don't resemble anything that Jesus talks about. money, greed, self-centred, self-indulgent.

i wish we could change places.

Gloria

we were closer than sisters, she with hers and me with mine. she knew every little detail about all my sins and she didn't count it against me. she loved me anyway.

like God. He knows every single detail about our every sin and when we come to the cross and ask for forgiveness He doesn't count it against us. He loves us in spite of ourselves.

never put off til tomorrow what you could do today

my friend Gloria died last night. we had been friends for 38 years. when i was having babies she was travelling the world. when i was able to travel the world she was having babies. we had talked about going to russia together, she said it was about the only place left in the world she had not visited, but it never happened.

we have been with each other through so many hardships, 38 years of friendship, loving and caring for each other, supporting each other through divorces and deaths. we cried together but mostly we laughed together. she and another friend and i were each 1 year apart. we were like the 3 musketeers. periods of time could go by without contact but we would pick up again like we hadn't missed a day.

for as much as i am at peace because she is with Jesus today i am going to miss her. when she showed me her baptism certificate i was so excited. she had lived in israel for a short while and had been baptised in the jordan river. she loved israel. i thought wow! to be baptised in the same river as Jesus.

years ago she had asked me to be her executrix, i said yes and although i took care of all the details when my father-in-law passed away many years ago, this will be a lot harder.

she had ms, recently got a couple of infections and was getting worse and then got pneumonia. she had gone to the hospital monday and when they wanted to put her on life support last night she refused and succumbed to the pneumonia.

i had talked to her on saturday and she had told me she was going to hospital sunday or monday, i told her i would come over sunday either at home or hospital. sunday i talked to her and she was at home but too tired for company. we talked & i told her i would come and see her today and we would see about getting her affairs in order. she agreed. she probably knew she was near the end.

i told her i couldn't come until today because i worked monday - wednesday and had classes monday to wednesday nights. my tuesday class finished last week and i had thought about going to bible study but i put that off too. when i talked to a co-worker about needing new glasses and she suggested costco i went to costco looking for new glasses and ending up walking up and down every row looking for whatever. i left costco at 8:30 and thought about gloria and realized it was too late to visit her on my way home. i expected to see her today.

you never get a second chance to say goodbye. i'm so glad that the last thing i said to her was 'i love you my friend' and she said 'i know, i love you too'

until we're together again my friend - i love you.

POVERTY & THE GIRL CHILD CAMPAIGN

Prayer for Day 1 Child ProstitutionDefinition:It is the sexual exploitation of a child for remuneration in cash or kind, usually but not always organized by an intermediary (parent, family member, procurer or teacher).>10 million children worldwide are engaged in some facet of the sex industry. Each year at least one million children, mostly girls, become prostitutes.>In Thailand, 10-12 year old girls service men in the sex industry. They typically have sex with men 10-15 times daily and sometimes as many as 20-30.>In South Africa there are 40,000 child prostitutes.Children are more susceptible to HIV and other STDs.There is also a personal impact story which would be too long to include in this email, however, I am going to see if I can obtain copies of this book.Prayer reflection regarding the above:Because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, God will now arise. Psalm 12:5PRAYPray that God would arise and defend the little ones.Pray that God would raise up lawyers, moviemakers and government rulers who will bring an end to this savage exploitation.ACTMake a short presentation on the prevalence of child prostitution and how your government could take action. Share this in your church, work place, and circle of influence.All of these points come from the book. Two recent stories (April 23rd) from The Toronto Star4. Opening bank doors to women in AfricaIn a recent survey, African businessmen were asked what they thought of women as entrepreneurs.All very well and good, said one puzzled responder. "But how can property own property?"That's the kind of prejudice Joanne Thomas Yaccato is locking horns with, as the pioneering GTA entrepreneur takes on a new role with the World Bank's private-sector arm to revolutionize the way African banks view businesswomen.As a consultant to the International Finance Corporation, which will distribute $40 million in international funds, her goal is to empower African women – providing the money and confidence they need to raise themselves, and the impoverished continent, from a life-and-death struggle to economic security.Although new to Africa, Thomas Yaccato, 50, has spent decades dissolving the stereotypes that keep women beneath the "glass ceiling" of business success and prevent banks and other corporations from understanding how to satisfy them as clients.The problems of African women were not new, just more acute than those of the West. She quickly found that Africa's diligent but disadvantaged businesswomen had one thing in common."They were ignored by the banks. One Nigerian woman (Muni Shonibare) who owns a chain of furniture stores couldn't get a dime from bankers if her life depended on it. And until we went in there, the bankers hadn't a clue about the opportunity in the women's market."5. African teens and pain of fistulaZinder, NIGER–For two days, 14-year-old Sari Zainabou pushed and pushed, her narrow body stubbornly refusing her baby safe passage into the world. At a clinic in her village outside the Sahelian trading town of Zinder, the women could do little more than wipe Sari's brow and encourage her to keep trying. When the baby boy finally emerged, he was dead. And after two solid days of Labour, with her baby's head pushed up against her pelvic bone, Sari was left with necrotic tissue that ate a hole in the lining separating her vagina from her bladder. The result was a constant trickle of urine splashing down at the grieving girl's feet.Now 15, Sari sits in the courtyard of the Central Maternity Hospital waiting for a second surgery to finally repair the fistula. It's a condition the United Nations hopes to erase from the developing world in the next seven years, spending $20 million (U.S.) on prevention, education and training in 40 countries and enlisting the help of celebrities like Australian singer Natalie Imbruglia to drum up attention in the West.Eradication is not likely to happen unless the more worrying problem of child marriage is solved, says Dr. Lucien Djangnikpo, one of six doctors in Niger trained to surgically repair fistulas. Judged the poorest country on the planet by the United Nations in 2006, more than half of Niger's girls are married before the age of 15. Nearly 90 per cent are pregnant before the age of 18. In a country where malnutrition and difficult living combine to create small, sinewy women, the conditions are ripe for fistula. "The body isn't mature enough to handle (giving birth)," Djangnikpo says.