Missionary Firsts

By the way, our pictures and post did not match in our last entry. The pictures are dances the boys performed for their school for International Children’s Day. Joshua was in The Lion King, and Damascus was in Mulan. It is customary for Filipino schools to hold choreographed dance and music events every few months. We had no idea we would be attending these kinds of events (nor that practicing for them would take up so much of the school day), but it’s great to watch the boys.

This is not our first time on the mission field, but I’ve had some “firsts” since I’ve been living in Cebu:

1) my first time to live in a big city

2) my first time to receive a ticket for a traffic violation after 19 years of clean driving

3) my first time to accompany a bride down the aisle

4) my first time to go grocery shopping in an indoor mall

5) my first time to work one-on-one with survivors of human trafficking

Of course, the last “first” is the one that really stirs my soul. Nearly every day I pass a plethora of bikini bars where sexual exploitation is the norm. However, these are just the places I can see from the road. It’s different when you see an area where the brothels aren’t labeled but where underground trafficking takes place. You imagine the lives those girls experience every day, but you can only imagine so far because you haven’t actually lived that life. And then you meet people who are doing work on the front lines, right in the big city where you live, and you wonder what else you should be doing. The other night I was overseeing some volunteer tutors at a local aftercare shelter. The shelter director began telling me about the outreach they do every night to girls in red light districts of Cebu. She takes girls from the shelter and goes to places where other girls are in order to give them hope, encouragement, and other alternatives. As she was talking, she was speaking of this outreach as just a matter of fact. Of course it’s what we do. What other choice is there?