Twenty Kuai.

A few weeks ago I accompanied a friend down to the red-light district. She is a native Californian as well and has been living in this city for several years. She has befriended many of the women who work in the brothels and recently partnered with the Project to help some of the women find a way out of prostitution. As I walked down those streets and allies with her to visit the women, I looked up from the dirty pavement and looked up into their eyes. My heart broke in a new place that it had never broken in before. Most of them were migrants from the countryside who came to the city seeking better job opportunities, but ended up in the allies of brothels instead. My friend told me that the average price for what they do is about 20 kuai. My heart sunk. Twenty kuai? Twenty kuai is about $3 USD. Selling someone for the equivalent of a few measly dollars. I tried to wrap my head around the idea. But it wasn’t just an idea, was it? It was their reality. It isn’t just a figure or a statistic, is it? It is a body, a heart, a mind, a soul – a person. A real live, breathing, feeling person. For twenty kuai. For three bucks. I swallowed the surge of emotion that rose up in me. These women weren’t just a face on a poster anymore. These people were no longer merely a sad statement made from a stage. These girls were no more just a global cause. They are the people whose eyes I looked into. She is the woman who I smiled at as I walked down the street. They are our Father’s daughters too. And they are hurting and enslaved by a broken world. Please join me in lifting them up and asking our Father to heal them in the way only His love can. Thanks be to our father that He is faithful to restore.