Escaping the Devil's Bedroom

Tatooed for Jesus

Edna, 44, is a former schoolteacher and a homeschooling mom in Texas. Recently she told me about her visits to local strip clubs. For the last five years, she's been frequenting different clubs with teams of women who hope to reach the girls there for Jesus.

Edna noticed that many girls who dance in the clubs sport tatoos. As she made small talk with them in the dressing rooms, she realized that the tatoos could open doors to talking about Jesus. Although Edna already had a small cherub tatooed to her upperback, she wanted one with a clear message about how Jesus had changed her life.

After praying about it for a year, Edna was ready for the second tatoo. On her lower back, a flowery script spelled "Forgiven." She couldn't wait to go into a club, approach a girl and tell her, "I like your tatoo. Let me show you mine."

But the next time Edna visited a club, she almost completely forgot about her tatoo. When she finally remembered and showed it to one girl, Edna told me, "she got this really blank look on her face, Like, 'What does that mean?'  I thought it was a blank look, but she was blown away.

"That girl called me weeks later and said, 'That tatoo on your back was a sign because I was raised in the church and I know what that means.' That same girl stopped dancing in the strip club."

I've never been in a strip club and I don't have any tatoos, so how could I relate to these girls? I asked Edna, "Would the right outfit help?"

"If God wants you in there, He’s picking you, know matter what," she told me. Once a grandmotherly woman accompanied her team into the clubs, which the girls loved.

"I think a lot of girls like me because I'm the mom who goes in and talks to them when their own mom doesn’t," Edna said. All of the girls she's talked to have suffered from absentee mothers. 

Do you pass any strip clubs on your daily commute? Say a prayer for the girls inside, that God sends someone to incarnate Christ's love to them. And whisper a prayer for Edna and her ministry.

Porn and Pancakes

That's the title of a recent Yahoo article that caught my eye in a friend's email (thanks, Deann!). So, before I get back to Julia's story (last post), it's "porn and pancakes" today. I am so relieved that a church in upstate New York is hosting this event to address the pervasiveness of porn.

Imagine, talking about porn addictions over coffee, a stack of cakes dripping with syrup, in your church fellowship hall! I hope we all have the opportunity someday. The power of porn grows in the darkness. It's the dirty little secret that your and my cousin, colleague, father or spouse wouldn't likely admit to. But it's also the start of sexual addictions that ultimately feed prostitution and sex trafficking.

So, thank goodness for this church, who's willing to tackle the topic head-on and bring it into the light! And, for the group of youth ministries from Triple-X Church, traveling the country to help us bring this darkness before God.

Do you know anyone struggling with a porn addiction? Does your church have a means of helping those struggling with porn?

I was tired of being a slave of Satan

I met Julia* in Sao Paolo, Brazil. A Brazilian of Japanese descent, she looked like one of my aunts with her black bob and petite frame. I tried out my Japanese on her and managed to win an ounce of trust, in part through our shared heritage.

Julia was 15 when she was raped by a group of boys at her high school. They shoved her in a car and bruised her neck while forcing themselves on her. "I was very afraid for a long time," she recalls. Julia visited a hospital because of the excruciating pain and inflammation, but she never told her mother what had happened. The two didn't get along.

At 20, Julia left home and found herself in Luz, a neighborhood in Sao Paulo known for drugs and prostitution. She was invited into an apartment building where she met many women. At first she didn't realize it was a brothel, and that a woman in the building was pimping all the other women living there.

Julia learned the trade quickly. "I was new, pretty, and I made a lot of money although I was infected," she told me. The other women encouraged her to spend her money with them at bars, drinking and dancing. Sometimes the men who paid to use her body made promises they never kept.

Fifteen years passed in the brothel before Julia was thrown out onto the streets, and began prostituting herself in hotels. On the street, she met Paolo Cappilletti, director of CENA, a ministry devoted to reaching homosexuals, transvestites and prostituting women and men. For 8 years, Paolo shared the Gospel with Julia. And for 8 years, Julia ignored him.

I thought it was nonsense. He talked about Jesus, but everytime I had another reason why I didn’t want to seek Jesus. I was drinking and smoking cigarettes. I was depressed, I was empty inside.

But after 23 years of selling her body, Julia was tired of suffering. "I was tired of being a slave of Satan," she said.

To be continued...

*Julia is not her real name.