Seeing is Believing

Today I sat with some IJM staff for over an hour and listened to their stories from the field. It was one of those moments where all of a sudden you realize that you’re talking about something way more intense than you were intending. Like when you’re driving on autopilot and suddenly you’ve driven into an intense neighborhood and no one knows how to get back.

Right before close of business I knocked on their door with a simple question about a case we are working on. I needed to know what a certain brothel looked like for a story I am writing. I walked in, knelt near the computer and opened my journal, ready to get up again and move on with my task.

But instead, the staff member looked directly at me and said, “Kristy, the only way you are going to understand is if I show you.” It was a look I hadn’t seen before. Somewhere in his eyes I saw that he had already entered back into that place and he was urging me to follow. Hesitantly I grabbed the chair behind me and pulled up to his desk.

For the next hour I walked their past with them. I saw what they saw. I heard the voices. I smelt the cigarettes and the musty odor of confinement. Nothing else existed. I was back in 2008 and instead of spending my summer before college in Cancun with my family; I was I walking the brothel district of Haldia.

It was terrifying and fascinating at the same time. And then he looked at me again and asked, “do you need me to stop?” I hadn’t even noticed that tears were streaming down my face. They were reproducing themselves at an exponential rate. But like most pain, it was a silent expression. I tried to form the words, “no, please, I want to hear more.” But instead I just shook my head and whipped my eyes.

We continued on. I saw a room with twenty young girls locked inside with a gated door, like chickens in a pen. I was told they lived there, all sharing one twin-sized bed. Men would walk in, choose who they wanted, cross the tiny corridor and wait in the sex room.  And when they were done they would exit the curtain, reenter the bar area, enjoy a quick snack and get back in their trucks, which were fueling up and head on their merry way. But the girls… they never left. Once inside they never again saw the light of day or the stars of the night sky.

And that’s when I recognized her. A girl I knew well. My mind flashed back to the day before. It’s 2013 again and she and I are giggling and hugging. She is my friend now, a person whom I talk with, laugh with, cry with, and play with. She is my sister and I love her like family.

The reality of trafficking becomes a lot more real when it’s a person you know. When it’s someone you love. I love this girl for who she is as a person, for her dreams and for her sense of humor. And while I knew her story intellectually, it was as if I was a mother receiving the dreaded phone call for the first time. My face dropped and my heart sank. It was real. What happened to her was real.

Now I know I have theatrical tendencies. But just ask my much more practical siblings; one day in the aftercare homes will stay with you until you die. But now I say, one moment in those brothels will haunt your heart for eternity.

I will never, for as long as I live, forget that moment. 

Another staff member sitting in the room spoke up for the first time. Quietly, and with tears in his eyes he said, "It's hard. Our job isn't easy. And one day God will call me home but right now, we work."

I think what makes this job so hard is that it’s real. What happens to these girls is real. They actually suffer that much. They actually do get tortured, beaten, raped, mutilated, murdered and humiliated. And yes, they actually do enter into this as early as nine in some places and as late as 14 in the ‘much-more-sophisticated-civilized’ country like America.

But it was this staff member’s last sentence that pierced my soul. He chuckled at my tears, threw his hands up in the air and said, “Seeing is believing Kristy.”

And so I say to you now: I can’t show you those videos. I can’t tell you anything that would even hint at a specific fact or figure. But I can encourage you to believe despite them. We don’t all get to see. But we should act as if we have. Paul understood communal suffering better than any biblical character, second to Jesus. I know that many of you have sensed a growing passion in your heart for the victims of trafficking, and I seek now to water it. Please believe me when I say that the reality is so much more horrific than I could hope to explain. And the battle is bigger.

I have been reading about David in 1 Sameul recently. And one thing I have noticed is that David prepared for battle by practicing. As Christians we like the imagery of armor and ‘suiting up.’ But the greatest warrior in all biblical history used a sling and a stone. He knew how to fight because he had been fighting his whole life.  David defended whatever flock he was given like it was the arch of the covenant. You may not be in South Asia or the White House right now, but you have sheep near you (or you may have literal armies) but the point is, let us always defend because even the greatest King saves this world one person at a time.