Three years before, I had visited Bangladesh and talked at length with the director of the organization about work with prostitutes. When I arrived in the country this time, the director told me that he wanted to present me with a gift: I was to be given the opportunity to officially open their new project, which was going to work with the prostitutes, with a special focus on offering their children an education.

The day that we spent in the red-light district in that northern town in Bangladesh was one of the most memorable of my life. I had been told that women in Bangladesh are working as prostitutes because they have been widowed, divorced or abandoned by their husbands and have no other means of support. Sometimes they have gone to work as housemaids and been raped, rendering them “spoiled” for marriage. It is virtually impossible to be a single woman in this country. Prostitution, which is legal in certain areas, is the alternative. These women and their children are considered outcasts by society. Their children are not even allowed to go to school with the “normal” children.

Walking into the area, it is obvious that the women form a close community, sharing the responsibilities for each other’s children, cooking together, talking together, doing each other’s hair. One of the women told me that she had more freedom here than any place else in her culture: she owned property (some of the brothel rooms in the area), she controlled her own finances and she could touch people the way she wanted to touch them. In this country, where I was admonished to not even shake a man’s hand, I could understand her feelings. I pray for her often. I am frustrated that I don’t know how to offer her alternatives to her life in this society, where indeed, living outside the brothel does mean oppression and hardship as a woman. But I know that she and all the others are daughters of God, and that God knows the answers to their needs and can bring them the security and peace they are seeking.

The one request the women did make was that their children be given an education. The Christian development organization responded by opening a school for the children of the prostitutes. The school will offer the children a quality education, providing them with alternatives for their lives that their mothers cannot provide. Also in this school, the children will experience God’s love, caring and compassion in special ways. And certainly their mothers will also be touched through this ministry.

Prayer Points
--Please pray for the ministries of the Christian development organization whose dedicated workers seek to make a difference in the lives of the outcasts of their society—the gypsies, the prostitutes and so mane others.

--Please encourage the people in your church to give generously to the World Mission Offering, so that many more who are in such need of the Good News will be able to experience it!

--Please pray for guidance and wisdom for me as I seek to encourage new projects that are bringing healing and faith in Christ to those who are outcasts in their societies.