UPDATE: Mitchell has landed safely back in Dubai where he will stay until he receives a visa to go back to India. We are so grateful for your prayers surrounding this, and we continue to ask for them--specifically that he will receive the new visa quickly. Tim spent the day at Ruhamah Designs with seven amazing survivors. Here's his insight into the work and restoration taking place there:
India is a place of amazing contradictions.
At once it is both caring and calloused; friendly and hostile; wealthy and impoverished. These opposites played themselves out in front of me numerous times today. I witnessed a naked children begging on the street in front of a billboard hawking upscale, luxury condos. I met a sex trafficking survivor who was sold to a brothel by her own family while she was still a child, now cuddling and nurturing her own child—showing him the love and affection I doubt she ever received.
Today I visited Ruhamah’s West Bengal workshop. Ruhamah Designs is a jewelry business started by our partner Freedom Firm to provide sex trafficking survivors a chance to heal, learn a trade, and develop self-worth and self-esteem in a Christ-centered environment. Here, I met seven young trafficking survivors and heard their stories—each of them tragic in their own ways. And while not all were willing or able to share about how they were trafficked, each girl readily shared about how her life has changed since coming to work for Ruhamah.
When describing what they’ve learned and gained through their employment with Ruhamah, I heard words like: Dignity. Respect. Confidence. Independence. Trust. Change. And perhaps, the most powerful—Freedom.
While these young women are still processing through intense pain, anger, and loss, they are also being renewed and restored. Today in the place known as the “City of Joy,” I saw a small piece of this joy in one of the most unlikely places—in the smiles and laughter of seven trafficking survivors.
The work being done at Ruhamah Designs and our partner Freedom Firm is made possible through your generous support. Give today to provide continued freedom to these survivors and others like them, at www.Freedom424.org/Give.