In February 2010 we moved to the hot, coastal city of Recife in North East Brazil, for a six-month recky trip. Most of our time was spent with local Brazilians, from NGO directors to slum-dwellers, friends, church pastors, council members and the slightly mad family that we were living with! Our aim was to figure out why God was callling us here to Brazil and what it meant for the future.
The answer came when we had the opportunity to meet personally some of the many boys, girls, men and women who sell their bodies on the city's streets for as little as £2. We found these people to be friendly, hungry, often dirty and often homeless, or from one of the city's many slum communities. The prostitution that we encountered seemed to be more about survival than a lifestyle choice, and it broke our hearts and angered us to see the multitudes of men eagerly abusing these precious people's vulnerability.
The more we listened to God's voice and shared our hearts with him, the more clearly we felt that our purpose there was to journey with these young people, to see them set free from the chains of sexual expolitation and poverty, and restored to new lives of hope, creativity and purpose. For the last two years we have been training and preparing to return to Brazil to set out on this journey, and are now very excited to be flying out on August 15th this year! We'll be working with Meninadanca, a charity committed to bringing hope, healing and justice to sexually exploited girls in Brazil. We go with a sense of real peace about this next step, and also a deep desire to begin the long, challenging yet beautiful journey of walking with these precious girls.
