On Prostitution

Close your eyes. Imagine you are thirteen again...What are you thinking? What are you feeling?...I am feeling fat (like most girls my age). I am also desperate to find the recipe to popularity, or at least to finding cool friends. Shallow really! For most of my life I have never thought about what other thirteen-year-old girls around the world might have been thinking until last week...

Hyung is a beautiful sixteen-year-old Thai girl who lives in Cambodia. She lived with her mother and step-father till she was thirteen. Her step-father physically and emotionally abused her. When she turned thirteen she escaped her house and went to live with ther grandmother. She then began to attend and Adventist Southeast Asia Projects' (ASAP) sponsored literacy school. Today she is teaching other girls how to read and write. Believe it or not, her story has a very happy ending; not so for many other girls in Southeast Asia and Africa.

While I was worried about shallow material things, thirteen-year-old girls around the world had one question in mind...Will today be the day I am sold into prostitution by my own parents?

In countries were most of the population is below the poverty line, chances for a bright future are slim to none. Many parents believe in sacrificing their thirteen-year-old daughters to secure the future of their sons. It only takes $1,000 to ruin a life!

Parents are paid $1,000 for their daughter's life. I am not being dramatic...Most of these girls that leave their homes at the age of thirteen, contract AIDS by the time they are sixteen and are sent back to their families to die. Most of them will not live past their twentieth birthday.

I have two requests for those of you that might read this post. Only two...

1. Please donate to an organization that is trying to make a difference in these girls lives. I work for ASAP, and we try to teach these girls how to read, write and sew. By learning these skills we hope their parents will allow them to work and earn money for their families without having to sell their bodies. If you cannot find an organization you like, start one!
2. Don't judge. As a Christian, I have been bombarded with messages from the pulpit and from those around me, that sexual immorality is a sin. Prostitutes are filthy sinners that choose that lifestyle because they love sex...sounds familiar? Seems like most Christians have forgotten that Jesus hung out with prostitutes when He was on earth...

By hearing the stories of these girls I have learned that most people do not choose what lot they get in life. I can't even get the life I want, and I live in the United States...the land of the free! Lets not forget to pray for those that are thrown into circumstances that they did not ask for and cannot help.