Down memory lane

I have been looking at some photos and reading letters from when we started the work among from the Badi people. This letter below is from October 2009 six years ago and part of the memory lane. How insignificant it started… With just the desire to prevent small girls from being pushed into prostitution and today we look in the rear-view mirror and are amazed. / Håkan G

Singapore 6 October 2009

Dear friends,

Another month has gone by and we look back to a great month. Thank you every one who came and joined us for our 15th Anniversary and made it to a special occasion for all of us in Touching Asia. It was truly a night of embracing His Kingdom, His heart, His call and His vision for nations.

The Badi – bondage in the sex trade 

Our new focus concerns a ministry to an unreached people group – to save young girls from ending up being sold as sex slaves or as bonded labour. For over a year I have been praying and thinking about human trafficking, and when I was in Nepal in February, the Lord really touched me deeply as I heard about and encountered some situations that I thought were disturbing. I wrote about it in the June Update. The plans have now matured and we are ready to get the ball rolling.      

                                      A few of the vulnerable girls in the Badi village

The first visit in one of the Badi villages together with Raju Sundas

The Badi people are Dhalits, untouchables, and one of the most marginalized groups in the Nepali society. The vast majority are landless being born into a life of extreme poverty, without education, health care and social statues. But the most appalling is the fact that most girls and women, mothers and daughters, are forced to involve in selling their bodies to earn a living. Children and young women are also for example often tricked and sold off in bogus marriages and used by their ‘husband’ or master to earn a good profit for them.   

One man Raju met had four ‘wives’. The last one (being only sixteen years old) he sent to one of the Middle Eastern nations to work in the sex/flesh trade. Another girl we met on this trip was only sixteen years old but was already a mother of two children. She was ‘married’ off when she was ten years old and became pregnant, and at sixteen she now already has two children. She looked so innocent, sweet and beautiful, but every day she has to go to the nearest city to get customers.

These are only two examples of so many, innocent girls meeting the same fate.

We visited one of the Badi villages and met many mothers and children and saw their extreme poverty and social statues. As I looked at the small girls I realized that most of them, if not all, will in a few years’ experience the same thing; to be abused and exploited to have sex with old men. It’s sickening to see and hear about this exploitation. Imagine being born into this situation; and this not just for a short time but this is your life. You are bound and destined from birth to this kind of life because of poverty and your cast.

I feel so angry towards this injustice and I feel broken when I think about the girls and the mothers. They want to break with this curse and they want their children to get a better life. We are now ready to begin to help them by starting a home for girls. This might be the first of several, I have no idea, but one thing I do know. Our vision is to:

• Establish a Girls home
• Provide long-term education, vocational training and create job opportunities for them, so they can avoid being forced into the bondage of prostitution, or other kinds of servitude/slavery. 
• By having a compassion ministry, we will be able to provide dignity to this community build relations and see lives being restored and healed.

Thirty girls selected

Thirty young girls have been selected and a place has been chosen. It will be near Kathmandu and a couple of older widows from the church will be the ‘mothers’ in charge of this home to give love and care. The inauguration will be in December.

Zero commitments

We will need long-term commitments for the monthly running costs for this home. As we launch this appeal at this time of writing we have no commitments at all from anyone. But in December when we inaugurate the Girls Home we will be thanking God for His faithfulness of having provided all funds. 

If you want to be part of this compassion ministry and you feel that God is definitely speaking to you, please send us an email or call us at the below address. We have photos of the children, specific information of the project, the people group and the budget details.

 Thank you for praying for us. 

On behalf of the Touching Asia family, 

Hakan & Erika Gabrielsson