Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Hope Speaks

GFA supported Women Reaching Women Missionaries
While in India the vision team heard some amazing stories from women missionaries.  These missionaries, are part of the organized good news spreading efforts of GFA.  God is redeeming the role of women in a demonic culture, a culture where hope-filled women have been non-existent.
  • Every year in India, more than 7,000 women are doused with kerosene and burned to death—by their husbands. The wife’s crime: an insufficient dowry.
  • Widows are left alone and outcast after watching husbands and children eaten alive by Bengal tigers.
  • Suicide numbers are higher in Asia areas because of the rampant abuse of alcohol by men.
  • High percentages of women are becoming illiterate.
  • Women are often the last to eat.
  • Many young girls have to drop out of school and are forced into child labor.  
  • There are 1.2 million child prostitutes. 
Who's going to reach them?  Many of these women live in some of the most remote places on the planet.  They have yet to hear of Hope.  And many women cannot be approached by men due to cultural customs, making their slim chance of hearing the good news even slimmer.

Hope is needed in a most desperate and suicide driven country, filled with female broken hearts.  

The GFA supported Women's Reaching Women's missionaries are speaking hope into the most desolate, desperate and lonely lives.  One small-framed and dedicated missionary was asked why she felt called to reach out to women, and her response was very touching, teary and powerful.

"I know what it feels like to be unloved and unwanted."  

That's why she speaks hope.  That's why she is motivated to share her Heavenly Father's love to those who never had an earthly father's love in a culture that devalues women.  That's why she feels called to reach out to women in a culture that lets their cows eat better than their wives. That's why she shares the ultimate and most perfect Hope.  That's why she speaks about the about a genuine and unconditional kind of love.  She once didn't have it, now...she speaks hope into women's lives.

Because of her childhood pain resulting from unloved feelings, she reaches out to those who are shunned by their families.  The Women Reaching Women outreach is reaching more areas that are starving for love and hope in the hearts these women.  She is speaking life, love and hope into the souls of newly loved ladies.

Women can go restricted areas or areas where men aren't allowed.  She knows the cultural taboos instinctively.  She knows the language barriers.  She lives among them and shares the same cultural interests.  But mostly her past has impassioned her to reach out to other hopeless women.

Hope speaks.

Hope brings the salvation message to hurting hearts and wraps them up with a nice pink sari.  A gift that most women have never known.  There are so many young girls who don't know the truth.  So many girls born are rejected at birth because of their gender.  Many are prayed to false gods to be boys, parents wished that they didn't exist, many are never accepted as the precious gift of life that they are.

So many need the hope of God's perfect love.

Those young girls grow to be women and virtually invisible to society.  Silenced by their culture and treated less than humane.  No respect,  no value, no honor, no worth, no love, no hope.

When Hope is spoken it Redeems.  God's love soothes souls and gives worth.  God's love fills the broken places that the unlovely have caused.  Hope redeems and gives them a second chance.  Hope's syllables resonate deeply.  Hope sings a new and happy song to their hearts.

Hope speaks.

Women Reaching Women speak hope and healing into the years of emotional damage due to unthinkable life circumstances and keeps them from evolving into by-products of a pagan culture.  Each brave missionary gave testimony for her reason for speaking hope.

Because they have known hopelessness, they speak hope.
Hope speaks Redemption into years of shame and guilt.
Hope Speaks.


2 comments:

Gay L. said...

So well said, Janelle

Deb said...

So many things I didn't know about. Thank you for sharing about these women and girls.