she's too young

It's 10:30pm here and most people in Greece are probably just finishing their dinner and getting ready to go out on a Saturday night. I however am already in my pajamas chowing down on Doritos. I'm about to go to bed, but the night is young for many people here.

Including the prostitutes we talked to the other night. We met a street full of Nigerian girls who have been trafficked here. They don't work in the brothels, but their pimps sit close by in the cafes on the end of the block. The pimps don't feel the need to exactly watch them like a hawk because they trust the girls to some extent. This is partly because the girls come from a place where voodoo and juju is very much believed in, and once the girls are trafficked they basically sign a spiritual contract in which they must pay off a debt before they can ever escape. Sadly even if this isn't the case for the girls, they are still held hostage by the fear of being unable to make ends meet. It's hard to find a job-even harder when you can't read and have no vocational skills. So these girls do the only thing they know-have sex to make money.

I'm a friendly and talkative person. But trying to make conversation with a prostitute was tricky. What do you talk about? What do you ask without stepping over any boundaries? (Hence I was constantly asking the Holy Spirit to speak through me) I asked a girl named Sophia if she liked Greece. She doesn't. And you know what she said? "But what am I gonna do". She looked me dead in the eyes as if to say there's no hope and she's stuck doing this forever, whether she wants to or not. But I know that God can pluck us out of our deepest point of desperation.

At the end of the street known for the Nigerians, a girl who was 24 was talking about two men who claim they want to marry her. I don't know the details but she said she wouldn't have to work the streets anymore if she were to get married. (I don't know what her hesitation is despite the encouragement from the New Life ministry to marry. Just choose one and get yourself out of this!). We asked if the prostitute beside her had a boyfriend. The response: "Noo! She's too young to have a boyfriend!" The irony.

I don't care how old any of those girls are [for the record there are girls working in brothels who have admitted they are 15]....NONE of them should have to do what they do. They're too young. They're precious daughters of God. They just don't see that.