Blessings in disguise

It has been quite a week.  For our alternative employment program, we have been working with an NGO that provides support and empowerment to street based sex workers to ensure their human rights and promote their health and safety.  There are more than 500 women who are members of this NGO.  We took 26 women last year, and gave them training and an a way out of the trade.  As it's not easy to develop work for people, we started with only 10 new women this month.  We selected criteria to prioritize who we would take... women who were the wage earners of their families, widows, women without options.  Unfortunately, some less than respectable people decided to try to profit from the situation and took money from women saying they could get them in, and then tried to threaten our staff to get their way.  There were threats and scenes throughout the week, and at one point we went to the police and had them come to address the issue.  

The training center where they meet is right in their community and has some issues like poor ventilation, flooding, dampness, lack of light... but as they could not find anyone else locally who would rent to a project like this we had just the week before decided to make the best of it and make a few alterations to try to solve these problems.  As the troubles erupted, the ladies with fear in their faces said they wanted the center to be moved out of the area, and with concerns for safety, we decided to look for a new building.  The one we found is ideal; very secure, midway between the slum where most of the women are coming from and the MCC office, has space to start our childcare program and have a separate office and maybe even a showroom, is clean and dry and well ventilated.  My colleague was giddy with excitement and said, "God is always on our side."  I think he really is and hope I can remember that next time everything seems to be a disaster.  I'm still saddened though at how many women are living these tragic lives with no options.  Ten women is such a drop in the bucket and so many could be spared the daily horrors if more jobs could be created.  Please pray that these women will quickly become employable (they are admittedly crude when they start the program), and that jobs will open up for them so we can take in more women as soon as possibe.