Prostitute Outreach - 4/1/11 (by Jen C)

To start off, if you were wondering just how nutty/bad at making decisions I am, check this out:

Friday night we already had the plan of meeting at 1am for outreach. Given that the round trip back home and back to LA later wouldn't be worth the time (plus gas is killing us all these days) I had made plans to take a nap at Julia's before outreach. Pretty smart, right?

Then comes my dear Jen C. A bad influence, in the best way possible, convinces me to skip the nap and go to a Dodger game with her instead. So from the time that I got out of bed Friday morning, went to work, enjoyed the game, did outreach, and then drove home, I was pretty close to 24 hours without sleep.

And so was Jen when she wrote this blog... (and yet was still able to write a fantastic update!) ;)

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Dear friends,

A lot is happening and it is hard for me to find time or I guess the level of concentration needed to write. So, here goes nothin!

In the last few weeks we noticed that there weren't many girls out on the track when we would do outreach and we began to pray about possibly changing the time and or location of our outreach.
The first thing we did was decide to go out later or should I say "earlier"...the last 2 weeks we have met at 1am to pray and hit the track at about 2.

The first week, we still didn't see a lot of girls, though more than usual. We ran into a guy who runs a local liquor store that I have talked to on several occasions and asked him what was going on. He said the cops were doing a lot of undercover busts (we happened to meet a few several weeks before) and that girls were getting arrested and the track was quieting down. So I asked him where the girls were and he gave us a location just a couple of miles from our normal track. At the end of the night we went to check it out and just as he had said we saw several girls in the first couple of blocks. We decided that the following week (last night) we would go to the new track.

Back up a few minutes.... while on the old track (confused yet? ;) ) we met two sisters who were a very sweet and very broken pair. They had been working for over 30 years and they were eager to hear how we might help them change their lives. We tried to connect them with a home that night but weren't able to make the connection, so we gave them our number and took theirs and prayed with them. We weren't able to connect with them this week, but I am still hopeful that we will soon. As we were talking with them, I remembered that I had one scarf left that my sister had made for the girls and thought it would bless them, we encouraged them to remember that God was pursuing them and had good things for them when they looked at the scarf. Will you please pray with us for these two sisters?

This last week I was still in prayer about the track and where we should be and one afternoon, while thinking of all the events of the last week I realized God had already answered. In one week, the Lord connected me to a pregnancy clinic, a newly formed Bible study and a Young Life group in the exact area where we minister. Wow! Surely God is working in this area and bringing His people together, with all different gifts to reach His people. I am so blessed by the connections that have been made and excited to see how God will use the various ministries to draw the lost to Himself.

This Friday night we had enough people for two teams so we split up, one team went to the old track and one to the "new". Both of us met a lot of girls and gave out several gift bags. One thing we would ask you to pray for is the openness of the girls, that they will trust us and receive us as we seek to reach out to them. It seems that with the increased police activity, the girls are less likely to stop and talk with us and apparently we all look like cops :p

We absolutely covet your prayers for this ministry, we trust that the Lord is leading us and that He has us and we are so thankful for your partnership in prayer. For the most part we go on outreach on Friday nights, but our team needs prayer coverage all throughout the week!

In His grace,
Jen C
http://www.afterhoursministry.org/