The following is one of my favorite stories that I have ever been a part of while doing ministry. It is a miraculous story about a Korean woman whom we helped get out of the sex industry and her journey to follow Jesus. We waited until now to tell her story for her protection. We feel like finally it is the right time. We have changed her name and covered her face for her protection.
It was November 10. Our dear friend Kim arrives at our home with a look of joy on her face and peace in her heart. My wife, kids, and I embrace her when she comes inside our home. Today she is getting baptized! This is no ordinary baptism story, in fact, it’s one of the most miraculous stories I have ever been a part of and I am so thankful that we got to be a part of it.
We drive to our friend’s home because they have a pool. This home is special to me because it is here that I started following Jesus in 1999. How special it is to know that when God changes one life, he uses that life to play a role in changing another.
We get to the house and she was immediately welcomed by her little group of friends that she calls her church and her family. Everyone is excited about what is about to happen. We give her flowers and gather around her to pray. Before we prayed, I spoke about the passage in Romans 10:13-15.
13 “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
I read this passage because like most transformation stories, usually it is because someone shared the story of Jesus with another. Someone had to go, whether it’s to your neighbor, oversees, or the unreached places is our cities. This story was about that. We chose to go into places where the church was not, into places so dark and so difficult to reach people that it took great risk and faith to go there, the brothels of our city where sexual exploitation is rampant.
We then play her favorite song, Amazing Grace, and all hold hands around her as tears of joy stream down her face. Afterwards she tells us she was just thinking about her life and where she had come from and now, she is here. It just overwhelmed her. After we pray, we enter the water. For me it was one of the most special moments of my life. I felt like that father at the wedding giving away his daughter to the groom, but for this it was giving her to Jesus, her true groom.
“Buried with Christ in baptism, raised to a new life in Jesus” and as she came out of the water, she immediately raised her hands to the heavens in praise. This is the gospel! Oh, how I love to share it. No matter with whom or what it costs me, how could I ever not share it! How could we not share it?
Her story starts in Korea. Like thousands of women, promised a job in the United States only to be tricked or manipulated into another life. She was told she would be making a great living as a masseuse. She was snuck over the Canadian border and forced to live in a house that she was never allowed to leave for two years and that’s where she was forced into sexual slavery. After that, she was now in the system of debt bondage with seemingly no way out, forced from brothel to brothel, brothels that never close here in our city and in most of our American cities. Most sleep there, going from one place to another. After a while it became routine and even if she wanted out, she had no way out. The “brokers” had taken her passport, she didn’t speak English, and like so many other women, they brainwash them to think that law enforcement in the US is bad so they never reach out. On top of that, she was put into a debt bondage where you cannot pay it off. This was her life for so many years. Eventually this was the life she knew. When she got older, she eventually became a house mama of one of the brothels. A house mama is basically the woman who runs the business and oversees the women working there. And there she remained stuck in the sex industry for many years, still owing money to owners and brokers.
You can’t imagine how difficult it was for our team of women to not only find a way to even have contact with these woman, much less minister to them. The only way in and out of these places is through the house mamas. If you can’t get by them, you are not getting in. As impossible as it may sound, we started praying for a house mama to come to Christ. This of course took a heavenly mental approach of faith and the need to view house mamas differently than how most of the world sees them. We needed to have the mindset that even house mamas, owners, and even pimps, could come to Christ. They needed to receive His love just as much as anyone. They are all there for a reason. Everyone has a story. This was our prayer and we had to be patient in this prayer no matter how long it took but it just felt right.
Fast forward two years. I get a call on my “secret” phone number that went to voice message. We created this number for victims who might contact us. It had never rang before. When I received the call, I thought it was just spam. I couldn’t really understand the voicemail because the person obviously didn’t speak good English, but I pursued it anyway. I got one of the girls on our team to translate and it turns out that the woman calling us was someone from the sex industry. We immediately set up a meeting with her and my translator. We had no plan because we were not ready or expecting this.
We met her in a public place where she felt safe. I remember her hands were shaking. She was extremely nervous. We had no idea if someone was watching, if this was a setup, or whatever but we were willing to risk our lives because this is what Jesus called us to do. All for the sake of reaching people for Jesus.
It turned out that this woman had saved our contact number for two years! She got the number because one of our teams went into a brothel and handed out our contact info. She stated that she held onto it because one day she wanted to be free and wanted a new life. I was shocked to say the least. Of course, in these situations like so many, you hear from people but will they really follow through?
We got her connected to a local nonprofit here in Dallas to help her with immigration issues and with things more on the law enforcement side of things. My wife and I slowly started to build a relationship with her. We just kept meeting as much as we could. Trust needed to be built. It was strange at first because she wasn’t used to having relationships with people outside of her world, especially not with white American followers of Jesus. We also didn’t want to press her about Jesus because she had been through so much. We were really careful. The only time I mentioned Jesus was telling her why we were reaching out to women in brothels. I told her my testimony about how God had transformed my life and why we were reaching out to these places and that was it. We just simply loved on her as much as we could. She didn’t seem open at the time to Jesus and of course coming from a Buddhist background I can certainly understand that. She simply didn’t have a grid for who Jesus was, even with living in the United States for so long.
One day when I was with her at the local nonprofit, she said she wanted to tell me something. She told me that she had a dream and that a man who was dressed all in white appeared to her. This was all in broken English so it was difficult to understand but of course my ears perked up! I hear stories about Jesus appearing to people in dreams all the time oversees but not as often here. She believed this was Jesus and said that ever since that dream she had begun to search online about who Jesus was. She told me she wanted to learn about Jesus. To say the least, I was completely shocked, but I shouldn’t have been!
My wife and I started meeting with her every week to keep building relationship with her and to show her scriptures about Jesus. It was a slow process. You have to understand coming from a Buddhist background, Jesus is a totally different viewpoint. Were we making progress?
Then one day she shows up at our door. She looked like a totally different person. She was dressed different, like she had picked out one of her best outfits. She just had a light about her. She looked at peace and she looked like she wanted to tell us something. As she walked in, she was carrying something. We had been planning that week to get her a Korean Bible but hadn’t gotten it yet. Somehow, she found one to buy and walked in proudly holding it. She said, “I have read all of Matthew and I am ready to follow Jesus!”
Wow, just writing this it’s hard to hold back tears. We didn’t bring this girl to Jesus. He did. We just showed up and loved her. He appeared to her in her dreams and drew her all the way.
It has been almost 7 years since we met her. She has become like family to us. My kids always love when she would come over to our house and they run over to her for a hug. We meet together as often we can. We have become her church family. I remember the first time at one of our gatherings as a team, she got emotional because she had never experienced being in a gathering of followers of Jesus.
She has worked so hard to get where she is today. She has a great job. She continues to grow and we continue to be amazed by her life. She texted me one day and said she had started a Bible Study with some friends of hers who wanted to learn about Jesus. Personally the greatest news I can hear is that someone I am ministering to wants to follow Jesus. The second is to hear about them sharing Jesus with others.
I visited this Bible Study one day and I witnessed her sharing Jesus with others with tears in her eyes. In that moment, I was again touched by the gospel and how it turns our broken stories into the most beautiful stories from one person to the next.
Every time we see her I have to remind myself of this amazing story and how God connected us and how different her life is now. It’s a true life of redemption and transformation. Her story reminds me that there is no greater thing in this life than to follow Jesus and partner with Him in the adventure of reaching people on this earth!
Leave a Reply