Attention Allies + Survivors :
Before the presidential debate, survivors across the country have written a letter that urges presidential candidates to denounce full decriminalization of the sex trade. We need your help!
We are looking for as many signatures as possible in the next hour! Please take a moment and sign- and then take another moment and share with friends, colleagues, etc.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdM22W3Ajp6Q1q7EG_Y9g_Dkc7j0k-WVauiyGHOCi5jKYmvAA/viewform
This photo says so much about who I am in my life today. When I first entered detox in 2007, I would get on my knees and awkwardly say, “God help me not use today. Help me to stay in treatment”.
I’m so humbled and grateful to God for saving from from a life filled with shame, self hate and remorse.
I’ve been used and abused.
I’ve done things I can’t believe I did.
I’ve been the aggressor.
I’ve been filled with hate.
But God has been so faithful to me. He has provided every step of the way. He has taught me how to see myself as clean and worthy. He has brought amazing women into my life. Women that have showed me what it means to be a godly woman, wife and mother.
Prayer, my friend, is one of the most powerful tools you can have.
Pray out loud.
Pray under your breath.
Pray with friends.
Pray anytime.
Pray always.
And in everything give thanks.
Copyright. 2019. Jasmine Grace
Photo Credit: Robert Nickelsberg
The subject of decriminalizing prostitution, human trafficking, and legalizing “sex work” is not going away. In order to offer clarity, we have asked Lisa Thompson from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation to present in Concord on April 4th.
Lisa will be in NH from the 4th through the 6th, speaking and presenting at various times. She is the VP of Policy and Research for NCOSE and has extensive knowledge about prostitution laws in the US and around the world. Her team has been researching the implications and outcomes of the various legal models of prostitution for many years.
Understanding Prostitution Laws – April 4th at CenterPoint Church 20 No. State St. in Concord, NH at 6:30-8pm.
NH TraffickFree – April 5th for a Town Hall Discussion at Life Church 150 Dow St, Manchester, NH at 10am-noon.
The New England Faith and Justice Summit – April 6th at Bethany Church, 500 Breakfast Hill Rd, Greenland, NH from 9am-4pm. (click the link for tickets)
It was a snowy Sunday. A freezing, icy rain kind of snow day. I was in a bad mood and I refused to be comforted by God or anyone else. I was angry and I felt like my old self. I lashed out at my son’s father and at God for no good reason. I couldn’t pray. I needed to nap and I slept for 3 hours. When I woke up, the anger was gone and I was ready to start my day over again.
As I turned my phone on, the video I forgot I was waiting for was there…
The trafficking survivor that I’m mentoring was being baptized at the church she attends while in a safe home out of state.
I met “Annie” about a year ago. She came to the halfway house I was working in and she was a mess. We connected right away and we talked a lot. I gave her a copy of Jasmine’s book and a Bag of Hope. I didn’t see her for two days. Finally, she came running into my office, excited and crying at the same time. She threw the book down and said “this is my life! I need to meet this Jasmine lady”. I gave her Jasmine’s number and they talked on the phone a few times. She was beside herself with her new found knowledge. She was no longer a victim but realizing she was a survivor. Sadly, three weeks later, she left the program and went back to her trafficker.
Over the next year, I began building a relationship with her by coming alongside her as she struggled to figure it out. She was an alcoholic but her real addiction was to her trafficker and the lifestyle the commercial sex trade brings. She went in and out of detoxes and recovery homes so much that her insurance was about to cut her off. I continued to guide her as she explored the Christian faith, teaching her who Jesus is and how He can help her find out who she was created to be. Later in the year, I picked her up from a hospital after another suicide attempt and was taking her to another program. It was while driving down the highway, she accepted Christ into her heart. It was a beautiful moment. We both cried and I knew God was working in both of our hearts that day.
A month later she left that program and I was heartbroken for her. She didn’t seem to be “getting it”. I also felt like I was enabling her to continue down the wrong path. I told her she couldn’t contact me again until she had 6 months clean. She understood, but it was a hard conversation. About 2 weeks later she called and I hesitated to pick it up. She told me overdosed and almost died. She sounded so sad and desperate. At that moment, I felt the Lord speak to me and then through me. I asked her if she was ready to leave the state and seek further treatment in a safe home. Because earlier in that week, I had met a woman who runs a safe house in Alabama for trafficking survivors. Without hesitation, she said yes! Two days later she was on a plane.
Two months later, she was back in Boston because she was asked to leave the home due to an altercation with another resident. She asked me to help find her another program that was out of state. I brought her to my house and for the next two days we made calls and referrals to different safe homes across the country. She picked one in Pennsylvania and left three days later.
While she was staying with me, we talked a lot about her time in Alabama and how she felt closer to God than ever. It was there, that she finally could see that He was truly working in her life. And that she could make it.
While at the latest program, she has gone down into some valleys. Her past trauma is starting to come to the surface and the emotions she has been numbing for years are starting to come alive. She is scared. She doesn’t know how to handle the feelings and she is letting her anger get the best of her. We have spoken a few times since her baptism. I am happy and excited for the new milestone in her life. I encouraged her to keep trusting God. She is afraid to mess up and doesn’t want to let her family and God down. I told her how I screwed up shortly after my baptism and reassured her that we all make mistakes. What I’ve learned is that, it’s about progress – not perfection and God can use it all. I reminded her that the same power God used to raise Jesus from dead, is inside of her and the Holy Spirit will teach her how to use it.
Please keep her in your prayers. We know that the enemy will relentlessly remind her of who she was in the past. We also know that God is in the business of redemption and often uses our past failures to bring Him glory! Walking alongside women who have been trafficked isn’t for the faint of heart. I am so grateful to have these front row seats into her transformation. It makes the work I do – worth it. I am grateful that God has set me on my own path to healing and recovery so I can show other women how to find freedom. We all walk it out differently but the enemy will use the same lies to keep us in the cycle of shame. The difference is that God uses His love and promises to comfort us and bring us out of that cycle and into His arms.
2 Corinthians 1:3-5 (NIV)
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ”
Written by: Anita, Recovery Coach and Mentor for Bags of Hope
Edited by: Jasmine Grace. Copyright 2019. All Rights Reserved.
Today, one of the most rewarding things in my life, is getting to share my story with others that haven’t figured out theirs yet. I have come to know that when I share in a transparent and vulnerable way – it gives others a chance to do the same. And when we finally tell someone else about the prior abuse or the trafficking we have endured, we open to the door to healing. The enemy of our souls uses shame and silence to keep us sick. Only bad things grow in the dark. It is when we shine the light down on those deep places, can we finally heal. That is why I help give women a voice. A chance to speak up. A opportunity to take the healing as it comes.
Here is one survivor’s journal entry from a group we did a while back. She gave us permission to share her powerful writing. And while she said awesome things about me, that is not why I am sharing it. I want you to focus on her feelings and her revelations.
“Today is a wonderful day. I’m at the program and this amazing woman came to share her story about recovery, sex trafficking and prostitution. She talked about her “pimp” and the grooming process. And the shame & violence. I am so amazed by her courage and strength and vulnerability to share some of the most shameful moments of her life with a room full of women. She told my story.
She knows what I’ve been through. The feeling of being tainted or dirty. The feeling that no one would ever love me again. That I am not pretty or beautiful like I used to be before I was a prostitute or in the sex trade.
She talked about the tricks and about how we are made out to be dirty hoes but they are just being guys. And how the stigma is so sick. I feel like God has put her in my path for a reason. I feel like I can take so much from her wisdom and learn from it. I am completely impressed by her. I feel such a huge connection with her. I hope I can email and stay in touch.
She has wrote a book about her diary entries- the 5 yrs she was stuck in the trade of sex trafficking. She brought us each a copy. I can’t tell you how happy I am. I love this woman. I told her that I’m working with a trauma specialist. She told me I’m brave and courageous and I am doing good working on my trama. She has been so encouraging. I remembered this one time that my pimp left me sick because He wasn’t getting any responses to his ad on backpage so I had to turn a trick before he got me off “E” and I was pucking all over the place. And he stuck my face in the puke. I’m full of these stories. I feel so broken and when I think of these or have flashbacks he makes me feel so disgusting and gives me anxiety.”
And this my friends, is why we write and give women a chance to share their stories.
©2018. All Rights Reserved. Jasmine Grace.
Every year we plan our Annual Bring a Item – Fill a Bag event for people in the community to come together and “do good” for vulnerable women by bringing basic toiletries and to stuff bags filled with HOPE!
We have smaller events throughout the year when groups invite us to come speak and fill 10-50 bags at a time. This helps sustain us through the seasons. Our goal this year was to stuff 300 bags, we did 270, but the best part was – so many new people came out to join us! We didn’t know most of them, so we made new friends! We needed to get more tables and chairs a couple of times because people just kept coming in 🙂
We are beyond GRATEFUL for the support and love people showed us! Also, to Trinity Evangelical Church in North Reading for hosting us.
Here are some of the highlights!
#1. Was when our two newest team members, Jenn and Chelsey, shared their testimonies of surviving the commercial sex trade and how they themselves received a Bag of Hope as they trudged through early drug recovery. You could feel the presence of God in the room, tears were flowing and we were all so blessed by these brave women for sharing what they have been through and how far they have come in recovery. This is what makes my heart so full… To know that God has called me to speak for so many women, year after year, as I have shared my own story in so many places. Now I get to watch other survivors rise up, mature in their faith, share their stories, and find their voices. As Chelsey beautifully states, “Bags of Hope gave me the voice I didn’t know I had”.
#2. Shout out to our amazing coordinator, administrator, recovery coach extraoenaire… Anita for her organization of the event and brilliant idea of giving people at the event an opportunity to sign up and deliver the bags they made to one of the 30 programs we serve! So many people signed up that by the end of the night we had only ONE BAG left!! While this is fantastic, we are in need of smaller bag filling events and donation drives, so please spread the word! Pray that this ONE Bag will multiply into 100 MORE!
#3. When I speak at events, I usually have a table for my book, The Diary of Jasmine Grace. Trafficked. Recovered. Redeemed. I always offer people a chance to buy a book for themselves and then donate one to a woman in need. Because of people’s generosity, they have donated over 200 books and we have given out over 150 in the past year and a half since it’s been released. Well, one of the drug recovery programs we serve brought their women clients to the event and I was able to give 15 books to them. There had been only one book at the house and the ladies were fighting over it 🙂
I could go on about God’s faithfulness, goodness, love and mercy, but it’s too much to fit into a blog post!
With Thanksgiving being tomorrow, it is my hope that you will take a minute to think of all you have to be grateful for. And to remember the women, men, girls and boys that are out there, still caught in the trap of sexual exploitation, addiction and homelessness.
With that said, I am THANKFUL to Him for this season of bountiful harvest, to those for their support of the ministry, and to you for reading this!
“Enter His gates with Thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.” Psalm 100:4
Peace, Jasmine
©Copyright 2018. JasmineGrace. All Rights Reserved.
First trafficked by deception and fraud and then held captive by psychological manipulation, she was in and out of the Life for almost twelve years. During those years, she would be out of the Life for a stretch of a few years, she was never free from the bondage of evil. And thus kept going back to the Life, unable to break free from the invisible chain.
Brothels, massage parlors, karaoke bars, and escort services—the Life was her default mode of life that was always pulling her back and also tempting her to fall back to whenever she tried to be her own, whispering to her ears that it was where she really belonged. Men always abused her and treated her as a sexual object anyway; ‘at least now I’m getting paid for it,’ she told herself, trying to convince herself that it wasn’t too bad and perhaps it was better.
But it was a life of darkness and utter hopelessness. She thought maybe she would end it all by taking her own life. And she tried a few times—in vain.
Meanwhile, by God’s grace she had a chance to attend a local church a few times and was even baptized at one point; though, not before long, she drifted away from the church and God and soon relapsed back to the Life. Nevertheless, God was faithful and one day when she was contemplating a suicide again, God brought to her mind Christ in whose name she was baptized. There is a power in the name of Christ. At least she quit trying to kill herself from then on. And slowly she began reading the Word of God, and as the seed of the Word took root in her heart, she became convinced of the evil and sinfulness of the Life and resolved to get out of the Life for good. And Christ delivered her out of the Life and redeemed her. And she accepted Christ as her Lord and Savior.
Not before long, she started serving God at a local church and became involved in anti-trafficking works. She firmly believes that the inherent dignity and inviolability of a human person lie in the fact that all women and men are created in the image of God. She also believes that it is only through the power of Christ the bondage of evil can be broken and only by His light the darkness can be overcome. And she is a witness to the power of redemption that is in Christ.
She is currently studying at a seminary pursuing her M. Div. degree and also helping other women exploited by the sex industry at a non-profit Christian organization. God has blessed her with a good Christian man with whom she has been married for four years now.
Authored by: Miranda
©Copyright 2018. Jasmine Grace
