Transvestite Prostitutes Need Love Too
// November 14th, 2009 // Goals, Prayer, Strongholds
And it’s our job to give it to them. Plaza del Sol, the closest plaza to our house, is notorious for being the major gathering place of transvestite prostitutes in Guadalajara. This is a group of men (Yes, I will forever call them men, for God intended them to be so. More on that later.) is so tortured, so bound and shackled, and yet they are untouchable in the eyes of most Christians. I hesitate to blame this upon the conservative nature of Mexican culture pertaining to homosexuality and other such perversions of God’s beautiful gift to mankind, because I feel like they are equally ignored, abandoned, and avoided in our culture. Nobody knows how to reach out to them, how to love them, and everyone seems too scared to try.
There are thousands of prostitute ministries in this world, and I salute every single one of them. Certainly, some may be approaching the field without having counted the cost or without having a faint inkling of what they’re supposed to do, but they’re trying. They’re reaching out to broken women and offering the hope and the healing that only God Almighty can provide. While not perfect and certainly not easy, clean, or simple, prostitute ministries are something our Father absolutely throws His weight behind. Why? Because it’s an attempt to step inside His will for His beautiful and beloved daughters.
Here’s where our lives in Mexico get messy. Men who have had surgeries to try to look like women are not God’s beautiful and beloved daughters. Instead, they are God’s valiant and mighty sons. They are the leaders of families. They are the strength and the backbone of society. They are the governors and warriors of the people. They are sons of Adam, hand-crafted in the image of God Almighty, the Father in Heaven we are created to worship and enter into a loving relationship with. At least that’s what they were meant to be.
Instead, they are little boys tortured and sexually abused. They are cold, twisted, black hearts. They are bound and shackled by fear, by hate, by disease, by disgust, by neglect, by loneliness, by Satan. They are confused. They are hurting. They are lost. They dwell in darkness. They prowl the streets, repeatedly entering into slavery most foul. They sell their bodies and, thereby, their destinies as mighty men, for drugs, cash, or for a sense of belonging, of being wanted. They are looked upon with scorn by people of all walks. They are mocked by homeless beggars. They are threatened. They are pressured. They are hopeless.
Check that. They are not hopeless. We have a hope for them, and we once seemed hopeless ourselves. I’m reminded of 2 Corinthians 1:9-10
“9Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us(A) rely not on ourselves(B) but on God(C) who raises the dead. 10(D) He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us.(E) On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.”
How, when we have been snatched from death (Romans teaches us that the wages of sin are death, and that we were all in sin before Christ snatched us from it with His sacrifice), though we were unworthy, how do we turn a blind eye to these tormented souls? How do we judge them? How do we condemn them? How do we determine that they, or anyone else, is beyond the hope of Christ?
Is it not our responsibility, no, our command from God Himself, to hold out hope for these men? Is it not our responsibility to hold them in prayer? Is it not our responsibility to love them at all costs? Is it not our responsibility to share the love of Jesus Christ, as well as His Good News, with them, before they are lost to the depths of Hell forever?
Of course it is. That’s not the question though, is it? We all know our responsibility. We all know our charge. What we don’t know, is how to do so. For now, it’s with a prayer-walk combined with praying at home for direction (half the group on the walk, half at home) every other Friday night. Someday, we hope to partner with a local church to physically launch this ministry (This is the Engage way. We make sure a local church is involved with our ministries so they will continue in case anything diplomatically catastrophic causes us to suddenly leave the country.), but until that point we are relegated to prayers and prayer-walking only. This is not to diminish prayer, as it is a vital part of one’s spiritual life and any ministry not covered in prayer generally serves very little, if any purpose whatsoever. However, we, as missionaries, tend to be people of action rather than people of waiting. These men are dying out there, and we want to intervene and help.
Please join us in prayers for these men, for the daily lives they lead (Who knows what that looks like? Do they have families? Day jobs? Can they even go to the store without being mocked and ridiculed?), for the nights they suffer through, for conviction and transformation, for light in their dark world, for partners in this ministry, for their safety and health, and for God to be glorified when they are redeemed by the blood of Christ. He died for them too. They just don’t know it yet.