Our almost-seventeen-year-old daughter Alexis Noelle has God in a box.
Alexis has been working with one of our missionaries here,
Becca Christian (http://beccachristian.myadventures.org).
The two of them meet with local high school girls on a weekly basis, teaching
them about the Bible, purity, and how to live life.
Almost 100% of these girls are fatherless, abandoned and
alone; as I have shared before, they lose girls each week from their meetings
as they fall pregnant from bus drivers, teachers, and relatives. They found one
girl trying to give herself a second abortion – it is a tragic reality of life
here on a daily basis.
Alexis felt the Lord asked her to do something special for
their graduation. They had printed up shirts that the girls wore – each one
with a different attribute: purity, beautiful, special, loved.
The girls wore
these shirts under their uniforms, and when they took off their outer shirt, the
rest of the kids and teachers would see these words of affirmation.
One of the
teachers phoned Becca and asked where the girls got the shirts. Becca was a
little nervous until the teacher asked if she could have one, as well!
Lex took it a step further – she made a box with scriptures
written all around and across in the middle. She had the girls write down
their sexual sins on a piece of paper. Now, remember: these are 10th graders.
They filled the sheets of paper with times they had given themselves for R5
(about $1.50), so they could buy bread or just get a ride to school on the bus.
They wrote down times they had been raped and felt it was their fault – the
most disturbing was that every sheet was written on; not one didn’t have
something to confess.
Alexis had them write them down and then tear the paper up.
She then had them put them inside this box of “Purity” with the Words of God
written around it, and then she burned them. She burned all of them. My 16 year-old daughter then preached a message on marriage.
She told them about how you save yourself for the
man God created for you – that not only don’t you give your body or even a kiss to a man that is not the one God chose for you to marry for life, but you also never
give him your emotions.
She taught them about faith, how to trust their
husband in Heaven for every need and how jealous He is over each one of them.
Then, my Alexis took the ashes from the box, wrapped in
them in a ribbon and gave them back to the girls… beauty for ashes.
