The Party!

Last Thursday, we drove 5 vehicles to the brothels to pick up any prostitute who would come to Grace Gardens for a party! We had advertised it for two weeks, passed out invites and everyone at Grace Gardens was all excited to introduce new ladies to Grace Gardens!We did this for a couple of reasons. First of all, we recently have had a few prostitutes come to Grace Gardens, stay a couple days and then leave and return to the brothel and tell lies about Grace Gardens. So we wanted to women to see for themselves what it is like. Also the words of Angela, a past prostitute and current resident, are always ringing in my ears. She said, "Mommy, when you are in the hotels, nothing else matters it is like you are under a curse. Then when you get out, you can't remember why you ever went there in the first place." Because of her words, I am always trying to get the girls to come out for us to talk to them. So, Thursday, we managed to get 21 out and over to Grace Gardens.We decided we wouldn't pressure anyone to leave permanently that day. Just show them the ministry, talk to them about how everything works, share some testimonies, feed them and give them all gifts from Gigi's boutique!We started rounding them up at 9:30 and we got the first bunch of girls to the house a little before 12. By 1:00 we had 21 ladies! It is a lot of work to gather women from 7 different brothels who are being ridiculed by there fellow workers for coming. We started the day with a lot of women yelling at us and laughing at the crazy notion that we wanted to have a party for them. But amazingly, 21 came and at least one girl from each brothel came. That was our goal, to get at least one girl from each hotel so they could go back and tell the other girls about Grace Gardens. And by the end of the afternoon, we had a lot of girls hugging us and thanking us.It was so neat to see the girls walk in, some of our GG ladies recognized girls they knew and ran up to hug them and welcome them. They also loved seeing how many kids were living at Grace Gardens. I think it speaks volumes to the ladies that we care for the kids too. The ladies seemed overwhelmed by how nice everyone was to them and many girls have said that they will be calling me this next week to come and get them so they can move into Grace Gardens. Now, I am not holding my breath because girls tell me that all the time, but I am praying. And I am asking you to join me in praying that girls will choose to call us and choose to follow Christ!Also pray for land. I know we just moved to our current location, but we are already running out of room again. We have found a piece of property that seems like it is perfect. It has all the buildings we would need already and in great shape, but it also has plenty of room to build more buildings! They are asking a little over $400,000 which we do not have, but we know that if God wants us to have the land, He will provide!