“Imagine the dirtiest, lowest thing you can think of…. I am even dirtier and lower than that”
These were the words she used to describe herself as we stood in the streets of Vila Mimosa, a red-light district at the heart of Rio de Janeiro that sees more than 4,000 men a day walk through its alleys to buy women. Except “she” was a man, a transgendered person who had been exploited in the Brazilian sex trade for years to support his drug addiction that numbed years of rejection and pain.
We sat on the rainy streets for over an hour and listened to his story as he described his battle within himself, his dreams to be a father, and the fear that He was too-far-gone to be loved by God. In that rainy night encounter, a night when we’d almost canceled our walk through the district because of the weather, one man’s life was changed as he repented and believed the truth about a love that covered shame, a love that could heal, a love that caused one man to lay down His life for him. As we hugged and said goodbye, with plans to meet-up the next day he said: “This is how I know the love of Jesus is real, that He would send you to this pit of hell to tell me the truth”.
All over the earth, men and women are held captive in pits of hell, some of their own making, their addictions, their abuse… But the Lord is with them there, never leaving them, never giving up on them and He is calling us to be there as well, the church that prevails against the gates of Hell.
Tim & Blaire Fraim
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