When I was at the ripe old age of 12 I had a dream. The dream was to travel to somewhere exotic where few people knew Jesus, poverty reigned and babies were abandoned and move there, open an orphanage and spend the best years of my life raising babies and teaching them about a God who will never abandon them.
Being 12 years old growing up in the middle Oklahoma, Africa was the most exotic place on my map so I checked out a language learning CD from our local library on Swahili and attempted to learn my first foreign language. I never did conquer Swahili and I have yet to make it to Africa but as I approach the milestone age of 30 my dream of running an orphanage is stronger than ever.
My practically minded husband typically just rolls his eyes and acts like I'm crazy when I tell him an idea that I'm working on. While I believe it was the adventurous spontaneous side of my personality which attracted him to me in the first place Chris is usually much too practical to get caught up in one of my "ideas" about the future. When forecasting a vision about the future I usually see possibilities while Chris thankfully sees the hurdles. This being the case and me being" me", I believe God brought us together so I can teach him how to dream and he can take care of all of the necessary details to make the dreams a reality.
Chris knew I had a dream of an orphanage but never took it too seriously until one night when neither one of us could sleep the Lord began to speak to him about our orphanage. He said he felt that the work we are doing now with YWAM Honolulu and running the DTS is a training ground for "something". He thought the Lord may be showing him that running an orphanage is that "something" we were being prepared for.
The seed was planted and I have been watering it ever since. A few nights later Chris had a dream about little girls that were going to be abused and sex trafficked in Asia. In the dream he was trying to protect and rescue them before it happened. Upon waking Chris felt that was his mission and goal to protect those little girls. I pray it was a prophetic dream from the Lord!
One year ago I too had a dream about girls being sex trafficked, although in this dream I was the girl who was taken. It was not graphic and gory, instead it was filled with the emotion of helplessness. I got a brief sense of what it would feel like to be in that position. The Lord was opening my heart to feel what so many in the world must feel everyday.
Sex trafficking is getting a lot of attention in the news today, I hope all of this attention is being turned into change. The problem seems so big and rooted in greed and lust it can seem overwhelming. I hope we can be a small drop in the ocean of change that needs to occur in the world.
Chris and I are in the dreaming and praying phase of this idea. The beautiful nation of Thailand has been in our thoughts a lot. I keep thinking that we will be in Hawaii for the next 5 years before moving over seas and beginning language studies in preparation. 5 years go by fast though so I wanted to let people know about the dream so they can begin to pray, partner and dream with us!
