Here I am Lord, send me!

What’s a short-term mission trip like? Exhausting, heart-rending, profound and life-changing, says Helen Cobham

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of joining a short-term Elim Missions team to India led by Mandy Campbell. Unexpectedly a space had suddenly opened on this team, and I felt the Lord prompting me to step up to support them.

This mission was an exploratory visit to support our global partners and set up a Be Free India project. Be Free is Elim Missions’ stand against human exploitation.

Our global partner has a vision to help the women who are exploited by the Devadasi system of the Hindu religion. In this system, prepubescent daughters are offered to gods by their families in the belief that the deity will be pleased and then bless the family.

When Devadasis reach adolescence, they are compelled to perform sexual duties as servants to the deities. Devadasis are nothing more than child sex workers or sex slaves.

With growing age, once a Devadasi is no longer useful to the deity, she will often end up working in agricultural labour, often homeless and even having to beg. No one will marry a Devadasi. Emptiness in life and exclusion from society become lifelong companions for these women. During our trip, in the local church planted by our global partner we held a women’s conference, which was attended by 182 Devadasis. Some of these women have already made decisions for Christ.

At the end of the conference, all the ladies were given a new saree and were provided with a hot meal. The cost of this day was funded by the Elim Missions Be Free fund.

The following day was Sunday, and it was overwhelming to see some of the women who had attended the conference return to church in their new sarees, some for the first time. The Scripture preached by Mandy the day before was Isaiah 61:3: He will “bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”

The joy of the Lord was tangible in a powerful way as everyone praised God in that rural church. Our heavenly Father reminded me at that moment that every single woman and child still trapped in the illegal and dehumanising rituals of the Devadasi system is his precious daughter for whom Jesus died. As we serve the Lord who hates injustice and comes to set captives free, this short-term mission left me with more questions than answers. What can I do for God’s daughters trapped in this situation? I repeated the cry of my heart from many years ago: “Here I am Lord, send me!”

I had forgotten how exhausting a short-term mission can be but was also reminded how profound and life-changing it is to hear the Lord speak into situations and see him move in power in an unfamiliar culture.

I would encourage anyone, no matter how long you have been a Jesus follower, to step out on a short-term team. You never know what the Holy Spirit will ignite in you until you are there, and it is guaranteed to be life-changing!

For more details about the Be Free India project, please contact the Elim Missions office: missions@elim.org.uk

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.

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