Sunday 8 June 2025

Okay. Yes.

Thank you, Rex. Um, let me call Darren up. I'm gonna pray for him and I'm just gonna open this time for him to share about every daughter matters. Father, we just thank you. What a precious, precious ministry this is. I. Father we've heard before from, um, communications from Ross and from others about the effectiveness and the fruit of this ministry.

It's a privilege today to hear straight from Darren, the good things that are being done in the midst of terrible, overwhelming darkness. Father, we ask and pray for your blessing upon this time. Anoint Darren now. In Jesus' precious name. Amen. Thank you, Darren. Thank you.

Good morning everyone. I want to commend you from the moment I walked in this morning.

I was made to feel so welcome. Thank you. I, I, my, this role takes me into quite a few different sort of venues from probus clubs and rotary clubs to schools, to churches. You don't always get that level of welcome when you. I, I often earn it like by the end everyone, we're all friends. But, um, just to have that when you walked in.

Thank you. So I commend you on, on the work you're doing here. If you, if you embrace everyone like you've embraced me, you're doing well. And that's a credit, I think Pastor Jamie too. Notice I call you pastor. Look. Yep. I'm in your good books. Look, that's a powerful song we just finished on, isn't it? An army is being raised up to break the chains.

Sometimes that feels a little bit poetic and a little bit unreal. So I think what we're gonna unpack today is what that actually looks like. Um, and I didn't plan that. I didn't choose that song. So thank you for gentlemen that chose that. When confronted with Darkness as Children of the Light, we have two responses.

We either run to the light and away from the darkness. Or we can bring the choose the light to bring the light to the darkness. I think what we are unpacking today is gonna help showcase where Christians are taking the light into the darkness. So I'm gonna start with a scripture this morning, that first slide, please.

In his arrogance, this is from Psalm 10. In his arrogance, the wicked man hunts down the weak who are caught in the schemes He devises. He lies in weight near the villages. His eyes watch in secret for his victim, like a lion in cover. He lies in weight. To catch the helpless, he catches the helpless and drags them off in his net.

Now, that was written thousands of years ago, and that is as relevant today as it was the day it was written. I think you'd agree, and I want to give you a really look. This is. What you're gonna hear for a while is gonna be very difficult to hear because we are talking about darkness and we are repelled as children of the light from the darkness.

But you don't appreciate the light unless you understand, I think the, the level of darkness. And I'm just gonna give you a real life. Um, I mean, I wanna leave you encouraged today, but I, yeah, we're gonna take a bit of a journey to get there. I was in Cambodia back in 2005. At the time, I was a full-time radio producer with Sunshine fm.

That was my mission. That was my calling. But the church, uh, the church I was attending was, was doing some humanitarian work up in a village in Cambodia, and they invited me to come and document what they're doing. They said, can you, you are in the media, can you grab a camera and come and film what we're doing?

I said, you re realize I'm in radio. Um. But I took up the, the challenge and went, God, you knew. So I borrowed a camera and I went on this trip with these guys and we went into this village and we were going around from hut to hut. And I think this was done with real dignity and respect. We recruited a translator or we had a, a translator on team.

And we literally went around this village first introducing ourselves, explaining who we were and why we were there before we did anything. And I think that's, that's showing real respect. And as we were walking around, um, I was getting footage and at one stage I broke away from the team and I headed further up the street and I started filming them coming up the street.

So just get a mental picture on this side of the road. You've got the last row of huts, you've got a dirt road, and then on the other side of the road is, is, uh, vacant land, but it's been turned into a rubbish tip. That's where they just throw their rubbish. You can imagine in Cambodia, if anyone's been there, it's like 38 degree heat and 90% humidity.

It's pretty intense. Yeah, yeah. It was uncomfortable. And the smells, and the flies and, and everything. Now my idea was to film the team as they're coming up the street, going from hut to hut. But I hit record while the camera's still pointing at the ground. So the first thing you see, we, on this footage, on the raw footage, was dirt road.

And then you, the camera comes up and your eyes are drawn to what's happening down the right hand side of the road as the team's moving its way up. And it wasn't until I was back in Australia that I was, I was in my editing suite and I was, I had it on a monitor, and I realized in that moment something else was happening.

Now, I didn't notice it when I was first, when I was filming, and off to the left. There was, in fact, I've captured the, the, the scene here. The next slide please. There was a guy standing there early twenties, just to hold that thought for a minute. There were three or four girls and they would, the oldest one would've been maximum 13 years of age.

Uh, the other, the others might have been a bit younger now. They looked a lot younger than they were because they're malnourished. These girls are living in abject poverty. Those clothes that they're wearing, they now have stylized it a little bit, but those clothes they were wearing on day one. When I went back on date or when we kept going back by TE day 10, they were wearing the same clothes.

You can imagine the smell as you got near those girls. Look, the, I didn't OI didn't, I haven't overstated the amount of rubbish that was there. It was piled up, but you can see a little bit of evidence on the screen there of that rubbish. The interesting thing was, um, there was this guy standing with those four girls and he immediately stood out to me as being something a little bit different.

For sure. He's got no shirt on and he's got no shoes on. That's not a poverty thing, that's a cultural thing. He's fit and healthy and when he, the moment I've captured his, as the camera comes up, he happens to look over his shoulder and he sees a white guy with a camera. That's the moment. What do you think he does next?

Yeah, he bolted. Next slide, please. That was so quick. That was shocking. And again, it was off to the side. That's why it, it's not great quality either, but you can see the, the team moving up the street here. And he did not stop running until he was right down the street, looked over his shoulder, realized no one was chasing him.

In fact, we didn't even notice him. What, what emotion is he expressing there? That's guilt. He's doing something wrong. I had no context at that time as a radio producer from Perth of what was going on. What I've come to understand is that this is. Commonplace in places like there where people like him, and it's not always blokes.

There's often women involved too, will go into a village like this because they know there's vulnerability. There are no that. There are people that they can catch up in their net, if you remember that scripture. So we'll go up to a group of girls like this and say. How you doing? And they'll say, not good dad's motorcycle's broken down.

Uh, we haven't eaten in two days. Uh, you know, we need money to get the bike fixed so he can earn money again. And he'll say, introduce me to your parents. I can, uh, I can get you a job over the border in Thailand. I've got friends over there run a clothing factory, just as an example. Okay. You can actually, I can lend you money to get the bike fixed, to get food on the table again, get you back up and running.

You just need to work for them for a couple of years and pay off the debt and come back. Guys, those girls are not going to safe jobs. Look, it's a lot more complex than this. But that's the, that's it in a nutshell. Next slide, please. So that's what's happening in, in that moment. That is a re a human trafficking re recruitment attempt.

Okay, next slide. So that's what's driving this. It's extreme poverty now. I've joined every Daughter Matters at the beginning of last year, and I've been absolutely honored to be on the team with Ross and, and, and the team there. And again, you, there's a little bit of familiarity with Ross here, and it took me to this place.

This is a, a border crossing point in a place called but wall. And you can see just behind me there is the gates into, into India. So we're on the Nepali side at the moment. You see there's a police officer here. Look, they're overwhelmed. They, they don't have time to check everybody. I actually seen footage where they go up to a, a cart, a horse and cart that's about to cross over the border and there's two girls in the back and there's a husband and wife in, or a man and woman in the front.

They don't even talk to the girls. They're looking at, what have you got in here? Looking through their goods. They're looking for black market goods, contraband. They're not looking for human trafficking. They didn't even look at the girls and they just waved them on. So we dunno what that situation was.

So this is while I was there, something was happening. So we've just got a little video here. Hopefully you can understand everything that's being said in this, but this is what was unfolding while we were there. So I'm here at the border between, uh, Nepal and India in a place called football. Um, as you can see, just behind me, you see the, um, the big gates over there.

The other side of that is, is India. I'm on the Nepali side at the moment, and, um, what we have over, over here, I'm just gonna take you up the street here. We do actually have a border crossing station here, um, with our partners, us. Us in. Um, but you'll see our signage here as well.

That's in behind me there. There's a couple of girls being, uh, interviewed at the moment there. The police have been contacted because there is something actually happening as we speak. There has been a couple of girls that were intercepted going into India. And they, uh, um, their stories didn't, haven't held, held up.

It's not safe for them to go there. So the girls here are, are speaking on their behalf and trying to, trying to glean some information about how to, uh, best deal with this situation. And, and the, as I said, the police have been called. So you can hear a little bit of the chaos in there. There was a lot of traffic and um, and a lot of that traffic was just moving freely across that border.

But what we were able to unpack after this, uh, when we actually had time to follow up with our staff and actually understand what had, had actually happened was while we were standing there at that, at surveillance booth, uh, a lady and a a, yeah, so a woman in her early fifties and a girl in her early twenties walked straight past us, Nepalis.

Our, some of our Nepali staff went over and intercepted them, went and started speaking to them only about 10, 15 meters from, from the border. I dunno whether it was a routine check or whether they actually saw something suspicious, but I'm glad they, they stopped them. They brought them back to the booth and realized something wasn't right.

There were red flags all over the place. So they got the police involved and the police took the woman off and started inter interrogating her. The girl went off to one of our emergency shelters. We dropped in on her a little bit later and she was sitting on a bed sobbing. So clearly something had gone wrong.

What we discovered is that woman had been posing as this girl's auntie taking her to a job in India, and she wasn't her auntie, she wasn't even related. So the girl thought she was with a, a safe person going to a safe job. Uh. She had sold that girl. The money had already changed hands. There was a gen, a young man waiting at the border to receive that girl.

Thank God we were there. She's safe back with her family. That woman is facing human trafficking charges. We couldn't get the guy, he was on the Indian side, so he, he took off. But in some cases we do get those guys and may, may finish with a story later with that. But she's safe. That's what counts in this moment.

So I'm just, look, I think what really struck me is how brazen they were. They walked straight past us expecting they could traffic a human being. 'cause that's how easy it is over there. This is happening on our watch, on our planet. Um, you don't, I think, truly value what happened in that moment unless you understand what would've happened had she made it across that border.

So I'm gonna go there. I think we need to see this and then we can rebuild from there. Okay, so this next slide is going to be a little bit, well, this is the scripture that puts it in context because there are people who do that brazen act and say God will never notice. He covers his face and never sees.

That's what they think. Next slide. They are going into the sex industry predominantly. That is the reality on our planet. There's also a labor trafficking street begging, but how disturbing is that bottom one? I believe these girls, as you do, are made in the image of God. I. If we believe that we can't reduce them to their components, but that's what people are doing.

So this next video is, is going to be the most confronting thing you see today. This is, um, from a team called Destiny Rescue. Some of you might have heard of Destiny Rescue. I used to work for Destiny Rescue prior to coming to every daughter matters. What I love about these guys is they will go right into the darkness.

They will go and find girls. Predominantly girls, occasionally boys, but overwhelmingly girls who are caught up in in bars, clubs, brothels. They'll go and find them and they'll get them out of there. So this video you're about to see is Australian Christian men going into the darkness to go and find these girls to get them out of there.

So this is that story.

Come, come, come

in. One of the Southern Asian nations that we work in, it is by far the biggest trafficking problem that we've seen anywhere in the world.

2000. 2000.

And there is a large number of girls and women from Nepal being trafficked here. To be sexually exploited.

Where are you from?

Nepal?

In this particular brothel we went into, they've got these dirty little rooms that the guys would take the girls into even.

It's just. Like a meat factory, you just go in. Yep, I want that. Do the deed leave. She comes out another guy. Yep, I want that. And she just goes over and over again. I heard numbers up to 40 times in one day,

14 years.

There was a young girl sitting up against the wall and she clearly looked like a minor. When I sat down next to that kid, I asked the pimp, you know, do you have any beers? Because it's not normal to just sit and talk to the girls.

How much? How much of a

girl? When we started talking about how much it was to take this young kid into a room and have sex with her.

It was less than the price of the beer that I was drinking.

How much you asking for? Three? Three.

That just blew me away that this beautiful young kid, the value that they attached to her wasn't even worth a beer. And I, I just can't get my head around that. It's just how, how can we. Devalue children and young women so low, like how did we get here

to them? She's not even worth a beer. You know, for less than a beer you can be abusing this kid like.

It's hard, doesn't it? I wanna put them outta work. I loved my time at Destiny Rescue. I love what they do, but I wish they didn't have to do it. And, uh, that's pa been part of the journey that I've been on. Next slide, please. The good news is the Lord hears the desire of the afflicted. I. I know that because he's shown me and he's shown us through the work of every of every daughter matters and through what you just saw there.

Next slide please. For me, that was incredibly personal. Back when I was, uh, you know, as I said, my first visit to Cambodia, I was a radio professional. I. Uh, I didn't get enough footage on the first trip back in 2005, so I went back in 2006 and I got to visit a rescue center in Ong Charm in rural Cambodia.

And while I was there, I met this girl. Now I blurred out her face because I wanna protect her and I wanna protect my own heart 'cause I carry her around very personally. When I was talking to the rescue center, um, staff, they were describing. What had happened to these girls that they had under their care about 12 or 13 girls.

And while he was describing all that, how they get recruited, what happens to them physically, all this sort of stuff, while we were standing there discussing that this girl put her face around the corner of the room and smiled at me. And so I waved and smiled at her and he said what had happened to her?

And, and he said she's, uh, her name is Laina and she's eight years of age.

My daughter, Cassie was eight. It got personal. I left radio from that point pretty much on. I've committed the last, uh, going on 20 years to help combat the darkness and to help shine light into the darkness because it's personal, so when it gets personal. Next slide. Next slide please. Um, we take on scriptures like this in a different way.

Psalm 82 is a direct call, defend the defenseless, the fatherless and the forgotten liberate them from the grasp of the wicked. That's not a metaphor that's real. Now, that can happen in this room, and I know it does. When you serve your community from this space, there are people in this room who are vulnerable, who need.

Protection. Anyone who falls into addiction, into, uh, domestic abuse, any, anything that, any mental health issues they need delivering from the wicked too, that can happen right here, but it's also happening around the world. And, and the seeds that you've sown through your support of every daughter matters is having an impact halfway around the world.

Your, you are living that scripture just through this next. When it's take personal, it takes you to places you probably never dreamed of. Look at for a period of time, I was on the streets of Perth with, with Salvation Army, taking school groups out to help feed the homeless. I love that there's people taking this personally, whether it's Salvos and Vinny's or Mission Australia, or anyone who's out there recognizing there are broken people on our own streets.

When people take that personally, things get done. And how often are they Christians that are doing that? I love that. Next, uh, remember, uh, there was a, um, one of those villages I visited, uh, that I described at the beginning. There was one place we went to was a big rubbish tip and there were kids sifting through rubbish looking for food.

But World Vision Australia were there. Australian money was going into that community. They had bought, um, more land that was arable, that had fresh, clean water, and they were going into this village, into this rubbish tip and saying. Again, not forcibly removing them, but actually negotiating with them.

We've bought land, we can help you transition across to this new, new area. We want to do that well and safely. That's what Australians are doing. That's what Christians are doing internationally. Last one, I. Look there while I was with Destiny Rescue. I just wanna share this because this is um, uh, and then we're gonna swing back to every Daughter Matters.

Uh, but this is still with Destiny Rescue. These, this was an operation I went on in Chiang Mai, up in Thailand and myself and another Australian, and these two Thai gentlemen. So they working for a Christian agency. They are Christians themselves. They were taking us into bars and clubs where they knew there were people that needed rescuing.

So the guy in the black shirt there, the agent there had on a previous visit to this particular bar, had met the girl on the left and, uh, had got enough information from her to run an identity check and, uh, went through the local police. They, they're not cowboys. They work in under the jurisdiction of the police.

He'd run an identity check and discovered she's only 14 years of age and she's doing sex work in that bar. So we were there on an operation to help get her out. Now she doesn't know who we are at this point. We had a whole cover story, and you've gotta move at the speed of trust. I. If you break cover too early and she's not ready, she'll probably blow, blow our cover.

So you've gotta build enough trust as quickly as you can. So that's what's happening in that moment. We are there, um, building relationship with her to the point where we could make an offer and believe that she would accept that that offer. But while we were sitting there, um, there were a. A group of a a row of young women just came and stood and next to us and, and just lined up.

And so Mark and I, the other Australian, we were to choose our pe, our um, uh, our, what do you call 'em, the companions outta that lineup. We felt disgusting, but we knew why we were there. We were taking light into a dark place. So this is next slide. These are the two girls that came and sat with us. Now, the good news here is because this happened, we actually discovered both these girls were not under only underage, but had come from Burma.

Now we know what's happened in Burma in the last couple of months, right? There are a lot more girls in Burma now facing the same. Situation where they need to go to Thailand to try and find work. We found a couple of these girls that had made that decision and we were able to present the evidence to the police through hidden camera footage and all the, all this support that we were able to, to get on the night with evidence, present it to the police and the police.

As far as I know now, I can't speak with absolute clarity on this because it's, it's held pretty tightly and I have left that organization. But I believe a raid was conducted on that, that bar that rescued about five or six young girls, and they're now safe as a result of what we did that night. Praise God.

'cause that's, that's what these scriptures are. Uh, this is going to the next, next degree of this, but let me just bring it right back. I think there might be one more slide there with, oh no. Um, what I wanna bring this back to is my first response when I met Laina, that 8-year-old girl, was that I don't want this to happen to my daughter.

I don't want this to happen to anybody's daughter. Every daughter matters. If I believe that about my child, I'm gonna fight for the same thing for for every daughter. Between the rubbish tips I've been there, I've seen that with World Vision in the brothels and the clubs. I. Between those two things, there's a journey.

If we are right and we position ourselves well, we can interrupt evil. We can interrupt that journey because they've gotta get from there to there. That's what's happening at the border in Nepal, one of the busiest human trafficking routes on the planet. Every daughter matters has stepped into that gap and said.

Well, there's not much we can do about the poverty over here, but we can stop them going to this. And again, I wanna put these guys out of work. I want to be able to stop as many as we can at the border. So this is a little video we've just put together that helps highlight again, the power of what we're doing at the border.

I.

On any given day staff from every Daughter Matters and Ashish social service. Nepal work at booths at border crossing stations along Nepal's border with India up to 25. Thousand women and children are trafficked across this border every year, making it one of the world's busiest human trafficking routes at border crossings such as this one.

Citizens are free to cross and are rarely checked for identification or questioned about the purpose of their travel. And just to show you how close we are, this represents the, the, the border. This is, this is India. The other side of this, I, I cannot step across past this pillar because I don't have visas and things ready to.

You probably will see, even as we're filming, there are people just openly going through without their papers being checked. They don't need ID or anything. Uh, for locals. This is perfectly normal. So this is just business as usual for human traffickers to, to be moving people across here without expecting that they're gonna be stopped in question.

Many of the young women are lured by the prospects of employment or a love relationship, something that appears so much more attractive than the poverty, lack of prospects and high incident of arranged marriages that they've left behind.

There is a humanitarian crisis unfolding in the trafficking of humans.

Some children, lots of children, but very often women 20, 22 years of age. And these people are duped into thinking they're being taken to a better life, but they're actually being stolen.

Interception booths are located strategically at border crossing points and staffed with trained interception counselors who will stop pedestrians and vehicles before they cross The interception counselors have the authority to question individuals and detain those who they suspect are involved in human trafficking.

Proximity to police and local law enforcement means that the interception counselors can refer potential perpetrators to police officers.

Just a couple of days ago, our staff interviewed, uh, incepted, a 19-year-old girl who had been, uh, enticed by a guy on Facebook to travel to India. And often this is just about the false promise of a better life somewhere else, and these girls are so vulnerable to that.

Then when they find there is a problem and someone is. Being trafficked, and they'll get those answers outta those young women or children. Then they are taken to an emergency shelter, usually just a couple of hundred meters from these border booths.

Every single day. Girls like this are here every single day, almost every five minutes, every 10 minutes.

Sometimes there's a whole bunch, uh, every hour. This girl's just like this right here, you know? And this booth exists to make a. Difference. I'm looking out at the India border and, um, we are here for a purpose. We're here to stop human trafficking and, uh, girls like this are so, so important.

Just a shout out to Ross Karro there.

What an incredible guy. He spent time in canning Vale Prison as a young man. He'd done the wrong thing. Uh, didn't know Christ came across a Gideon's Bible. And said, I don't understand any of this. God, if you exist, I need help with this. You have some guys from Thornley Church of Christ visited on Christian on Mission, uh, not, not long after that, and led him to Christ.

Look what he's doing now. I think that's, that's awesome. And look, just to go back to, um, Tony Kerwin at Destiny Rescue. He was in Bangkok with his family. He's an electrician from Cairns average Aussie bloke, and he's in Bangkok. And he sees what he can't unsee. And he said, God, why don't you do something about that?

That question bounced straight back and said, why don't you do something about that? Those guys have rescued over 27,000 women and children out of bars and clubs in the last 20 years. Praise God. So, next slide please. So just where we stand right now, we started, um, there's the operations about. Just going on five years ago, and what Ross did, I think very, very cleverly was found local people who already understood the problem and were already acting on it.

They had one surveillance booth looked a bit like this at a border crossing station where they knew there were human trafficking going on. They established it, they got staff on board. Ross said, what would you do if we empowered you financially and and managed this and invest in this? They went, yes, we could just keep replicating this.

So going on five years later as of of today, where we currently have 13 border crossing stations, surveillance booths, manned by Nepali staff, you and I would miss it. It's important that we, we have these girls right at the front line. So we have about 50, 50 to 55 frontline staff at the moment.

Predominantly women. We always set up near police. They are safe. Um, and, uh, there's only seven of us here in Australia. We don't have offices or anything. We, we try and maximize as much of the support going to the field as possible. We have highlighted this girl on the right here because when we rescued her, she was being trafficked.

She's now on staff and about 1415 of our girls that are run at the front lines are girls that have been trafficked themselves. They know what it looks like because they know what it feels like. And I think that gives them an edge. Gives us an edge as an organization. Next slide please. Quick geography lesson.

For those who don't know, DePaul, this is it. You've got China to the north through Tibet and India, wrapping around the southwest and, uh, eastern bo um, sides of it. So yeah, it comes up right up to the Chinese border. Trafficking doesn't tend to go north because of the Himalayas, so it's just not logistically practical.

So it comes south, and by the time you hit that southern border, most of that is either foothills or plains. So at any point along the 1800 hundred kilometer border, people were stepping across those borders without being checked in. In, as we've seen, we're obviously our mascot. Uh, we call her Priya. She's on my shirt as well.

Priya means beloved in Nepali. You see, she's stylized as a barcode where she saying she's not for sale. In fact, the word priceless is across her. She is priceless. Yeah. Nice, isn't it? Wherever. See one of those, we have a current surveillance booth. Each of those has an emergency shelter that is critical. I.

Because those four to six days that they're in our care are where we can really invest in them and help 'em understand what's going on, reconnect them with families, we'll contact families straight away. Let's be really clear here in Nepal, the WI the families are not selling their girls. Most of them are just the girls trying to go and get a better life in India to send money home, and they're being betrayed and tripped by the people that, that are supposed to be caring for them.

We also have two in the middle there, two safe homes, so that's for girls that can't go home immediately. Uh, now over 90% of our rescues do go home within that first week or so, but those that can't, and there's currently about 40 girls under our care for a, for a six month program or so. Next slide, please.

So just give you a, a, um, humanize the story here. The girl on the left, in that photo in the blue sleeves, her name's Ashika. She's 15. Uh, so this is quite recent. She had been living with an 80-year-old grandfather 'cause she'd lost both her, her parents when she was five and he just wasn't coping. He, he was malnourished himself, living in quite a remote village.

So she put out on Facebook that her ideal, her dream job was to work at a hotel in India. Some guy in India saw that post and said, if you can get here, I can give you a job. I can give you accommodation. All I need from you is to bring as many girls your age or younger as possible. Now I heard that reaction and when I go into schools here, I'll go into Santa Maria or or Mercedes College.

Those girls react immediately. Red flags are going off. Our girls are educated. These girls are barely literate, so they come naively. She, she's recruited two 14-year-old friends and just headed for the border, which is incredibly dangerous and, and, um, brave. They're very incredibly brave, but they don't know what they're going to, they think they're going to this dream job, so we were able to intercept them there where the police got involved in this one, you can see a mighty large rifle there.

Um. I don't think he did much. I think he was just posing for the camera. But anyway, good on you, mate. Um, once, once we actually secured them there, we would take them to the emergency shelter down on the right there. But you can see even in both photos, they don't look particularly happy. This is a very vulnerable moment for them.

They've been, they're gutted. They've just had all their dream hopes and dreams shattered. That's why we need those days to, to really build into them and, and sew into them. In fact, this is Ross just explaining what happens in a, an emergency shelter. Might have to flick through to next one please. And again, I.

I am about to enter one of our emergency shelters in the far west of Nepal and come with me. I'd like to just walk through a little bit of what's happening here. Here's some of our amazing staff here, and this is the office. This is the first room where girls would come to, and of course they've been intercepted at the border.

They're probably a little bit shell-shocked, and they're trying to understand what's really happening for them. And the counseling begins right here. Come with me, we'll do a walkthrough and uh, there's a great kitchen behind me. The girls are really well set up there and, uh, and they're really looked after well.

They're able to stay here for four or five days. And of course, this is one of the bedrooms and this is where the girls will spend most of their time and they're just processing at this time over those few days, those four or five days. Processing what happened to them, processing what will happen to them, and of course receiving guidance, counseling and, uh, understanding how to reconcile back with family, how to reconcile back into the community, and how do I understand what to do with all of these broken dreams, broken promises that have just been given to them.

However, now they're in a safe place. This is an emergency shelter. We're so grateful to have 13 of these shelters across the border of Nepal. Thank you for standing with us.

Thank you for standing with us. Yeah, next. Okay, so for those girls that can't go home and it's, it's less than 10%, um, we do have these sort of facilities.

So that's a safe home. That's manned by staff, by husband and wives, teams, and, uh, loving staff. So they are genuinely looked after. Next slide. Again, I blurred out the faces here, but look at the difference. You can see the joy, you can see the, that they have a future. We have restored that for them. So these are girls in a safe home.

They're all exposed to the gospel in a way that's appropriate culturally and for their, what their, their experience. And that was just such a beautiful moment spending time with those girls. 'cause they just. Suddenly they look like young women, not just children anymore. We are, we are really able to invest in them.

We've got rooms full of sewing machines that are pedal powered. They don't need electricity, which is a big thing in Nepal. Uh, we've, we are running food carts now where we're in a process of, of, of doing, rolling that out so we can train them up to be, um. Hospitality barista training. We have to upskill them as much as possible while they're in our care because we're putting them back into an environment where they need that edge.

Um, look, another thing that came outta this photo just incidentally, was the girl in the middle. She's just gorgeous with the red top. They're all gorgeous. But you know, she came up to Janelle and myself after this photo and was quite emotional and through a translator, said, if I can just get through year 11 and 12, I can make a go of this.

We immediately reached for our wallets to pay for that and then realized, unless we could do that for every girl here, we probably shouldn't do it just for one. So Janelle went to the board after coming back to Australia and said, we need a program that, that basically ensures that any girl that needs it, that comes for our services is, is able to achieve that.

We've gone live with a, a thing called Pathways to poten, uh, to potential where now we can offer that for, um, for, for girls. Uh, uh, look, I'm saying girls here because it's less than 1% of boys that come through our, our, our surveillance booths. It, it is over, it is almost exclusively girls. So for a girls now, the program allows 'em to go from year nine through to first year tertiary and we will cover all their accommodation and food and clothing during that period.

And it's about 2,400 and something dollars per student per year. So that's what we've gone to the Australian public with Help us fund that, that program next. So just as we wind up, um, these are just some of the numbers that, so March was a little bit quieter. It was a a down month off, and it's up around 150, but I still rejoice over ev every single one of those 113 girls, we don't publish these numbers.

That's why you won't see April or May. At this point. We're still processing those figures to make sure that when we. Put them out to the public like this, that we can verify that, that, that they are legitimate human trafficking. Uh, interceptions. So 113 girls were intercepted in March last year, and you guys have been part of this.

We rescued 1,701 girls. Isn't that beautiful? That's 1,701 girls that are not being exploited in India. Because of your support. So, uh, if you look at those full numbers over, uh, going up to five years, that's 3,676 to the end of March. Over half of them came in last year. So that means the model is working and it's been established.

Took us a while to get it right, and now we're seeing those numbers just blossom next. So 105 of them, uh, ended up in our shelters. So only a, a handful went home, uh, straight away, but the rest actually spent some time with us next. Three ended up in our safe homes and you can see some of the, the, um, sewing machines there.

Um, just a quick note on that. We had eight girls just a couple of weeks ago graduate from the, the Safe Home Program. So that's created eight new positions for new girls to come in, which is brilliant. Next, and 109 of those were reunited with their families. That I didn't expect that when joining every daughter matters.

I didn't know that there was that level of, of success that only four of them weren't able to actually go to back to their families. Look, it might not be immediate family, it might be extended family, but it's it's family. Next I. Every single case was handed to the police. I think that's really powerful.

The police have, uh, look, uh, we, we understand this. They've probably dropped the ball over a period of time, um, because there is corruption, there is poverty affecting them as well. Uh, the beautiful thing about our Australian police force is it's well funded throughout taxes. Nepal, Nepalis don't pay a lot of tax, so they don't get a great police force.

But there are some really good people there. And what we are doing by standing alongside them at those borders, we're giving them muscle. We're giving them support, we're giving, helping them be accountable for, for what they're doing. And they are stepping up. It's so there are a lot more prosecutions going through now.

People are being held to account. But let finish one last story before we completely wrap it up. Um. There was a lady on our team, we call her Hawkeys. I dunno her real name. I wish I did because I want to honor her, but Hawkeys is pretty cool. She literally stands in the middle of the road with the border right behind her, and the traffic has to go around her.

They're scared of her, and she stands there doing this, and she stares into every vehicle that comes towards her, every person on foot. She spent years as a sex slave in India. That's what drives her. She doesn't wanna let one single girl get past her. And she noticed, just recently she noticed there was a young guy and a, a girl, uh, going to a kiosk just up the road, coming towards her, coming towards the border.

Her radar was going. So she went over and started talking to them, realized something was wrong, brought them back to the surveillance pollute booth, got the police involved. What we discovered was that this was a 19-year-old Nepali guy living in India who had met this 16-year-old girl two years previous online.

And had made her fall in love with him, had come to collect her. Took two years for him to build up the, the, the, um, you know, the rapport and the, the, the trust with her to come and actually collect her. Told her not to tell her parents or anything. Came to collect her, brought her back to the border Hawkeye, saw them intervened, got the police involved.

They did a sting operation and arrested both him and the guy that he was about to hand her over to at the border. We got both of them. They're now facing charges. That's similar to that first story, but I think the key here is that we've damaged his business model. He spent two years on this operation to get no payout.

So yes, police convictions are one thing and, and, uh, the legal side of things is one thing. The other is, I. The light will shine on darkness and destroy the darkness in in the business model as well. And I think that's just as powerful. So guys, just finished with this scripture. Defend the defenseless, the fatherless, and the forgotten, liberate them from the grasp of the wicked.

You are doing that in your everyday service to Christ in this place, and you are doing it through supporting missions outside of this as well. Thank you. Next slide please. So just, uh, yeah, come and talk to me at the afterwards if you, if you want to hear, hear more about what we do. I've given you a fair in insight today.

One thing we are looking for, and I'm never. Uh, a shame to put this out there because this is gold for us. We love that the church is supporting us, but if you individually are interested in partnering with us, we'd love to come and talk to me about that as well. There is no set amount. If somebody, if you are prepared, if you are able to even do $10, 20, do $20 $30 a month, that is gold for us because if we.

It takes all the risk. If they, if we've got hundreds of people giving just that smaller amount, it spreads the risk, but it also gives us a finite number that we can deal with and do the maths on that. And in 12 months time, we can open a new, new, uh, booth or a new safe home. Or we can, we can plan ahead, we can sustain what we're doing, but we can grow, we can keep increasing the light that we're shining.

Um, so if you are interested in doing that, we can get you signed up to that and you will get regular updates. You'll, you will be. A partner with us, but there's no obligation to do so. I just need to be, be clear on that. That's just for those who would like to respond. So let's, uh, close in prayer. Um, yeah, let's commit all this 'cause this has been difficult.

I know that, but I hope you're encouraged by what Christians are doing, what God is doing on our planet in some of these dark places. If I hadn't have shared this, you may never have heard some of those, those stories, so I think that's important. Lord, we just, uh, come to you this morning acknowledging that we, we know that darkness out there.

We all know this stuff's happening, but Lord, you have seen and you are responding, you are raising up incredible people around this world who will step out into the darkness carrying the torch. Of, of your spirit and your light to take it into those dark places. And we just wanna honor the guys at Destiny Rescue.

We wanna honor the guys at, uh, international Justice Mission, and we want to, um, acknowledge what every daughter matters is doing in such a powerful ministry at the border in in Nepal. Lord, we pray for the ongoing safety of our frontline staff as they put themselves in danger every day. Lord, you have protected them for the five years so far and we.

We continue to believe that that will, that will continue to happen. Thank you for the, the incredible bravery that they're showing. And I just draw close to them as they go about this, this incredible work. Protect our staff here in Australia as we, we share this message and we, we ask for support financially from Australia and we help manage what is happening on the ground over there.

And then, um, just pray for everybody in this room as they are involved in helping fund this ministry from this church. Thank you for the privilege of coming here and, and sharing this today. Thank you for Jamie and, um, and his wife as they, they serve this, this congregation here in Jesus name. Amen.

It was cloudier, wasn't it?