Without a mother, Anala wandered around the district during the day, until one day she found the Manna House of Prayer. The place has been transformed from a brothel to a daycare and prayer center. Women drop off their children before they go to sell their bodies, and some of the mothers stay and chat and brush our hair and laugh with us.
The one-room building is about the size of a two-door garage that was separated into eight different segments. These segments are separated by curtains, where, in its former days, men would have their way with the women they had purchased for the hour. While their mothers entertained their clients, the children would crawl around the floor under the bed. Now it is where true love, selfless love, is given.
The house of prayer is run by a small group of dedicated believers and is an off-shoot of YWAM. There we work with a former sex worker, who was kidnapped and sold into prostitution as a young girl. She is rail thin and dying of HIV and tuberculosis, but finds joy in her Jesus. And today she looks across the room at me as Anala crawls into my lap.
She falls asleep in my arms, and as she breathes softly into my shoulder, I wonder if this is the first time she has ever fallen asleep in someone’s arms. I wonder if this is the first time she has been held in a loving way.
