Amirah is a multi-faceted aftercare organization for survivors of sex trafficking, providing residential, outreach, and education services.  https://www.amirahinc.org/   Amirah is setting up a safe home for women who have been rescued from the sex trade.  This is a very exciting and needed step forward, providing a safe and secure place for the women to heal and re-establish themselves.

Amirah is a New England based ministry to women who have been rescued from the sex trade. They have operated a safe house north of Boston for several years and will soon be opening one in the Greater Hartford area. This will be the only one of its kind in the entire state of Connecticut. A small team of volunteers from Wellspring have recently been involved in helping to clean, spruce up and decorate a beautiful older mansion that has been leased to Amirah to provide beds for 26 women, who will have a safe place to begin to put their lives back together. About a dozen other area churches have been involved in the restoration project.

This Sunday, November 24, Michael Distefano, the director of Amirah Hartford, will be with us to show before and after pictures of the house, especially of the work the Wellspring team did. He will not be preaching that day, but sharing briefly about the need for and the vision of Amirah. He is also coming to thank us for our participation in the project. In addition to the physical work on the house, Wellspring took a special collection last summer, and your generosity gave $4,600 toward the house renovations. Michael thanks you and Wellspring thanks you.
Michael will also be available after service to provide more information on the ministry of Amirah and to meet you and answer any inquiries you may have, including ongoing support.

We usually don’t promote these kinds of ministry moment visits, but this work is worth highlighting. It is incredibly difficult and costly. The women’s lives have been utterly fractured by their involvement in “the trade”. The work of healing and restoring trust, dignity and confidence, and training in a skill for a new way to earn a living is very painstaking and difficult. The love of Jesus is at the center of this restoration process, but it is more than a “come to Jesus moment” that is required for a life to be set free and put back together. And, I believe, that on a Kingdom measure, something very significant is accomplished when each one of these lives is restored. In the face of a great systemic cultural evil that is fueled by hell, each woman rescued and restored is a powerful witness in the face of cosmic evil. God is glorified and great grace is released to a culture whenever a systemic evil is addressed and overcome by good.

Blessings,
Pastor Rick