Coincidences?

Some interesting things have been happening over here with us lately. Some may call them coincidences.Last week I was at a local café reading my bible, having a little vanilla macchiato. When I got up to leave and pay, the girl working could tell I was not a local, and asked me how I like Hamburg, and so we got to talking. As soon asI told her about our heart for the Reeperbahn, her eyes lit up and she began feverishly looking through that day’s paper. She was excited to show me an article that was front page about the “War on the Reeperbahn.”

What we’ve learned is that basically there are two gangs that supposedly run it. Due to the internet being so easily accessable, the price for the girls on the Reeperbahn is getting cheaper, and so the gangs are in a power struggle as they must be losing a lot of business and thus $$MONEY, and someone got shot over the issue last week. If she and I had not begun talking then I would have never read the article—which is obviously information that is very important for us to read!

The following day Buddy was on the train and just so happened to sit next to a guy that was reading the paper, and it was turned to a page with another article about the war on the Reeperbahn. Interesting.

Then this week we received two emails about a seminar a local church was having about prostitution in Germany. We knew nothing about this but people we’ve met heard about it and thought of us. I originally was going to stay home last night because Buddy already had 2 meetings to go to but at the last minute we were able to find a babysitter.

I didn’t know what to expect from the meeting but it was awesome. Gathered in one room were about 50 Christians here in Hamburg that have a shared passion to see women in prostitution freed from slavery. The speaker was a woman in her 70s that worked in the red light district in Thailand for 17 years and founded a ministry there, and now has been in Berlin, Germany for the past 3 years and is working with the women there. She spoke for about an hour and a ½ and then opened it up to questions. What a wealth of knowledge for all us to learn from such a seasoned, Godly woman. A few take-aways: statistics show that 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 men in Germany pay for you know what. And she said that either 12-18% of the men in Germany admit to doing so on a regular basis. That’s a pretty big number. And she said the worst markets for this are in Berlin and in Hamburg (no surprise as they’re the two largest cities).

However, my biggest take-away was the networking I was able to do—to meet people with a similar heart was so inspiring. The translator for the evening even asked me to stand up and tell everyone what we're doing here in Hamburg--which was fun to tell--and people were so encouraged! And guess who I just happened to sit next to? Four women that are currently ministering to women on the Reeperbahn, that have an ‘in’ with four of the brothels—they are allowed to go in once a week and meet with the women—pray for them and tell them about Jesus. I have heard about these women for about 3 years but never knew who they were. Now we have already set up a date for all of us to meet and we will see what happens from there. Coincidence?

We of course don’t see any of these as coincidences at all, and we are very encouraged about God’s steady hand that is daily guiding us into all that we need to do, learn and know.

Love to you all,

Krista