Ignorance would have been bliss...

...in Tijuana's Zona Norte.

Last night I went to minister in Tijuana's Red Light District, called the "Zona Norte." For several months, some people from the YWAM Tijuana base has been going to this part of downtown Tijuana to hand out soup to the homeless and pray for the people there. Where we set up our soup station is right across the street from 2 of the most famous bars in Tijuana, which happens to have a Christian church right between them.

During the day, walking down calle Coahuila where we were in Zona Norte may seem like a typical downtown street - bars, nightclubs, hotels and massage parlors. Someone living in ignorance to the situation there would not be aware that those places are used as brothels for child prostitution and illegal child trafficking. Many missing girls and boys, from both the US and Mexico, are thought to be within the establishments there, being illegally sold or used as prostitutes as young as 8 years old.

When I was in Ensenada doing my DTS last year, we did ministry in an area downtown where there are a lot of homeless people and drunks. We did not encounter as many prostitutes. Most of the homeless people there greeted us each week and openly shared with us about their situations and received prayer. In the Zona Norte last night, there were not many homeless where we were, (this is not to say there are not many homeless people living on the streets there). But a couple of homeless people that I did encounter actually rejected the soup and friendly conversation I tried to offer them. Ouch.

Beginning to feel hopeless and a bit useless as well, I asked one of the guys on our team to walk down the street with me and we could pray for whatever we saw. Within a few moments, he had women trying to proposition him or owners of the bars offering to sell him 'two chicks at the same time.' Later we walked by a mom who we learned last week prostituted her 6 year old daughter to get drug money for her husband's addiction. We finally arrived outside the chuch there between the 2 biggest bars in the area and sat outside the doors, pondering the sad irony of how those doors at the church close just in time for the doors to the next-door brothels to open.

I sat their gritting my teeth as my anger grew while people walked by. Ignorance would have been bliss: I could have seen a mom taking a walk with her daughters, instead of a desperate single mom dragging their small children to perform 'favors' in the nearby hotel. I could have seen young women choosing an area of work they enjoyed instead of drug-addicted prostitutes forced into it at a young age without any possible escape now. I could have seen men out for a night on the town with their buddies instead of husbands and fathers who'd left their families at home for a night of empty pleasure.

No hope. No self-worth. No shame.

This is the reality of Tijuana's Zona Norte. I can no longer live in blissful ignorance to it. Neither can you.
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The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern. ~Proverbs 29:7

Arise, O LORD, in your anger; rise up against the rage of my enemies. Awake, my God; decree justice. ~Psalm 7:6

Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. ~Isaiah 1:17

Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay,"says the Lord. On the contrary:
"If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."
~Romans 12:18-20