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Red Light District Outreach Report (31 March 2007)

The 31st of March was an Open Day in the Red Light District; a day set aside by the city for people to come and look in behind the window brothels and sex clubs and to even see men in windows on that day. It was a day to make the Red Light District more “family friendly”.

The Cleft
Several weeks prior to the Open Day, the Cleft staff began asking God what He wanted us to do during that day. During our Wednesday morning worship, each one of us went off alone to pray and ask Jesus what he wanted us to do. We came back together and shared the verses and the still small voice some of us heard or pictures or prophetic words and felt God had spoken specifically concerning our part in the celebration of prostitution day in Amsterdam.

Communion and Bible Reading
Every day beginning on the Monday before Saturday the 31st of March, the Cleft staff closed down most of our ministries in obedience to what we felt God saying to us and we went to the streets to pray, take communion together on the bridges and worship openly. We did these prayer walks for 3-4 hours twice a day. We also felt that God wanted us to read the Bible publicly in the district, so for three days, 24 hours a day around the clock, blocks of four hour times were filled with people who agreed to read the Bible. Many read the Bible on the streets in the Red Light District sitting along the road or walking down the street. Groups met through the night reading in the Cleft basement.

On Friday, the 30th of March at 6 PM, the day before the Open Day, we started a 24 hour worship that went through the night and throughout the Open Day. People from the YWAM base, and several churches and other Christian organizations joined us for this full time. The 31st of March was a day filled with drunkenness and wildness and looseness and a license to celebrate sin. Many of us wept as we saw the depth of the degradation and the celebration.

The Statue
Many prostitutes came from around the world to be here on this day to unveil the statue just across the canal from the Cleft. The statue is of a prostitute standing in a window. The organizer of the event said this statue was to be a place where the prostitutes could come and stand before the statue for comfort, strength, and encouragement. When two of our workers went to the woman who organized the statue and the day, they asked about the sex slave prostitutes that make up about 25% of the window population and she said that they too can come to the statue for strength.

The week was very good for the unity of the team and our ability to work together outside of our other responsibilities and ministries, it took us up a few notches spiritually and unified us and we loved to come out from our ministries to do things together. Did we see the district change and the statue crumble before our eyes? No, but our hearts broke in a new way for our neighborhood and we are getting some new vision for the future because of it.

It is a new Red Light District and we want to change to its needs, please continue to pray with us as we are beginning to develop a new Mission Statement that will carry us into the future.

Yours in Christ,

Stan Pettengill
Leader, Cleft Ministries