Watch Uzbekistan Video! - Click Trained in May, 2009
Hello Tim,
What a fantastic ministry you and Michelle are pioneering! I visited your website and I am impressed and excited at the idea of you coming to train our national leaders how to do these types of micro-enterprises here in Uzbekistan.
Because of this culture a micro-enterprise like this is vital to the starting and developing a women's TC center, most of the women that will come to TC will have already been rejected by family and friends - anyone who could help will have already closed their doors leaving no one to sponsor these women while in the discipleship program.
The beginning of winter Valeri a TC worker at a men's induction center in the western part of the country noticed a woman walking down the street attempting to hide from the people because of her shame & humiliation from wearing plastic bags on her feet for shoes; he asked me “Travis, why do we not have a center for women?”
Velodia a graduate of TC and now a worker at a men’s induction center in the northeastern part of the country has a mother who is a homeless alcoholic living in the capital city; he doesn’t need to say anything though his eyes ask the same question – why isn’t there a program for my mother? Another mother’s hopelessness and despair of raising her baby girl in a box consumed so much vodka until she past out drunk outside in the middle of winter – Anna froze to death, leaving her daughter to somehow survive for herself on the streets.
And yet another mother, Sveta, working the streets, says “I don’t like doing this and I hope one day I can return to my family and live a normal life” but she sees very little light at the end of the tunnel. She concluded with “who is going to help someone like me?”
Women in this culture in many ways are considered a piece of property that someone owns, a dowry must be paid before a man will marry – the woman is sold; little or no understanding of what self-worth means - not knowing that she too is special in God’s eyes.
The church leaders too are asking when a women’s center will open. They have trained women ministers currently ministering in prison’s and tuberculosis hospitals who are ready and waiting to serve in the women’s center.
If the women's program will start it must also start with a micro-business, if we start another TC center and provide for them we teach them how to be dependent on hand-outs but if we teach & equip them 'how to fish,' then in the future they will become self-supporting ministries, transformed women in the business world and a bright testimony of the Good News.
Tim, I am sure you have a desk full of appeals so I thank you for taking the time to write us and I pray that God will make straight the paths, finances and your schedule for the purpose of starting a jewelry and textile making micro-enterprise for Teen Challenge Uzbekistan.
God Bless,
Travis Moran
Country Director
Teen Challenge Uzbekistan
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