NorthStar Women Give

by Michele on December 3, 2019

In keeping with Giving Back Tuesday, this week we are highlighting the second of our international connecting ministries, offering NorthStar Women the opportunity to support them with their prayers and/or donations. Each of these ministries is led by a member of our Women’s Network. This second ministry is Beauty for Ashes Africa, directed in the U.S. by Chrissy Dukes, who grew up at Columbia Baptist Church in Falls Church and is one of our NorthStar Women Speakers.

Chrissy Dukes is the U.S. Director for Beauty for Ashes Africa. Recalling how she came to be involved with this ministry, Chrissy shares that she was teaching a human trafficking awareness curriculum in a government detention center in North Africa. The students were young girls who had been abandoned, shunned by society, had run-ins with the law or sent for other reasons to stay until they turned 18. They were eager to learn, beautiful, yet abandoned girls. “We didn’t speak the same language,” Chrissy remembers, “but somehow, we were able to communicate.” One student, whose sweet, yet scarred face peeked out of her head scarf, kept staring at Chrissy. She sat down with her and through a translator, the young girl told Chrissy, "You have so much peace in your eyes. I want eyes like that."

Beauty For Ashes Africa (BFAA) seeks to combat human trafficking by providing a transition home for young girls who age out of government centers at age 18. With nowhere to go, no family, and very little education, these girls are vulnerable to traffickers who wait outside the doors for the girls to exit. BFAA’s vision is to provide a safe home, food, counseling, love, education, and aid finding jobs and safe housing so these girls can become independent and contributing members of their communities. Some girls have completed the program and found jobs and apartments; two are now in law-school being educated to fight for the rights of girls like themselves. Each one is on her own journey towards wholeness, freedom, and independence. BFAA is grateful to walk alongside them to love them and help guide them into a beautiful future. Their prayer is that each resident would leave the home no longer seeing through eyes shadowed with pain but with eyes that have experienced life transformation; eyes that shine and are full of peace--truly trading Ashes for Beauty.

To learn more about or donate to this connecting ministry, visit http://beautyforashesafrica.org/about-us/.

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Meet Michele

Michele Husfelt Amazed by Grace, Military Wife, 5 Funny Kids, Courtland's Ammi, Tea Connoisseur, Encouraging Friend, In Christ Alone

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