Crazy Church Ladies: The Priceless Story of an Unlikely Group Winning the War Against Trafficking

By Gwen Adams

What happens when ordinary churchgoing women heed the radical call of an extraordinary God? The sex trafficking trade is an ugly, messy, and complicated crisis in desperate need of intervention, but it is easier to stay out of it and pray from a safe distance.

However, the church is not called to be safe. In Crazy Church Ladies, Gwen Adams recounts how she and her group of church ladies became crime-fighting machines to upend the world of trafficking in their city.

Their program, Priceless, has become a multifaceted wrecking ball to the crime of human trafficking in their home state of Alaska. But they still focus on the simple truth that as they invest wholeheartedly in the few, they will reach the masses with the hope of the gospel message.

Crazy Church Ladies lays out a blueprint for the church to be the church. In a world with so much conversation about the church and social justice, this story shows how the church can live into its primary calling, to make disciples and impact the surrounding culture in ways that no government, law enforcement, or community activism can.

Get to know the real Crazy Church Ladies and eventually, the men, too, as they encounter victims of trafficking and the worst abuse you could ever imagine. In the most unlikely place, among people with nothing in common, life-changing friendship emerges. The stories will break hearts, but unbroken hearts rarely change the world. In the end, the reader will see the astounding beauty that can only emerge from the darkest of places.

What happens when ordinary churchgoing women heed the radical call of an extraordinary God? It breaks their hearts and brings true hope and healing to the world around them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deep River Books LLC
• Release date: Jun 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781632695536

Book preview

Introduction

My favorite story in all of the Bible is the story of Gomer and Hosea, from the book of Hosea. It’s the story of a prophet who is told by God to go and marry a prostitute. This well-known man, a spiritual leader, forsakes his reputation and marries a woman named Gomer. One could deduct that Gomer’s father was well known because his name is included in the text. I’m sure Gomer’s reputation was a dark spot for her family. She was at least an embarrassment and more likely the disgraced daughter who would never be wanted as a wife and mother. Nonetheless, this is who Hosea was called to marry. It would be no different than if a well-known pastor married a prostitute whose escapades had been all over the news.

The scandal must have rocked the region. Perhaps Gomer’s dad had a bit of an inclination that if a prophet married his wayward daughter, she could somehow regain a proper standing in the family. Maybe he thought there would not only be a redemptive effect on Gomer’s poor soul but on the whole family. Whatever the backstory, this marriage would have been the gossip of the town and the ruin of Hosea. Both Gomer and Hosea would enter the glass house on Main Street with curious eyes and sideways glances at every turn.

I like to think Gomer wanted to change too. Maybe she thought it was a chance for normalcy. A proposal from the religious giant of their region might be her only hope. But Gomer falls. How many of her lovers did she have to pass every day on her way to the well? Could she have withstood glares and gossip? Maybe she couldn’t bear being a project for her righteous husband to fix. Whatever the case, the lure of her lovers overpowers her and she seeks comfort in their perverted arms.

She gives birth to a third child. Hosea knows this baby is born from another lover. Hosea holds the baby and gives him the name Lo Ammi which means Not My Child. I can’t even imagine holding your tiny baby with such a name. Gomer succumbs to shame, leaves the marriage, and goes back into a life of open prostitution. A foolish, brokenhearted Hosea can’t bear to see her live in ruin. He continues to provide for her needs in secret. Somehow, she is given food to eat and clothes to wear. There wasn’t room in her broken mind to think that Hosea was the giver. No, he must despise her. She gives all the credit to her lovers.

It wasn’t long—it never is—before prostitution life broke her, body and soul. This beautiful woman who once carried a seductive alluring confidence would find herself worn out and useless in the world of sex for sale. And, with the custom of the day, used-up temple prostitutes were eventually sold off as bargain-priced slaves.

Hosea is instructed by God to go and purchase back his wife. The crowd gathered, and the bidding started for the few used-up temple prostitutes. It was a chance for the townsfolk to get some cheap domestic help. Someone in the crowd calls out a bid. A huge bid. He goes way beyond what Gomer could possibly bring in on such an auction block. Can you imagine what went through her mind when she learns that she has been sold to Hosea? She must have thought it was his perfect revenge and that he would finally and publicly kill her.

As Hosea moves to claim his merchandise I can only imagine those first few moments. How could Gomer possibly do anything but stare at the ground? Instead, he approaches her with tenderness, covers her nakedness, and leads her away to restore her to the safety and beauty of home. The change is evidenced in the fact that Hosea renames the three children. The last one, Lo Ammi, is renamed to Ammi which means My Very Own Flesh and Blood. This restoration is an astonishing display of redemption and forgiveness. The change in Gomer is demonstrated in Hosea chapter two where God says,

"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

In that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’ (Hosea 2:14-16)

God Himself put on display the magnitude and majesty of His kind of perfect love in the most imperfect relationship. The worst of sin and hopelessness is the backdrop for a story of love that His children, trapped in space and time, could somehow understand. His steadfastness is displayed through betrayal, His goodness given even without being appreciated by his beloved. Even Gomer’s restoration is initiated by Hosea, without a whiff of repentance from her. He simply pursues, and purchases her back to himself. But his desire is not for her to live as a slave or servant. It is in this very spot that my favorite verse in all of Scripture lands: In that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’ He will be called husband!

The story of Gomer and Hosea would become the backdrop for me to see the full spectrum (at least as full as I can and still live on earth) of the love of the Creator God. The key to see this glorious truth was revealed to me through the darkness and the lives of those trapped in the corners of our world. The viler the story, the more brilliant the discovery of love.

This is my story, intersecting with a few other stories of obeying the command to go. I left the church, or what the church had become in my world, to pursue the Great Commission and ultimately to pursue the heart of the Father. I discovered love. The place God led me was to the margins, the darkness. This book is the story of the brilliant light of love discovered in the margins. It’s a story of hope found in darkness, utter darkness.

Do I believe that the whole church needs to stop what they are doing, pick up camp, and race to the margins? Actually, yes, in part I do believe that. Maybe not everyone will close up shop, walk away from church programming, and walk with survivors of sex trafficking. Not everyone will start their own 501c3 and rally a community to fight violent crime, but we all must go. Reaching a lost broken world won’t happen if we don’t. But more importantly, we cannot discover the heart of God if we stay and hide in our safe place with people who feel like us and look like us. We can’t leave it to those who we think are unfortunate enough to find themselves gifted at evangelism and are doomed to knock on doors and pass out pamphlets or hold revival meetings. No, this is for everyone. There are marginalized people, desperate for the touch of the Savior, all around us.

These were not easy pages to write, and there are parts of the story that won’t be easy to read either. But my hope is that each reader will walk away with a little better understanding of their own rescue and the purpose of the family of God in a broken world. Perhaps each reader will discover their own need of the mercy of God or an outpouring of grace. Perhaps each one will find enough spillover from being touched by the love of God that those around them get splashed on and want more. Maybe they will see our lives, lives deeply moved and compelled to love by love itself, and simply look at us and say, Show me.

As noted throughout the book, all of the names and significant details have been changed or eliminated to protect the identity of law enforcement, mentors, and survivors of trafficking—people I love.

Chapter 1

If You Should Choose to Live . . .

A trip to the library shouldn’t be heart-pounding scary, but this is a new world. Calli, a young, exuberant case manager in our three-year-old organization of church ladies turned crime fighters, pulled up to the library with me on a brisk fall day. Tia, a sex-trafficking survivor in our program for just over a year, was supposed to pass the day hidden among the stacks at the library, reading. I assumed she would be flat lost in some mystery novel on the third floor; she loved to read. We were going to move her to her new housing arrangement that very evening. I called her cell phone, as I packed up my computer and left the office, to let her know we would be along in a few short minutes. The phone rang and switched over to voice mail. Dread sank into my heart, again.

I drove with Calli a little more aggressively that night, not at my usual grandmotherly pace. Please God, let her be lost in a book with her phone on silent. We began to search the rows of books. Calli and I split up to hunt more effectively. We crossed each other’s paths as we raced through the stacks. I saw the look in her eyes; she was thinking it too. Tia was probably lying on a floor somewhere, dead.

We had visited Tia in the psyche ward at Providence Hospital and at the Alaska Psychiatric Institute many times. I was recognizable in both locations as a frequent visitor and Tia’s guardian. She listed me as her family. Family? I have a family and she certainly didn’t feel like my family. But there I was, Tia’s family.

Calli and I rode the elevator down in silence. Where was she? It is impossible to get information over the phone about patients in the ER, but we had to find out if she was there. We also called our state trooper connection to see if there were any recent calls regarding a suicide attempt—nothing.

I had learned to make the calls to the hospital and speak with confidence. Any tone of inquiry would produce the same answer, I can neither confirm or deny that we have a patient here by that name. Yes, you have a patient there by the name of Tia Capri and I would like to speak with her. Then I waited, as I had so many times. Ma’am, she won’t take calls just now. Phew, she was there, alive. I had no idea what kind of shape she would be in when we arrived, but I knew she must be a mess to have already been admitted.

We were taken down a secure hall to see our gal. She had taking more than one hundred extra strength Tylenols. This was her eleventh attempt by this same method. She cried when I walked in the room, I know you are disappointed; I told you to quit wasting your time on me.

I whispered back while bending over to hug her neck, And I told you that I can waste my time however I please and I have chosen to not give up on you. The staff left the room, so we could talk. She was so broken.

Will you forgive me?

You know the answer to that, but I’ll say it again. Yes, you are always forgiven, even before you ask.

Then she closed her eyes and squeezed out a couple of tears as she told me how the doctor had asked her why Tylenol again—why she didn’t shoot herself or jump off a building