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Missions

Bringing Havens of Hope

Imagine your life and health devastated by years of heroin use and addiction. Home is midst the squalor and filth of an old communist military barrack devoid of running water or heat. Rotting garbage is all that feeds you and your child. Now, imagine believing your only hope of escape is death. This and similar scenarios are the sad reality for too many women around the world.

Assemblies of God missionary Jane Christiansen understands the torment these women suffer. She was a heroin addict near death in a county jail when she found a tattered Gideon Bible. Soon after, two women from the Philadelphia Teen Challenge intervened on her behalf and her life has never been the same.

Today Jane is part of Teen Challenge International (TCI). She is responsible for generating funding for a unique ministry that offers hope by establishing women's centers around the world. Although Teen Challenge is in sixty-seven countries and has 312 centers worldwide, only sixty-two of them are women's centers.

The need for safe havens with intense counseling geared specifically toward women addicts is critical. In the United States alone, among drug-using women, seventy percent report having been abused sexually before the age of sixteen; and more than eight percent had at least one parent addicted to alcohol or one or more illicit drugs. Internationally, the numbers are even more staggering.

The free flow of heroin in places like Serbia has created millions of addicts among the world's population. Unfortunately, the only Teen Challenge in Serbia is an office where women report. With no housing facility, they are forced to return to drug houses and abusive situations that only hinder their struggle to break free.

Yet, there is hope. Recently, TCI reopened a women's center in Spain that had been closed for more than five years. Within a thirty-day period in Lithuania God miraculously provided funding for a new women's center. TCI moved fifteen women and their children out of that old military barrack into a beautiful new home in the country.

But, it's not enough! Right now TCI has more open doors for ministering to these women than available funding.

They desperately need help to bridge the gap. Will you help?

For more information about Teen Challenge International, call 540-972-8223, or access their Web site at www.teenchallenge.com.

REVEREND JANE CHRISTIANSEN can be contacted at P.O. Box 547, Locust Grove, VA 22508.