2017 Reflections

 

Justice 180 had quite the year in 2017 and we have high hopes and excitement for 2018 as well. God has done incredible things through our team and we want to give you a glimpse of what this last year held for us, as well as what we are looking forward to. 

We began the year with 19 of our students in both Europe & Southeast Asia, loving on and bringing light to some of the darkest places on earth. Atmospheres were changed, women were loved deeply, and the students' willingness to serve touched numerous peoples' lives. The Southeast Asia team was even able to help set up and run a beauty salon/spa day for the women working in the red-light district in the Philippines. Each team member joined together with their different skills to go above and beyond to bless the women that came. They gave them manicures and pedicures as well as cut and styled their hair. Many new women got connected with the local ministry our team worked with because of those beauty days! Some of the girls joined the support group the ministry ran, looked into the high school equivalency program, and even enrolled in their job training program.

After our DTS students graduated, the ministry team moved into a dreaming, creating, and revamping season. A big dream on the heart of this ministry is to one day open a coffee shop that employs and mentors women coming out of the sex industry. We are planning on starting the journey towards a shop by first starting out as a coffee truck. Last year we began to lay a foundation in our team as well as plan steps to reach our goal. We did this by putting plans in place for fundraisers that bring awareness to the issue, give information about who we are, as well as raise money towards the coffee truck. We also were able to purchase a commercial grade coffee roaster, which helped us take a huge step forward in the quality of our coffee. This year we will be putting our plans into action to raise the money needed to move forward in our dreams! 

We spent the spring and summer months in the city of Los Angeles looking for new tracks to do ministry. It took a lot of research and many nights ending up with little to report, but we finally found a new track! The new area we have started working in is one that we had been dreaming of reaching for years but it never seemed to work out. However, things had finally come together and we were so excited to take this year's Justice DTS to that new track. This meant that we were sending out two teams every Friday night to two different parts of the city. So many incredible testimonies came out of those outreaches with our students! We had moments where we met girls God showed us we would meet and got to share with them His heart for redemption for their lives. We built relationships with girls that allowed us to build their trust and to hear more of their stories each time we encountered them. It was such an honor to serve these women in 2017 and we are excited to see how God continues to move in both of our tracks in 2018!

In the fall we moved into an exciting time; It was the first time since the ministry began in 2013 that we had both school staff and separate ministry staff! We ran our fifth Justice DTS and still had people actively working and growing the different parts of the ministry. That DTS is currently overseas doing outreach in Costa Rica, Brazil, Thailand, and Greece working in the red-light districts, assisting with the refugee crisis, and blessing long-term missionaries.

As you can see we were quite busy as a ministry this year! As we begin to launch new fundraising initiatives, run after dreams and visions, and grow our ministry reach in the city of Los Angeles, we just want to say a huge THANK YOU to all of you who have supported us over the years. We look forward to updating you all on how you can partner with us in our initiatives this year!

 
Autumn PhillipsComment