Impacting Youngstown Together

You are helping RAHAB expand into Youngstown … and this means:

  • Doing street and strip outreach regularly
  • We recently hosted a special training session with local volunteers
  • Doing follow-up meetings with survivors … taking them to breakfast on Sunday mornings, building deeper relationships, letting them know there is a way out of the pain

But in order to continue our expansion in Youngstown, please consider stepping forward with a gift today, since more women and children are desperate for the help you offer them through RAHAB and the hope Jesus provides.

God has clearly called us to this work in Youngstown, and we will follow His leading!

Your generous donation today will help us provide meals to the survivors we meet and befriend on the streets … as well as bags of essential self-care items like lotion, hair supplies, headbands, makeup, deodorant, feminine care, and more.

Together, let’s be the disruptive hands of Christ and offer Love and Truth in the flesh to those who need it most. Thank you for reaching out to the vulnerable in His name!

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Joy Jar Moments to Celebrate

In honor of our 20th anniversary, RAHAB is taking every opportunity to share moments of joy with you from the women and children we get to serve.

As they handwrite a joyful moment on a piece of paper and put it in one of our Joy Jars, we want you to join the celebration as well … for “Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5).

Joy Jar Moment: Working with a youth and her family who are not from this country, we were able to get a translator to help, and the youth was able to open up to her mentor and know she was in a safe space.

We’re so thankful for the ways our community partners:

  • Help the children and families we serve break down barriers to receiving services
  • Work collaboratively with us to ensure they all receive the same level of care

This is just one example of the types of collaboration you ensure through your support. Thank you!

Beautiful Praise

 

RAHAB’s annual two-day retreat experience — offered to women we’ve met at our Drop-In Centers — is always a cherished, life-changing, soul-searching time they never forget.

One of our staff members captures what took place at last year’s retreat in her piece “Beautiful Praise,” and we feel certain you’ll be blessed by it …

Beautiful Praise
By Stephanie Zufall

Sunday morning worship

I’ll never comprehend it, nor do I want to. I just want to wallow in it for eternity, caught up in the awe and wonder of who HE is!!

This kind of worship…the kind that doesn’t make sense. The kind in the burning fire where death stares us in the face, and yet we don’t shrink back from declaring HIS majesty, glory, and power!

I’ve only held pieces of their stories, short snippets of their pain. I’ve only felt a droplet of the barrels of disappointment that has cascaded over their lives, unimaginable pain, and yet they rise. They rise into daughters who trust their Father singing, dancing, spinning, clapping, and stomping all the while their child is 6 feet under, their arms marked with tracks of counterfeit relief, their bodies physically distorted from the hand of another, their grief so present it can fill the room, and yet they rise.

The world and their circumstances have given them every reason to stick a middle finger up to heaven and walk away. And yet here we are before Him: bare, open, desperately seeking His face.

It doesn’t make sense.

Only Jesus can evoke this kind of worship! Only Jesus can turn that kind of pain into praise. Our stories demand our heads to hang and arms to guard yet still our faces shine without a shadow of shame while we reach high and cling to His robe!

We’ve stood in the fire, we’ve watched it all burn away, left with ashes, that only HE can turn into the most beautiful praise.

Women who are able to come to our retreats are offered opportunities to seek spiritual renewal in a safe space and to have genuine encounters with Jesus through powerful worship, Bible study, relationship-building, and deeper connections with our staff and volunteers … plus take part in healthy activities like swimming, horseback-riding, hiking, a ropes course, and more.

Thank you for helping vulnerable women see that God can make beauty from ashes at special events like this!

Your Ministry through RAHAB — Then and Now

 

This ministry started with adult women. We would meet them on the streets and in the strip clubs, visit them in jails — doing our best to meet basic needs and be a people they could rely on.

At our Drop-In Home they were invited in for warm meals, clean clothes, and a safe environment in which to experience a community. After years of getting to know these women and their stories, we began to see a pattern: most of the abuse and trauma experienced by our friends began as children. We met women whose childhood trauma made them vulnerable for trafficking later on in their lives … and women whose trafficking began while they were still minors.

It was clear that intervention needed to happen sooner than adulthood; intervention needed to begin during childhood. After talking with the Summit County juvenile trafficking docket Restore Court, we went right to the drawing board to build a budget and program for Minor Mentoring.

Through the ongoing support of friends like you, RAHAB officially began mentoring minors in 2014. Since then, with your help, we have mentored hundreds of youth, many of whom have been part of Restore Court. During their time in the program, they are assigned a RAHAB mentor. These mentors speak words of life to them and become a safe adult they can build a healthy relationship with — maybe even the first healthy relationship they’ve ever experienced.

Together, we’ve seen youth transformed as they start to identify all the wonderful attributes about themselves and build their own self-worth and confidence. Through the years, we have had the privilege of growing and optimizing our advocacy, mentoring, programming, and overall support of the youth in our communities … efforts your partnership makes possible, to the glory of God.

If you are interested in getting involved with our minor programming, we invite you to fill out a Volunteer Application at rahab-ministries.org/volunteer-application. Thank you!

Pursue. Invite. Home.

 

Truth and Love for hurting and broken women and children. For 20 years, this is what RAHAB has been about, and has done, thanks to your compassion in action. We strive to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the lives of those we serve, partner with, educate, and even those who are exploiting the vulnerable.

  • Just as Jesus pursued the hurting to offer Hope and Love, so do you.
  • As Jesus invited people into community and relationship, so do you.
  • And as Jesus welcomes us all home into His arms and into His Kingdom, you welcome women and children into family and healthy homes here on earth.

These initiatives will serve as the launchpad of our efforts going forward. Together, we will:

  1. PURSUE — through our Outreach, Jail Ministry, and Task Force
  2. INVITE — through our Minor Mentoring and Drop-In Homes
  3. HOME — through The Willows, Adult Safe House, and The Oaks

In fact, our Task Force plays an active role in the fight to end human trafficking. The main objective of our advocates is to provide services for all survivors we meet and help them find a way out.

One woman shared with us the long history of violence she’d experienced with her boyfriend. She tried leaving — again and again — but didn’t know where to go.
RAHAB was there for her, over several months’ time, through all kinds of threats, abuse, and countless shelter placements. Each time, her abuser would coerce her home … and the cycle would repeat.

But then, your love — Jesus’ love — began to shine through in a new way. Things began to change. We witnessed her begin to make empowered decisions toward her own healing. We continued to cover her in prayer.

When she was able to move to our Adult Safe House, she arrived at the pickup spot with her bags packed and her face bright. She excitedly handed one of our advocates her cell phone and exclaimed, “I’m ready to go!” For the first time, we saw hope in her eyes.

As we continue praying for her healing and her path forward, join us in stepping TOWARD the vulnerable, the “forgotten,” the hurting. Help us follow in Christ’s footsteps to Pursue. Invite. Home.