When Olga (alias name) gave birth to her baby, a social worker from Tel Aviv called me and asked me to come and visit her in the hospital. When I arrived, I was told that Olga had abandoned her baby and run away, back to the part of town where prostitution and drugs are rife.

We drove to find her and met her at the brothel where she worked. This was the first time I had ever been exposed to the red-light district, entered a brothel and talked to a prostitute.
I realized I needed help and wisdom from Above to know how we could help Olga.

While talking to her, I offered to come once a week and take her to visit her baby in the hospital.
I hoped that her contact with the baby and spending time with him would awaken her
maternal emotions and motivate her to break the cycle of drugs and prostitution in her life.

Over a five-month period, we came to the brothel and drove her to the hospital to meet her little boy, who was going through a rehabilitation process, having been born addicted to drugs. During this time, we learned her life story, a story overflowing with abuse.

No one had warned Olga before she came to Israel that she would be imprisoned in an
apartment in Eilat, that her passport would be taken away from her, and that she would not have any value, dignity or basic human rights. After running away from the apartment in Eilat, Olga kept working in prostitution as a way to provide for herself in a foreign country, and she lived on the margins of society, with no basic human amenities.

From that time on we went out every week to the brothels in the old Central Bus Station area in Tel Aviv. That well-known place where we used to board buses as children had changed beyond recognition. Every room has now become a brothel and every alley or backyard, a drug abuse spot. The place is saturated with violence, and girls are beaten and even murdered there, and all in broad daylight, while in the background thousands of refugees are wandering around. Recently, after the area made headlines in the media, some changes have been made. There was an attempt to root out prostitution, and many of the brothels have now become coffee houses for refugees. The girls were scattered around but the problem hasn’t been solved, it has just spread to a wider area.

Through our contact with these women, we have seen prostitutes who decided to keep their babies rather than abort them; we have seen women break out of the drug cycle and start the rehabilitation process; we have seen many women that died and gave their heart to God.

“Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you.” – Matthew 21:31