By Candace (May ’02) Hurckman
“I want to give them Jesus. I use wisdom. I help them with hygiene, rice, manna packs, and medicine. I gather them, fellowship with them, be with them, pray with them, hug them, share with them, everywhere I go. I hug them even when the women smell. It’s not a problem for me, because they need love. They need peace. They need healing. When you share with a woman, they tell you everything – how they suffer, what they go through, how they feel, why they need help, how they became widows.” – Rosebell, Venture Partner
Rosebell is one of Venture’s partners living and ministering in Southeast Asia. She serves over 200 women, primarily widows, and 2,000 children every week. The widows come together to meet with Rosebell to receive food, hygiene training and supplies, prayer, and community. They have no one to care for them, their housing is unstable—a result of being displaced. They have no I.D. and no citizenship. Rosebell’s heart is for these women to know Jesus intimately, to care for them when they are sick, to love them when they are suffering, and help them when they are fleeing violence. She provides leadership training and Bible training for other women so they can learn to love themselves and others and look after a small group of women.
On this International Women’s Day, we celebrate Rosebell and the brave, strong women Venture partners with throughout this region. We celebrate the women risking their lives for the widows, the orphans, the oppressed, and the marginalized. We celebrate Rosebell for her unwavering commitment to daily giving of her life and her love, and lending her ear to the desperate pleas of women and children.
Bringing the whole Gospel to the whole person
The years 2020 and 2021 have marked the most significant moment in Venture’s history and in the nations we serve for women empowerment and women initiatives. Venture’s goal is to bring the whole Gospel to the whole person in places who have never heard. James 1:27a says “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress…” At Venture, we take this mandate very seriously.
In the areas where we serve in Nepal, girls are born into the lowest caste and it is assumed they will spend their lives as prostitutes, starting as early as 8, 9, and 10 years old. These precious girls are groomed as toddlers to prepare them for this unthinkable lifestyle. When kids in this country are preparing for Kindergarten, these young 5- and 6-year-olds are taught how to dance publicly in the streets to seduce men. When we are throwing baby showers for our daughters, the daughters in this caste are being pre-purchased by pimps so that one day they will be taken to begin life in a brothel, still years from the onset of puberty.
Since COVID began, pimps have taken advantage of families who have little to no access to food. If a daughter is guaranteed to a pimp for a life of prostitution, that family’s hunger is satisfied. If a family could receive $2 per day by working in a rock quarry, they may guarantee their daughter to a pimp to receive $5 per day. The pandemic has brought on even more desperation in the areas we serve, and these desperate times often call for desperate measures.
Seeing different possibilities
But we believe their circumstances and outlook on life can be dramatically different. When others see a vulnerable young girl, we see her potential to one day be a leader in her community. When others see a future prostitute, we see a future college graduate. We choose not to buy into the belief that the girls from the lowest caste are worthless, and instead have immeasurable worth, and are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). If we believe this for our own daughters, we need to believe this for the Nepali daughters.
In 2020, Venture began partnering with Nepali women to address a significant gender-based need in the region. When a young woman is on her period, she is seen as an outcast and it is considered sinful to even talk about your menstrual cycle and feminine products. HER (Himalayan Entrepreneurial Resources) was started through a partnership of a local Nepali woman and women in Minnesota to provide feminine hygiene training so that women and girls could learn that their monthly cycle is completely normal, not shameful, and it is how God created their bodies to work. The idea of using and even owning a feminine product is seen as a luxury, especially when women struggle to feed their children.
But in 2020, HER distributed feminine hygiene kits, provided hygiene training for 300 women and girls, and offered training for women and girls that addressed gender-based violence. And that was just the beginning.
HER is also about women empowerment by introducing women to the idea that they can become businesswomen. Women are discipled and taught basic economic agriculture. Instead of selling their bodies, girls can sell goats. This concept is a radical shift in Nepali culture because the women of the lowest caste cannot venture out in their communities to go to the markets, the temples, or even seek out medical care at a clinic because they risk being beaten, murdered, or raped.
What these women want is what we all want: to be free and have purpose, but they are denied this basic human right. HER is improving their lives financially, physically, and mentally. Now they are learning that they can create safety for their families, successful businesses for the communities, and offer the hope of the gospel through church planting.
Serving every day of the year
International Women’s Day is one day on the calendar to pause and celebrate women doing extraordinary things. We are honored in the Venture community to partner with local women in Southeast Asia who are ministering to women every single day of the year.
This is what we are called to do in our country, as well. To be near to the broken-hearted. To meet the needs of our neighbor—the neighbor enduring domestic violence, the neighbor living paycheck to paycheck, the neighbor living with addiction, or the neighbor of a different skin color, faith, or political ideology. May we be men and women who freely give of our lives to the people we come in contact with each week, offering help, hope, and healing. May today be a humbling reminder of the role we get to play in others knowing and experiencing freedom and experiencing the love of our Father.
Candace (May ’96) Hurckman (pictured here with her husband, Paul Hurckman ’96) is Grass Roots Coordinator for Venture, an organization that has grown from the seed of an idea planted in 2002 in three North Central University students to an international organization committed to “doing tough things for people in tough places.” According to NCU Magazine (Spring 2018), “Venture … feeds people around the world, releases victims of human trafficking, supports schools and teaching programs, establishes sustainable farms and safe homes, plants churches, makes disciples—and provides life-changing adventures for thousands of people who ride and run to raise the funds to make these things happen.” North Central is a longstanding partner of Venture.
