Monica is a woman from Romania who came to SNU in February to discuss her organization with the Romanian SIMS crew and the SPEAK Theme House, which is called The Open Door. This organization was formed to help the women and men of Romania who are involved with sex trafficking and to help them find a place of security until they can get back on their feet.
This cause runs deep for Monica, as most people involved with sex trafficking were sexually abused or assaulted at a young age. Monica herself was sexually abused by her grandfather for years while she was growing up. He described it to her as, “A Special Kind of Love.”
When she was nine, her uncle also abused her at the same time her grandfather did. When she turned eleven, she decided to live her life by her own rules; the only person she listened to would be herself. She was raped when she was seventeen. During her early adulthood, she said that she made all the wrong decisions, slept around a lot, and had four abortions.
When she was a young woman, she witnessed first-hand the Romanian Revolution. The Romanian Revolution was one of the bloodiest revolutions to date, and she witnessed many atrocities. On the first day of the Revolution, she crawled her way out of the town square and to a bus. When she got to the bus, she looked back to where she was and watched as a helicopter swooped by and massacred people in the crowd.
Another time when she narrowly escaped death, she was almost in an ambulance to get to a hospital, but decided at the last second to go there another way. When she later arrived at the hospital, she found the ambulance that she was going to get on had been riddled with bullet holes.
She stayed at the hospital for about a week and a half. One night they were on high alert lying on the ground trying to hide from terrorists; she is quoted saying that that they had, “Adrenaline up to their eyeballs.” While they were lying there, Christmas music started playing on the radio, and everyone in the room started to weep. They had not heard Christmas music in years.
After the Revolution, Monica met her husband and got married to him in 1992; she was 24. Later that year, as she was looking for a second job as a translator she bumped into an American friend of hers. She referred to her and her husband as the missionary couple. They lived in a bad area of town, and Monica’s husband Christy was initially very distrustful of them, saying that they were American spies.
The missionaries did not once try to push the gospel onto them; they just lived and breathed the word of God. Monica’s husband was gruff, bitter, and thought his wife to be foolish for buying into this.
Her first son was born in March of 1993, and they came to the states in May; her husband later during Christmastime gave his life to Christ. Later, in 2005, Christy became the lead pastor of The Blessing Church. For about four years before that, he was the associate pastor.
Monica started a prayer campaign in 2010, which happens to be the only one in Romania, and it was called Open Door. She tells the women who come in that they are not victims, but survivors. So far, she has eight facilities that house sixteen girls each. The most important thing she says is that, “Every time they work with a girl, God provides, every time.”
[author image=”http://echo.snu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/IMG_6205.jpg” ]Danny Smith, Staff Contributor
Danny was born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana and has a major in Elementary Education and a minor in Multi-Cultural Studies. He enjoys sleeping, trying new foods, listening to his records, and most importantly, taking naps. He hopes to one day teach elementary school children over seas.[/author]