Reclaimed's 2018 Year in Review

It’s December, which means we’re bringing another fantastic year of ministry to a close! With these past twelve months came tons of amazing milestones. And some of our favorite ones are listed below!

IJM’s Liberate Prayer Gathering

When International Justice Mission (IJM) flew in its employees from all over the world to Dallas for their annual prayer gathering, Liberate, Reclaimed and Watermark (in addition to other churches and ministries) stepped up by sending volunteers to love and serve IJM’s faithful employees.

Sermons at Watermark

While he was in town for Liberate, IJM’s founder Gary Haugen spoke at Watermark’s Sunday services and The Porch! Click the links below to watch both sermons and be encouraged by the truth he shared.

We Are God's Plan A

Dignity of Responsibility 

New Roots Study Books AND One-Day Study

This year, we updated our curriculum with a new design and revised content. The new book debuted shortly before we held our first one-day study, which featured two panels, a prayer tour, and more! Our next one-day study is on Jan. 26, 2019, so register now if you haven't gone through the Roots study yet!

Watermark Apartment at Restored Hope Ministries

One of the ministries we partner with purchased an apartment complex where women with children could live while participating in their recovery program, and graduates of the safe house also can live there. Watermark specifically sponsored one of the apartments, and a Restored Hope graduate is currently living there! We also did another work day at the apartments—painting, planting, and cleaning to serve the current and future residents!

Motel Outreach Successes and Expansions

This year, hotel/motel outreach volunteers received tips about several missing girls. They also expanded their routes to include other places where missing and prostituted women might be found such as bus stops.

Reclaimed T-Shirts!

At long last, our volunteers have official Reclaimed shirts! If you’re a volunteer and missed the chance to pick your shirt up at our December volunteer meeting, email us at Reclaimed@watermark.org to get yours.

If you want to stay up to date on our next milestones or be part of them, like us on Facebook and sign up for our newsletter to hear about latest Reclaimed happenings and to learn more about how you can get involved in 2019!

2017 Year in Review!

2017 was a big year for Reclaimed with events, partnerships, and serving opportunities that many of you participated in. A few of our favorite moments from the year are listed below!

Hotel/Motel Outreach

Last year, we began a new partnership with the ministries Poiema and Rescue Her, which has given both Reclaimed volunteers and Unashamed teams the opportunity to help create awareness at Dallas hotels and motels about missing minors who are vulnerable to sex traffickers.

Restored Hope Ministries Work Day

Reclaimed teamed up with Watermark's Single Adults Ministry on June 25 to paint, clean, and plant a garden at the apartment building owned by Restored Hope Ministries! Thanks to their hard work, graduates from the safe house and women seeking healing from the ministry who have children can have safe, beautiful housing!

Glow Breakout Session

At Watermark's annual day of beauty, Glow, on July 17, we hosted a room that focused on skin care, natural beauty, and the beauty that comes from knowing Christ. You can watch the video on our Facebook page!

Impact Awareness Event

At an event after The Porch on July 18, over a hundred young adults learned about the basics of sex trafficking as well as our over-sexualized culture and helped put together materials for that month's serving opportunities. This led to...

Reclaimed's Largest Study To Date

In August, over fifty people took our five-week study! This means that many more people are now more educated about sex trafficking, its causes, and how they are uniquely wired to fight it no matter where they work and serve!

Noteworthy

We teamed up with Noteworthy to write cards for a cause on October 29! Attendees wrote notes to encourage the hotel and motel staff members we would come in contact with at our hotel/motel outreach in November.

Give & Go Boxes

During this holiday giving campaign, the church body donated over a hundred boxes of supplies, which went to the Restored Hope Ministries safe house! This helped raise awareness in the church body which providing much need resources to a life-changing ministry here in Dallas!

If you want to keep up with us and jump in all of the great things we have planned for 2018, like our Facebook page and sign up for our mailing list!

Meet an Abolitionist: Taylor Almquist

BRINGING THE HOPE OF CHRIST TO THE DARKNESS

Reclaimed leadership team member Taylor Almquist with her husband, John

I was first exposed to true poverty during my junior year of college at a church in Waco called Church Under the Bridge. Out of that experience, God awakened a deep desire in my heart to respond with some form of mission or non-profit work. Shortly after, I discovered Word Made Flesh (WMF), an international organization committed to serve Jesus among the most vulnerable of the world’s poor.

When researching WMF, there was one trip that stuck out: Kolkata, India, where I would have the chance to work with women who had been trapped in the sex trade. The previous year, I had gone through a deep depression and only walked out by trusting the hope and light found in Christ. While I didn’t personally understand the evil of trafficking, I wanted to bring these women the same hope and light that I had found in Christ — the solution to it all. Despite everything else going on in my life (job applications, college graduation, etc…), I knew that I was being pulled to go to Kolkata. Just a week after accepting a job offer, I heard back from WMF, and I was invited to join in on the four month trip that fall. By God’s grace and hand in it all, the company deferred my start date. Within a few short months, I was in India.

I remember stepping off the plane like it was yesterday … I had just met the two women in the Dallas and Frankfurt airports with whom I would spend the next four months learning, mourning, and fighting trafficking. We had each attempted to prepare for the realities of trafficking leading up to the trip through reading, but the books only say so much. Our time in Kolkata was mainly spent working alongside and building relationships (no matter how broken our Bangla) with the women of Sari Bari, an organization created by WMF that employs women leaving the trade. This enabled them to find alternate employment and also to seek healing and restoration found only in Christ.

Each day as we walked up the stairs to the Sari Bari units, people would greet us by saying “Joy Jisu,” which means “Praise the Lord!” We began each morning with a devotional and some of the sweetest praise and worship in Bangla. Soon after, the ladies would go to work sewing hand-made blankets and other goods made of recycled saris. This was a perfect metaphor for the beautiful work He was doing with their lives — old saris that had been left and broken were redeemed and made new. Sari Bari provides a space for the women to create these beautiful items, but also desires to raise up strong leaders and managers within the organization, further empowering them and the redeeming road ahead.

I went to India wanting to share the hope and love of Christ, but I took away so much more …

It was easy for me to be full of hatred toward the men and abusers of these women, but while I was there, the Lord tremendously softened my heart toward the ones I would have called enemies. I had not stopped to realize that the johns, pimps, madams, etc. are just as enslaved as the victims of trafficking are. The root of their pursuit for money, power, and pleasure is simply a desire to fill a void within, and it becomes a cycle for them. It was challenging to get a very close glimpse into each end of the spectrum of the trafficking world, and to find my heart flooded with compassion for the johns, pimps, and madams, etc … because they are people just like me — broken and in need of our savior, Jesus Christ.

Now I have the opportunity to educate people about the worth and dignity of women and men because of who they are in Christ. Through the leadership team at RECLAIMED, I’m able to connect with people, get them plugged in and help spur change here in Dallas. There is a quote we use in the curriculum by William Wilberforce that says,

“You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”

I hope you’ll join with us in our next curriculum study and be part of the change!

One Year Anniversary!

Friends of RECLAIMED,

This time last year we had just finished officially launching RECLAIMED at Watermark’s Act to Impact Sunday. And now, a full year later we’re blown away by all that God has done in and through this ministry. Confident in the strategic direction the Lord had asked us to go, we moved forward. Now as we take a look back over the last year, we want to invite you to join us in praising Him for all that we saw happen.


SMALL GROUP KICKOFFS
This past year saw the launch of our first small group studies with 5 different groups going through the curriculum we had developed. The study gave them the chance to learn facts about trafficking, the root causes behind it, and ways individuals were uniquely created to fight it. We enjoyed watching each participant grow in their understanding of the issue and in their heart for those impacted by trafficking. Participants went on to serve with our ministry partners as well as continue with their existing areas of service armed with a new perspective on how to combat trafficking in their context. We’ve also been excited to see other churches and non-profits take interest in utilizing our study materials in their locations. We look forward to seeing it multiply across the city later this year.

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MAKING A SPLASH
In August of last year some of our content made big waves in social media, online, and in person. As the Exxxotica Porn Convention came to town, RECLAIMED worked to inform and empower the church in Dallas to make an educated argument for why a porn convention had no place in our city. We were overwhelmed as tens of thousands saw our content and had the chance to share within their networks why porn is harmful. We also partnered with Unashamed and the Porch to host a night of prayer outside the convention center during one of the nights of the conference. As the fate of the convention is currently being debated, we look forward to continuing to reach our city in relevant and winsome ways.

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AFFECTING CHANGE
Perhaps our favorite parts of this year where the opportunities we had to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty…both with the hard work of relationships as well as physically serving some of our ministry partners. From serving 250 meals with New Friends New Life, to partnering with IJM at their annual fundraising dinner, to low-key movie nights with the women of Restored Hope, even to fostering ongoing one on one relationships with women entrusted to our care, we saw God show up time and time again. Trafficked women walk through a number of difficult situations in the recovery and restoration process and we have counted it a privilege to be a part of that journey with them.


YEAR TWO
So what’s in store for year two? If we have a vote, it’d be for even more of the above. Will you join us?

The RECLAIMED Team