Pastor Bryan Jarrett and his team have created a safe space for children who have been victims of sexual exploitation.
Ed: Tell me about your camp and your program for children.
Bryan: I was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. For years, when I first started ministry almost 30 years ago, I did a lot of youth ministry and as I began to heal, I began to feel the freedom to talk about it. I say this all the time: rodents and roaches play in the dark, and when the lights come on, they all go find a place to hide.
There was freedom for me in being able to talk about it. As I shared my story, I realized that thousands of kids across this country were connecting with my story, and then I started looking into the numbers of people who admit to being sexually abused. This doesn't count all those who are not saying anything about it.
This has been a dream in our hearts for years. We actually started a camp with Royal Family Kids' Camp, which is a nationwide organization that helps local churches engage children who have been abused and neglected. I didn't start out to engage kids in the foster system, but identifying children who have dealt with sexual abuse is hard outside of the foster system.
A lot of the kids in the foster system are there because of some level of abuse, much of it sexual abuse. We founded Lonesome Dove Ranch in 2015 to serve the needs of children who have been exploited and sexually abused. It was born out of my own pain.
Ed: Tell me about how the camp runs. How many kids come in and out? Where do they come from?
Bryan: When we first began, we started by making inroads to organizations that serve the orphan. We set ourselves up at the camp for the worst-case scenarios. Our clinical counselors, are all Christian and counsel from a biblical and gospel-centered framework.
That's one thing we let the state know. Here in ...
from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2Qkg7dM
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