Hey Everyone!
Here’s a look into what’s going on in our ministry right now. Check out our website www.eternityfocus.com for a more indepth look. When you stop by our site be sure and check out the latest photos, videos and blogs… Please continue to pray for us. Love you all and God bless! Alika, Danika, Janika and Lainika
What’s New ~ We’ve been back to Nashville and have finished recording the vocals for our brand new Christmas CD which we’ll be releasing this fall! During the last week of March and the first week of April we went back to Dark Horse Recording Studios www.darkhorserecording.com and completed the soundtracks by adding our voices to the mix. The first song we sang was Away in a Manger. Over the course of four days we recorded every song and wrapped up the project with O Come O Come Emmanuel (which we did acapella). To hear more about our experience at the studio, check out the blog on our website www.eternityfocus.com . We’ve also added more new photos to the studio photo gallery so check those out as well. Speaking of photos, while at Dark Horse we set aside one afternoon for our photo shoot. The weather was perfect and thankfully all of us had a good hair day! So, now we have over 600 pictures to choose from and we’re forced to narrow it down to our favorite 25 shots. After we’ve made our final selections the design process begins. After the designer has created a layout for the new album we’ll get to approve the artwork for the new Christmas CD and that part of the process will be complete. As for the music side of things, we’re playing the waiting game at this moment. Eric Copeland and Billy Whittington are mixing the music right now and when everything is sounding how they want it to they’ll send us the songs and we’ll get to hear how it sounds. After we have approved everything they’ll send it all to Final Stage (a studio in downtown Nashville) to be mastered. Once the master has been approved, the music will be ready to release! It’s a long process that’s getting closer to completion everyday. We can’t wait to share this new music with you all. If you would be interested in having us come to your church this Christmas season to share this new music, please feel free to contact us about our available dates. (Information can be found on the Contact Page of our website www.eternityfocus.com.)
Old News ~ What’s Been Happening ~ We have been sharing our ministry in countless churches and we are forever grateful. God has been opening doors and allowing us to branch into several new states including Tennessee, Indiana, Iowa and Michigan. Since the release of our first album, Eternity Focus, in April of 2007 God has lead us to several states in the Mid-West and we’re excited to be returning to several of them again this year. Check out the schedule page on our website to see when we may be back in your area. Also, feel free to join our Fanclub on Facebook. There’s a link to this fanclub on the homepage of our website. Just click on the Facebook icon and you’ll be linked directly to our fanclub. You can read what others have posted about us and stay in touch with Eternity Focus fans across the country. *Note ~ Eternity Focus does not have a profile on Facebook; therefore they are unable to add or be added as friends.
Going Deeper ~ Into Our Personal Lives ~ Lately it feels as if life is a rollercoaster made up of varying speeds and emotions. We may strain to get to the top of a huge mountain only to come rushing down the other side and spin into circular patterns that leave our minds reeling and our stomachs queasy. That’s a fancy way of saying that life is fast and furious and never seems to slow down. Here’s a closer look into each of our lives… Dad has fully recovered from the car accident he had earlier this spring {see the March 4th blog for details}and is back to taking care of all of us. Mom has been away from home for the majority of this month. She’s been helping our grandma who has been in and out of the hospital and rest home over the past four weeks. Two weeks ago it seemed that grandma was doing better so they released her to come home on 24 hour care, but just last week she was readmitted into the hospital. Please keep both her, my mom and all of the family in your prayers. The rest of us are keeping busy with work every weekday and singing every weekend. We relish the long car rides which give us time to catch up on our sleep (all except for dad, who is driving). Lainika has finished most of her school and has only a few lessons left. Homeschooling is a definite plus! She’s looking forward to being done with her studies and all of us are looking forward to summer. Speaking of being done with studies, our cousin Taylor is graduating from high school this weekend so we took the weekend off to help her celebrate. I can’t believe that the school year is nearly over already!
Focusing on Eternity ~ Devotional ~ Americans are obsessed with celebrity, sensuality and getting their own fifteen minutes of fame. Popular Reality TV shows only feed the fantasy of fame and fortune. We want the world to stop and stare. We want to get to the top no matter what it takes. If we have to sell a little part of ourselves so be it. Sometimes we’ll give in to sin to get what we want. In order to achieve the “perfect” and pleasurable lifestyle we so desperately crave, we sacrifice our souls in the name of notoriety. We get wrapped up in our own little world without realizing what’s happening behind the scenes in our souls. We justify our actions with phrases like the following… This is the way the world works. I’m no different than everyone else and everyone else is doing it. God will forgive me; He knows how much I want this. It’s just a little white lie. Cheating on this won’t send me to hell. A little sexual immorality tonight won’t ruin my future. No one has to know; and besides, it’s no big deal. I just want to get to the top and then I’ll be happy. This will all be worth it in the end. Doing this will make my dreams come true and that’s what life is all about right? Because, after all; who doesn’t want to see their name in lights…
Across the ocean, nearly half a world away from America, the sun is setting in India. With the setting of the sun comes the dawning of darkness. Welcome to the red light district. Rubbish ruins the view; used condoms lay scattered in the streets. Here, in the houses of hell, rows of rooms, six feet by eight feet square, hundreds of thousands of India’s young girls and women who are sold for sex by the hour. Newly acquired girls are locked in cages, waiting for their wills to be broken. Only days earlier they were sold into slavery. Their average age is thirteen, though some are as young as six. For as little as $150, their fate is sealed and the destitution of living as a prostitute is forced upon their future… Human trafficking is something that we in America equate with civil war history. No one really cares that it still happens today. No one speaks out against the sex slave industry. No one here does anything about it. We’re so caught up in our culture of making a buck and making a break that we close our hearts to the horror going on half a world away. While we sleep in peace those trapped in torture are forced to endure destruction.
Beyond the Soiled Curtain by David and Beth Grant is a book that has changed my life by opening my eyes to the reality of India’s red light district. As I sat in my wonderfully air-conditioned and beautifully decorated home reading about the reality that these girls face everyday I was convicted. What was I doing to counteract this evil? Yes, I told the missionaries I would pray for them when they came and spoke at our church three years ago but when was the last time I followed through with that promise and actually remembered as I told God everything I wanted Him to do for me? While I was here at home focusing on my own selfish ambition and vain conceit, girls in India live ensnared in an endless nightmare of ruination. Here I was with fashion, fortune and fame at my fingertips while these girls long to be free from the sin they are suffering from. As I read the stories of this sinful reality, I asked myself how we as a world could let something like sexual slavery occur and remembered a quote that says, “Sin will take you further than you ever wanted to go.” From this side of the story, the hell that sin leads to is more clearly defined. While in America sexual sin is subtly being slipped into our everyday normality, in India it’s being sold in the streets. Sensuality and sexuality is something that we Americans treat like fire. We love to see how close we can get without getting burned. Because let’s face it, we all like the warm fuzzies that we get when reading a romance novel or seeing a love scene in a movie. However, we don’t like how it feels when we’ve been overexposed to the flames and are burned, so we try and see just how close we can get without going too far. But, here’s a secret about fiery heat; the longer you are exposed, the more your body absorbs and consumes. Have you ever noticed that when you walk in from extremely cold temperatures and are met with a hot blast of air you sense an extreme difference right away? What about when you’ve been inside for awhile and the warmth doesn’t seem warm anymore so you click the thermostat up one degree at a time, you can’t really tell the change in temperature but it’s changing with each accent of the thermostat. Isn’t that how it is with the “hot” culture we live in here in the USA? Reading the booked caused me to stop and take stock of life and I realized that though in America we may not have brothels on every corner but we are slowly lured into warmer and warmer situations whenever we turn on the television or even walk around in the mall. We may not have a red light district but we definitely have a problem with lust. But for me, it didn’t stop there. The issues existing in each chapter challenged me to take a look at my heart and face the fact I needed major transformation and renovation. I had to deal with the death I was letting sink into my soul through sin, because as we all know, the above quote is true. The subtle sins that we all justify start out as little things, but soon; once the crime has been committed and we find we’re willing to live with the consequences, we become desensitized and do something a little worse. With each wrong choice we get a little closer to the edge of the cliff of destruction. Soon we don’t even realize how far gone we are, yet we’re left wondering why the world around us is falling apart. As I confronted this conflict inside myself, I was convicted of my obsession with obtaining worldly success. My list of goals, dreams and expectations suddenly seemed insufficient and totally insignificant. Instead of chasing celebrity, sensuality and my fifteen minutes of fame I determined that I needed to seek the Person who could save me from the endless cycle of these things, Jesus Christ. My hope was renewed in that moment as I was rescued from the never ending rollercoaster ride of chasing the temporary trappings of this world. I realized that I would probably be a normal girl and never see my name in lights and be totally ok with it. But then the thought struck me, what about the girls in India that would give anything to be a normal girl, a girl who never had to see her name in “red lights”. They deserved the same freedom I had just found in Jesus. I started questioning what I was going to do about this issue. I determined that I would not let my chance to help create change slip through my fingers.
Beyond the Soiled Curtain opened my eyes to the reality of rancid world we live in but it also painted the picture of hope on the horizon of despair. Because in the midst of their midnight nightmares, these women and children are finding the hope of rescue found only in Jesus Christ through the ministry of Project Rescue. With their tireless efforts, the ministry of Project Rescue is reaching out to those in the red light district with the true, healing love of the gospel. Whether by building Homes of Hope where the daughters of those enslaved in prostitution are able to live in safety, or by holding church services for the women both freed and still enslaved in the sex-slave industry, all those working at Project Rescue are reaching out to those in India’s red light district with the love of Jesus. As funds allow they are reaching into more areas across India and the surrounding nations with the hope of the gospel. To learn more about how God is changing lives through the ministry of Project Rescue and hear the stories of some of the women whose lives have been changed, check out their website www.projectrescue.com. Please join me in prayer daily for the thousands of teens, women and children who face the reality of the red light district. To find out more about how you can contribute to making a change in India, please visit Project Rescue’s website.
Because of the life lessons I learned from the book Beyond the Soiled Curtain I would encourage you to get your own copy and read it for yourself. The circumstances of a life of sin can creep up on your or can be forced on you but the good news is this; your soul never has to stay bound to that sinful existence. For we know that there is a God in heaven who launched a labor of love so extreme and self-sacrificing hell never thought it would actually happen. Jesus came down to earth to put into play the ultimate Project Rescue. By dieing on the cross, Jesus Christ paid the ransom that makes us forever free from all sin. Though Satan will try and drag you through the gutter of filth, shame and despair always know that nothing can separate you from the unending love and amazing grace of Christ. So, the ultimate question is this… Have you responded to Jesus’ rescue efforts and if you have how are you helping Him continue to redeeming process for others? I would invite you to join Jesus in Project Rescue: The World.