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A few years ago, I stood in my bathroom in front of the mirror, brushing my teeth for bed, and I said to my husband (through the foam and around the brush), “If I spent a lifetime in freeing slaves and were to rescue only one, it would be worth it.” From that remote scene in the United States, I was able to come all the way around the world to India, to Ooty, and to volunteer with five other women with Freedom Firm. There was a lot that changed on the way: the facts lined up in my head as I researched; a college friend and his wife and family moved to India to join staff; I had another child, my husband started nursing school; my church, Grace Church of Chapel Hill, NC, starting supporting Freedom Firm. And then I caught word that Grace’s radar was out and they were gathering a team to go. To go. To go. To actually do something on the ground (beyond the marches and prayer walks) for trafficked women.

I am very grateful to Freedom Firm for having me to volunteer and for using our team to continue forward with the liberation and rehabilitation of these wonderful women. The staff kept thanking me, but I also was thankful. To be able to move from an idea, a bleeding heart, in our sometimes very isolated and theoretical lives to the mist-touched mountains where women actually string beads to slowly extricate themselves from their bondage, where workers have sacrificed much and gained more to toil in the ripe fields of human souls: it is almost too much to thank.

I am back stateside now, probably for quite some time. The smell of masala has exuded its last from my pores, the foreign bugs worked their way out of my intestines. There are kids to drop at school, pick up, a three-year-old to potty train. I think of Ooty at night, when I would wake in our boarding house to silence and pitch blackness, when even the honking seemed to have ceased down the mountainside. The altitude sickness was giving me moments of random insomnia, which I look back on now with wistfulness. In those moments, with the clicking of an old house and the steady breathing of my teammate, the day would come together with a prayer and steady mind, undistracted by a street full of saris and attempting to eat rice with my hand. All the moments of the journey—for that is really what it was—are seen strung like pearls on a necklace of exquisite beauty and even some curiosity. I can still see this necklace, take it out and wear it and hope that it inspires.

That we may continue to work, wherever we are, toward liberty and love for everyone, and that we too may be ready and able to sacrifice for it.

Thanks from our team to the hospitable and amazing staff of Freedom Firm for a lesson in redemption. And may you be blessed with resources and strength to continue with your vital work.

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Devon worked with Ruhamah in November, 2010, for a week. She came with five other women from Grace Church of Chapel Hill, NC, for the long trek to and fro, bringing supplies and working on sales, marketing, and design for the jewelry-making enterprise.