Bright Fame

I believed in God from a young age and when I first heard about missionaries, I knew I wanted to be a missionary. I was very surprised when, at the age of 10, I was swinging on the swing with a boyfriend, that he said he didn’t want to marry me because I wanted to become a missionary. I thought that everyone wanted to be a missionary.

My parents didn’t want me to go to a Bible school for becoming a missionary. Instead they advice me in becoming a teacher or nurse. Because I always worked as a camp leader and on Sundays with the children and I had nothing with nursing, I became a teacher.

At the end of my studies, I met Frits at Youth for Christ where we both worked. We both had the desire to serve God together. We got married and knew we were called to live in Amsterdam among people from many different cultures. Soon I became a mother and started a children’s Bible club where all the children from our apartment came. We also invited our neighbours to our home for evenings where we showed the Jesus movie. We became involved in missionary work in Romania and Albania and were active in our local church. Although we still had our regular paid jobs, we knew we were being called full-time. All of us may serve God full-time in the place where He has placed us. After a few years, we came to work in a church where we started a number of projects such as a Christian bookstore where Frits started working and a Christian day-care centre, which I started leading.

We often encountered people who were not able to participate fully in society and we noticed that working as volunteers in the team of the bookstore was very healing for them and we learned that it is very important to have relationships with people. We also saw this when we became co-pastors in a shelter home for addicts.

Wherever Frits went, even when he was taking our daughter out of the gym class, he would come across women who had experienced abuse and for whom he could do something. Although he immediately referred these women to female counsellors, one of them said that God knew he was a man and that she was fine with a woman joining the conversation but that she only wanted to talk to Frits. We discovered that where men had brought pain, God also wanted to use a man to bring healing. I stood behind Frits because I saw that God wanted to use him in this way.

So when a Russian-speaking missionary with a three-month visa came on our path, who wanted to reach Russian-speaking prostitutes (there are many women from Eastern Europe working in the Red Light District who did not have English as a second language at the time but Russian) but no one wanted to take her along. I asked Frits why he would not go with her to the windows himself. Of course, I did not know what would grow out of that. What started with 3 months of once a day in a week has now become a full-time operation. We made special contacts and developed relationships. Women stepped out and were baptized. The work grew. Step by step we started to work less paid and God always confirmed us with the necessary finances. The work started in the kitchen of the bookshop and now we have an office where social work, legal help, language lessons and much more is offered but the most beautiful thing is and remains when women get to know Jesus and we are able to baptize and disciple them.

Visit our website for more information: www.brightfame.nl

THE AUTHOR

Jacqueline Rouvoet

My name is Jacqueline Rouvoet and together with my husband Frits, I lead the work of Bright Fame where we reach women and men who are working behind the window (prostitutes) in the Red Light District of Amsterdam and whom we want to help to get out of prostitution and build a new life.