Fifteen years ago, Prasana was brought to a red-light district in South Asia by her own husband. Many of the women around her had similar stories: girls from poor villages sold on false promises of factory jobs, wives sold by husbands who had tired of them. Most of them had never dreamed of much. As IMB missionary Carlie Blyth put it, “No girls here in this socioeconomic world ever imagined that they would get to be a princess.”
In 2021, a South Asian couple, Anvi and Reyansh, began renting a small room inside the district for a weekly prayer meeting. They wanted the women to hear what Carlie tells them again and again: that they are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that there is a King who loves them.
Prasana came. And every time she came, she cried. “I need to leave this place,” she would say.
But she didn’t leave. Not for one year, not for seven. Carlie admits she began to think Prasana never would. Anvi never stopped believing. She kept praying, kept welcoming her, kept helping her take hold of Christ.
Then her adult son was in a car crash that killed someone, and he was jailed. It happened while Prasana was away at the ministry’s yearly women’s camp, a few days of worship, Scripture, prayer, and simple games like musical chairs, because most of these women never had a real childhood. In the evenings the prayer times run long, and women often weep.
At one of those prayer meetings, Prasana stopped holding back. “I just want to be Yours, and I want to follow You only,” she prayed. “I don’t know how to fix any of this, but I do know that You’re real, and I can’t keep living like this.”
She left the district. Leaving was not easy: the women who follow Jesus there have to leave everything behind. She moved into a halfway house where she learned job skills and was discipled. Still she worried about her son. She thought about saving money for a bribe. She brought her fear to Anvi and Reyansh over and over, and they kept praying with her.
What happened next, she did not arrange. A pastor held in the same jail shared the gospel with her son, and he committed his life to Christ. The two of them studied the Bible together behind bars. Prasana had shared Jesus with her son before, and it had come to nothing. She had tried so hard to fix everything herself. “The Lord powerfully proved to her, ‘I’m doing something better than what you think,’” Carlie said. Prasana received it as a gift.
Another woman from her village, Nabina, also chose to follow Jesus. They are not sisters by birth, but they call each other sisters now. “Jesus can’t, He won’t, let us stay there anymore,” they said, “and now we need to follow the Lord.” They are learning everything they can about planting a church, hoping to bring the gospel back to the very village they were trafficked from. In the last three years, nine women have left that district because of Jesus.
Maybe you have been crying at the edge of something for years: saying “I need to leave this place” and never quite leaving. Prasana’s story says God is patient with that kind of waiting, and so are the people who love you in His name. You don’t need a plan to fix everything first. You can pray what she prayed: I just want to be Yours. I don’t know how to fix this, but I know You’re real. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17, WEB). And if Jesus has brought you out of a place you thought you’d never leave, you are welcome to share your story.
Adapted from “Former red-light district workers become daughters of the King” by Tessa Sanchez, International Mission Board (24 August 2026). Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. Original article. Names in the original report were changed for security. Except where otherwise noted, IMB site content is CC BY-NC 4.0 (Legal Permissions).