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| Of Faith and Healing - The life lessons of Sarah Balabagan |
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Sarah Balabagan first made headlines around the world in 1994 as the under-aged Filipina domestic helper in the United Arab Emirates who killed the employer attempting to rape her.
Her story awakened the global Filipino community to the unfortunate plight of overseas contract workers and was eventually made into a controversial film in 1997.
Now, 15 years later, Balabagan sits insid e a downtown café in San Francisco, sipping coffee and talking about her eventful life, dressed in a trendy red cotton blouse, slim black pants and high heels for her next singing engagement.
Brushing her long black hair away from her face, she admits to being a very different person from the girl who languished in an Arab jail a decade and a half ago.
With three children, several album recordings and scheduled visits to different churches throughout California to speak and sing about her newfound faith in Christ, she has indeed come a long way.
"I’ve always been a brave person," she said in Tagalog. "I’m not ashamed of my story. I was jailed because I defended myself from bad people, and seeing how people react to me now, I know they understand that."
Once known as the face of overseas workers seeking justice, Balabagan is now controversial within the Filipino Muslim community for renouncing Islam, the religion she was raised in, for Christianity.
"Jesus teaches love, and I felt it, so I believed," she said. "It’s more personal to me."
In the different churches she has shared her story with, she always says that her new faith is what brought healing from the deep trauma of her past. Once only an advocate of overseas’ workers rights, Balabagan is now also an advocate of the Gospel.
Balabagan’s journey began in a small town in the province of Sultan Kudarat in the Philippines. Born to very poor parents who had 14 young mouths to feed, she learned to understand at an early age that life was difficult. Her father was an alcoholic and a gambler who left the care of his children solely to his wife.
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