End It

Ministries for Trafficking:

http://worldrelief.org/Page.aspx?pid=3064

http://exoduscry.com/

http://stoptraffickfashion.com

http://daughtershouse.wordpress.com/resources/

http://magdalenestl.org/

http://www.gems-girls.org/get-involved http://www.gems-girls.org/about/research-resources

http://www.somaly.org/

http://www.love146.org/

http://www.thea21campaign.org/

http://3strandsglobal.com/index.cfm?pID=3331

http://www.worldvision.org/our-impact/child-protection

http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/

http://run2rescue.com/faq.html

http://www.hagarusa.org/

Love Alone is Worth the Fight

Ways to Fight Trafficking (adapted from various sources including: http://projectrescue.com/5-ways-you-can-fight-sexual-slavery/)

Learn

-Read articles about trafficking occurring in Missouri, the US, and overseas
-Read book on trafficking. I personally can recommend these books: Half the Sky:Turning Opression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. "Girls Like Us" by Rachel Lloyd. "Passport through Darkness" By Kimberly L Smith. Terrify No More by Gary Haugen.

-Watch a documentary on trafficking. 

-Read in the Bible what God has to say about justice and the oppressed

Pray

-Set aside time to pray for those in slavery

-Organize a prayer group

Give

-Support and/or fund-raise for a ministry that fights trafficking through prevention, rescue, and after-care. 

-Host a fund-raise party where people can buy products that vulnerable women make to help prevent trafficking

-Sponsor a child who is vulnerable to being trafficked

Serve/Educate

-Tell your friends, family, church, etc. about what you have learned about trafficking

-Host a documentary night or a book study 

-Get involved with organizations that fight trafficking

-Learn how to identify victims of sexual slavery and trafficking from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Rescue & Restore Campaign.

-Lobby Politicians

Not for Sale

The Problem( source: http://courageworldwide.org/the-problem/)

"Police and government agencies report they have seen the phenomenon of child sex trafficking increase tenfold over the last two years, and the abuse is still on the rise. The internet is being used as a tool to sell children for sex. There are countless ads that offer “erotic services” with juveniles photographed in the ads. This problem is wide-spread and the ease of use and secrecy of the internet furthers the hidden nature of this crime. Police report that vicious pimp circuits and organized crime rings exist that force children and teenagers into sexual exploitation. Police are successfully uncovering and prosecuting the perpetrators of this crime. The greatest factor in promoting child sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation is the demand for younger and younger victims. Most women in prostitution are trafficked into the sex industry as children. Worldwide, the average age of entrance into prostitution is 13.” 

"Children exploited through prostitution report they typically are given a quota by their trafficker/pimp of 10 to 15 buyers per night…Utilizing a conservative estimate, a domestic minor sex trafficking victim …would be raped by 6,000 buyers during the course of her victimization through prostitution."

For more information on human and sex trafficking click on this link:  http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/human-trafficking/

Love Always Protects

LOVE146: Prevention Education

"To prevent the exploitation of children, we must reach them before sex traffickers do. The best people to prevent the trafficking of children are children themselves. That’s why we make it a priority to speak directly with teens, making them aware of the tactics of pimps & traffickers, the signs of exploitation, and the services available to them should they find themselves in at-risk or exploitative situations. Once ensnared, victims of child trafficking are controlled by threats, violence, and sometimes drugs, making the pathway to freedom extremely difficult. Prevention Education acts as a vaccine to this social ill." (http://love146.org/prevention-education/)

1 Corinthians 13:7 "[Love] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

Another tangible way to prevent trafficking is by sponsoring a child that is at risk of being trafficking through organizations like Compassion International, World Vision, and Mission to the World.

Tread on Trafficking

As I made the decision to run the MO' Cowbell Half Marathon, I decided to also support an organization, Love146, that supports a cause I strongly believe in: ending child trafficking and exploitation. I will have regular updates on this blog and on this website Running for Freedom. If 25 people give $13 to match the 13 miles I will be running, I will achieve my goal of $325. Follow along and consider supporting these efforts to fight trafficking!

Restorer

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard...if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong;and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in."
Isaiah 58:6-8,10-12

I am thankful for our LORD who brings healing, satisfaction, protection, and restoration to His children. He came for the oppressed, the hungry, the homeless, the naked, the shamed, the sick, the poor, the broken. You and I are those broken people. We need Him.

I have been learning about women who feel an oppression I will probably never experience or ever fully understand. These are women who are trapped in sex-trafficking, who need the LORD to bring full restoration to their lives. Their spiritual need is no greater than mine and their lives are just as precious to God as mine.

• "The most common age of entry into the commercial sex industry is 12-14 years old." (http://www.gems-girls.org/)
• "Sex traffickers frequently target vulnerable people with histories of abuse and then use violence, threats, lies, false promises, debt bondage, or other forms of control and manipulation to keep victims involved in the sex industry." (http://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/sex-trafficking-in-the-us)
• Sex-trafficking looks different all around the world, but it is taking place in the US and not all that far from our homes. Last year, Angela Schmidt came to Crossroads to speak about Daughters' House, an organization that does outreach in our community to women who are sexually exploited or abused. She shared that the ministry is growing and in great need of people to pray and to come alongside these women to share Christ's love and offer assistance to find food, shelter, toiletries, work, etc. It takes more than a few people and a few encounters with these women to undo the lies that they have been taught to believe about who they are, why they exist, and how much they are valued. (http://restorestlouis.org/daughtershouse/)

This passage in Isaiah cannot be ignored by any one of us, although it makes me uncomfortable as I struggle with what that looks like for me to live a life that reflects this. But it clearly calls for God's people to take action, to be a part of God's story of restoration. We are by no means required to save the world, yet we must pray that God would be at work, restoring our city, making all things new. Asking for His guidance on where He may be calling us to serve Him. The incredible part of Isaiah 58 is seeing that just as God was present with his people Israel, He is with us and He will guide us, strengthen us, and equip us to do this work that He has given us.

I would challenge you to look at the passions and abilities that God has gifted you with and to think about where God is calling you to redeem our culture. Are you pouring yourself out as the LORD poured himself out for you?

"For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads,with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness."
Romans 12:3-8

Tension

There is a battle that goes on in my heart, a tension I can't seem to get rid of. At times I try to quiet it, to block it out and make it go away through any distraction I can find or excuses I can make.

It began when I saw a film that exposed a new world to me. A world where people will walk for days just to get medical care for reasons such as their child having a tumor in their mouth or stomach the size of a melon. Where clean water is rare, where there is only 1 doctor for the millions of people, and 1 meal or just a cup of tea some days is the norm. I began to read any book I could find on social justice only to discover that slavery still exists today in human trafficking, that children in Uganda and other African countries were being kidnapped and trained to be soldiers, and that AIDS was destroying families. I would exchange notes with a friend in class and wonder why we had to sit and wait and stay in high school or go to college when all we wanted to do was go to Africa and save the world!

That's when God called me to Nursing, a way I felt I could really make a difference in places of great need. Being generally horrible at and hating Science (for as long as I could remember) I promised God that I would do nursing, but that He would have to provide me the grades to make it. It was through Nursing school that I really saw that God is the one who gives us the ability to do what He has called us to. And He sustained me through Nursing School.

During Nursing school I went to Kenya where I spent 2 months each summer building friendships with children living in poverty. I saw the reality of what I'd read about. The poor nutrition and lack of clean water that made the children in the school unable to focus on school work and frequently become sick. A child discovering he is HIV positive. The children who lived at Shunem home because they were from abusive homes, or were orphans or certain to become orphans because their family members had AIDS and could no longer care for them.

But I also began to see JOY in the midst of this poverty. Joy that didn't come from having the securities and comforts I took for granted, but a joy that came from salvation through grace and faith in a loving God. They had their fears, the uncertainty of when their next meal might be, but they believed God would provide. It was the joy of community, of caring for one another so that no one went hungry or felt alone in their fight against AIDS. They reminded me that God simply wants us to live in dependence on Him- He is all we need, the source of our life. As a nurse I saw that people not only need physical healing through medicine and money, but they need Jesus who proclaimed, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor" (Luke 4:18-19).

There is that tension between what I believe and how I am living and questions which sometime come in the middle of the night, waking me up and challenging me: Do I live like Christ is all I need? Will I sacrifice living according to my wants and desires so that the Gospel might go out and the compassion of Christ shown to the needy? Will I go outside of my safety net of Christian friends to reach out to my neighbors whose lives look good on the outside, but need Christ to change their hearts? Will I live below our means so that I can give more to those who really need and so that the Gospel can go out to the nations? Will I remember those children in Kenya who are joyfully living even without clean water and full bellies?

Or will I live the life of comfort and ease that the United States has to offer? Will I ease my conscience by thinking that the poor in places like Africa have adjusted to that life of poverty or that they don't know any better? That it is okay to buy what I want, because everyone else has it and I have the money.

But in my heart I know that God has called me to more than a life of pursuing my wants and my pleasures. I look to Jesus who lived in full dependence on God for everything from where he rested his head to his next meal. Jesus sacrificed his very life out of great love so that we might live for Him. The Great Commission calls us to go out to our neighbors and to the ends of the earth to share Christ's love and his salvation that is for all people. When that becomes my focus and purpose, all worldly comforts and pleasures become unimportant. The tension of how I spend my pay check to how I spend my time and with whom requires that I give all of these things up to God who gave them to me in the first place.

It does not come easily and although I know in my heart it is good, I struggle to obey, to do what God is calling me to do. But He has not given up on me and I pray that He would continue to remind me that there is nothing more important than Himself in my life.

Hebrews 12:1-3

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."

II Corinthians 4:16-18

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."