Count Your Blessings

It's very easy in the day-to-day grind of life for us to take our blessings for granted. Whether you are a believer of Almighty God or not, you are blessed when you consider the following:

• Right now there are U.S. children far away from home who are being beaten and sold for sexual services.  If you have children and they are safe, you are blessed and so are your children.
  
• Right now there are men and women working very long hours with little or no pay while being deceived (i.e. have deb to pay off that keeps growing); isolated; abused and threatened (themselves or family members).  If you have a job that allows you to come and go and pays a wage without the fear of abuse or threats, you are blessed.
  
• Right now there are women who are being told they are worthless, hopeless, ugly, stupid, and that no one cares about them.  If you have people in your life who love you, you are blessed.
  
• Right now children, women and men enslaved by trafficking (for sex and labor) do not have the freedom to eat whenever or whatever they want; are not free to come and go as they please; cannot receive medical care; are not allowed to speak for themselves; cannot go to school; cannot contact family and friends for help, etc. If you can do or have any of these things, then you are blessed.

As long as slavery exists, we cannot call our country the "Land of the Free".  No one has the right to deny an individual their freedom and no one has the right to sell another person.

Please take a moment in your "daily grind" to count your blessings and to pray and remember the children, women and men being trafficked all across the U.S.

Children Are Not For Sale....

I love Wednesday nights because I have the privilege and blessing to teach an awesome group of kindergarteners at my church. Years ago, at another church, I discovered my love to teach and 5 year olds are my niche. They get me and I get them. They love unconditionally. They forgive easily. They are like sponges when it comes to learning and they are eager to help.

That's why the end of this school year is bittersweet for me because it's my last semester to teach. My focus needs to be elsewhere as I start the journey to educate and engage others in the fight against human trafficking. God is taking me in a different direction and I want to be obedient to His will.

As I think about the children in my class - their smiles, their laughter, their honesty - my heart becomes heavy for the children worldwide, including 5 year olds, who are sold for sex every day or are forced into manual labor. It not only happens in countries like Thailand and India, but also in the good, ol' USA.

Like I said in my first blog, human trafficking is a deep, dark and dirty issue many people do not want to hear about, let alone talk about it. For the millions of children forced into the sex and labor industries, they are counting on grown-ups, like you and I, to speak up for them - to be their voice for freedom.

Here is the reality.....

•  Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing crimes in the world.  It's the world's second largest criminal enterprise, after drugs. (U.S. State Department)
• The global market of child trafficking is over $12 billion a year with over 1.2 million child victims.  (UNICEF)
• In the U.S., as many as 2.8 million children run away each year and within 48 hours, one third of these children are forced into the underground world of prostitution and pornography. (The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)
• The average age of entry into prostitution/sex trafficking for children is 12 years. (U.S. Department of Justice)
• 300,000 children in the U.S. are at risk every year for commercial sexual exploitation. (U.S. Department of Justice)
• 600,000 to 800,000 people are bought and sold across international borders each year; 50 percent are children and most are female.  The majority of these victims are forced into the commercial sex trade. (U.S. Department of State)
• Child pornography is one of the fastest growing crimes in the U.S. Nationally, there has been a 2,500% increase in arrests in the last 10 years. (F.B.I.)

 Many of these children have run away to escape an abusive home, only to find themselves trapped in a sadistic world of abuse, deception, fear, etc. while others are being sold by parents, family members, friends for a profit.  Regardless of whether the money is used to pay off a debt, buy drugs, feed a family, a cultural norm, etc. - it's still wrong.  Children ARE NOT for Sale.

The facts are grim and heart breaking but now is not the time to remain silent. Trafficking can happen anywhere - your community and mine - and these children need our help.  Please check out F.R.E.E. International (www.freeinternational.org) and F.R.E.E. Indiana (www.freeindiana.org) for more information and learn how you can get involved.  Also, please keep checking my blog - A Voice for Freedom - for information.

Until Everyone is FREE.....

It's the start of something......

My best friend, Steve, encouraged me the other night at dinner to start a blog about the calling and burden God has placed on my heart to be a voice for the children (yes, children), women and men held captive every day by human traffickers. One of my prayers is that my voice (along with many others in this fight) - a Voice for Freedom - will help those in bondage to be rescued and restored.

I first heard about human trafficking while on a missions trip to South Africa in 2001. While the information I heard was very brief, I know it's the place where God planted the seed in my heart.  Upon returning from South Africa, God, through the Holy Spirit, conveyed that He was taking me in a new direction and to a new church. After several years of ministering to the homeless with an inner city church, I resigned from the ministry and left the church. I asked God to lead me to a church with a heart for missions and within a month, I started attending Grace Assembly of God. One of my prayers was that God would burden my heart all over again for something. In less than a year of my missions trip, that prayer was answered.

At our annual missions conference, we had missionaries from F.R.E.E. International, Breaking Chains Network and Project Rescue talk to us about the issue of human trafficking, not only worldwide, but also in the U.S.  What??  There are slaves in the "Land of the Free"?  What happened to President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery? 

The reality is that laws are broken and human rights are violated every day.

The reality is that more than 200,000 children, women and men in the U.S. are forced to work in the sex (prostitution, pornography, etc.) and labor (farming, industrial, hospitality, domestic) industries every day and suffer from abuse (physical, sexual, emotional, verbal), manipulation, poor health, fear, etc. at the hands of their traffickers. They have no freedom. They have no voice to cry out for help.

As we listened to the horrific realities of trafficking, we also heard there is hope for the captives. There are armies of individuals working to Find (F), Rescue (R), Embrace (E), and Empower (E) those held captive in the chains of trafficking. It was during this time of awareness when God burdened my heart to be a voice and the arms, hands, legs and feet of F.R.E.E. International in Indiana.

A year later, again, we launched a new ministry at Grace Assembly known as F.R.E.E. Indiana. The vision and mission of F.R.E.E. Indiana is to bring awareness and encourage involvement among the faith based communities of Indiana to fight human trafficking. I will share more about F.R.E.E. Indiana in future blogs.

Human trafficking is a deep, dark and dirty issue that many people don't want to hear about, much less talk about it.  BUT, if we remain silent, how will these victims ever be set free?  They're counting on us to find them...to be their voice for freedom.