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.