It's Been Awhile...

It's certainly been awhile, and while I've had lots of thoughts of posts (and even started a few), they've obviously not made it to being posted. However, as slack I'm feeling as a blogger, this is still one of the best ways to get info out to folks who may be interested in learning more about an upcoming missions trip I'll be participating in.

Let me know if you have any questions or if you're interested in learning more.

She was 12 years old when her grandmother sold her for the first time. She spent three days locked in a hotel room in Cambodia with a foreign man. And last week, she came to our office, a beautiful college-aged student with a beaming smile, to share the story of her freedom. Now she's a spokeswoman for an organization that bears her name, Remember Nhu. 

 

Nhu now travels the world sharing her story - how after her grandmother sold her again she demanded part of the money and took herself to hair and nail school, how she was adopted by a missionary couple, and how together they've started homes for at-risk boys and girls across the globe so that other children don't ever have to find themselves in the same place Nhu did. 

 

Last year I was privileged to co-lead a mission trip to Eastern Europe to help 10 women from across the US learn more about this issue and more about how, together, we can proactively fight the global issue of sex-trafficking.  While what we heard was extraordinarily difficult to take in at times, it's been amazing to see how the women who participated in the trip have been at work in their own churches and communities to further awareness of this cause. 

 

This year, I've been asked to co-lead a similar trip, but this time to a different region of the world. We are taking 10 women to Cambodia and Thailand November 13-23. This time, we're going to "my" area of the world. For five years I lived in Asia, but so often I turned away from the blatant sexual trafficking because it made me uncomfortable. I never again want indifference to be my response. 

 

To that end, we'll be working with ministries that intervene at all stages of the trafficking cycle. In both countries, we'll be visiting with ministries like Nhu's were they work to prevent the vulnerable from being sold in the first place. We'll meet with ministries that are reaching out to women sold in brothels and bars to try and reach them with hope and freedom. And we'll meet with ministries who are engaged in the long, hard work of restoration and healing for these girls and of providing them with job skills and training for a future free from being sold. 

 

Once again, I need your help. I need prayers desperately because this is hard and big. And it's been easy to look past how hard and how big it is by hiding in the minutia of schedules, and budgets, and visas. 

 

Another way important way to help is by giving financially towards the cost of transportation and lodging. I’ve been asked to raise $2750 to participate in this trip, and having your partnership in this endeavor would be an enormous blessing.  Knowing you are united with me on this mission to those who are immersed in such darkness will bring hope and courage to a seemingly overwhelming situation.

Thank you for prayerfully considering how you can be involved.

Here are the options if you would like to give financially:

1.     Click this link  https://donations.mtw.org/donate/AddDesignation.aspx?No=14901 to donate online to account 14901.

2.     Send a check to the following address with 14901 in the memo line

Mission to the World

PO Box 2589

Suwanee, GA 30024-0982

What's New?

Some of the very good reasons I've been a distracted blogger this year. Here's what I've been doing this summer. 

What I've Been Watching -
The World Cup - Well, watching as much as I'm able to, what with this whole work thing that gets in the way of Euro-centric game times. And also the lack of cable. Having been overseas for two World Cups (China in 2002 when Korea/Japan hosted and then Argentina in 2006), I caught World Cup fever from countries where the world stops when your team in playing over a decade ago. Also, I have a long history dating back to high school of supporting (stalking?) soccer players.  A little creativity means I've been able to catch a good number of games - ESPN at the gym, Univision live streaming (should so have taken Spanish instead of French), friends' Watch ESPN logins, data plans, more time in sports bars than any time other than when I worked in one. The whole sports bar thing has been detrimental to both my wallet and waistline this month, so that's a silver lining of the US being out. Here are a couple of fun world cup links.

Faking It Through the World Cup - has some language, but funny
The Definitive Ranking of the Hottest Guy from Each Team - don't agree with all their choices (Two words: Graham Zusi)
Which Team to Cheer For

Here's this little gem from Glennon Doyle Melton over at Momastery:
You guys. I've been watching the World Cup for a few days now. I have a question. I cannot ask my husband this question for reasons that will make themselves apparent in a moment. WHAT THE SAM HILL IS GOING ON???? Is there some sort of attractiveness test that these people must pass before they are issued cleats? If so, after they pass the hot test are they placed onto some sort of factory conveyor belt thing where they each get hip haircuts and the ideal amount of stubble and perfectly placed tattoos and then their real normal eyeballs are removed and replaced with PIERCING, HURT YOUR PRECIOUS HEART SOCCER MAN EYEBALLS???? I repeat... WHAT THE SAM HILL IS GOING ON?? And for how long are we supposed to just pretend to be watching the ball HERE???

So You Think You Can Dance - So very happy it's summer and this show is back. It's the only reality show I watch and I LOVE it. Already the dancing is phenomenal! And even if Niles and Mary get a little annoying at times, and even if the guest judges are sometimes only there to promote an album or raise ratings for the evening, the dancing is still so good. I may actually watch more for the choreographers than the dancers - Travis Wall, Stacey Tookey, Sonya Tayeh, Nappytabs. They're fantastic!

Friday Night Lights - I've heard such great things about this show and decided it would be what I watch on Netflix over the summer. I've prepared a little spot in my heart for it on the same shelf as West Wing (best. ever.) and while it hasn't quite earned a spot there yet, I am still really enjoying the complexity of relationships on the show and the goodness that undergirds most of the characters. Only on season 2, so we'll see. 

What I'm Reading?
This summer started with a bang in the book department, but hours devoted to World Cup viewing have thrown off my pace. 

Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman - I'd read a lot about the Netflix show and really didn't have any desire to see it. I'm not prude when it comes to TV shows, but I do have limits. However, a friend read the book and said it was quite different from the show, and it really is. I loved the book. I found it laugh out loud funny and ultimately heartwarming as well. I also found it made me pretty infuriated at the US penal system. 

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green- It's rare that I read a book where teenagers come up to me and comment on my selection. However, at the beach over Memorial Day more than one teen passed by my beach chair with a "Oh my gosh! That is the best book!! I just love that book!!! Don't you just love that book!?!?" It was a very good book and I did cry when I finished sitting in my beach chair looking over the Gulf. This was a deliberate choice of setting on my part. If I'm going to read a book that's ultimately horribly sad and where crying is likely, then I choose to do so in a beautiful location (see also: The Kite Runner, My Sister's Keeper, The Book Thief). Also, I found the movie to be one of the most faithful book adaptations I've seen. 

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn- A friend on vacation was totally sucked into this book, and since I'd seen it around a lot (my mom and step-dad each gave it to the other for Christmas a couple years ago), I thought I might try it. It will completely suck you in. It is so fascinating. How everything is constructed is amazing. Also, it's horrifying, and may make you never want to get married. And then the end. That end. Ugh, it's hard to say anything without spoilers, but...really, just, eh, ugh. Maybe don't read it. Wait for the movie. I hear they're changing the ending for the movie.

The Expats by Chris Pavone- I started this on the flight back from Australia (that was an interminable 43 hours), but got distracted by other new, shiny books and needed to finish and get it off my goodreads list. While the premiss is totally different than Gone Girl, finishing one right after the other brought out a number of similarities. Mainly about duplicitous marriages and endings that I do not enjoy. So, you know, this isn't a glowing recommendation or anything. It is kind of interesting about spies, though. 

A Company of Swans by Eva Ibbotson - This book combines two prominent themes of what I've been watching this summer - dance and Brazil. It's a book that takes place early in the 1900s about a girl who runs away from an oppressive British home to join a ballet troupe traveling to Brazil. When they mention traveling to Manaus I actually have a frame of reference for that now (thank you, World Cup). The author wrote 5 lovely novels that take place roughly around the World Wars. She's passed away, so these are the only five stories we'll get from her, but they're precious. Today they'd likely be classified as Young Adult, and they can be dramatic and you can generally see where the plot is going, but they're also sweet, and have lovely details about European culture and the arts, and romance, and bad guys getting thwarted, and other things I tend to like in books more than bad marriages. I recommend starting with The Countess Below the Stairs. It's still my favorite of the group and has kind of a Downton Abbey vibe with the upstairs/downstairs component. 

If the weather stays nice, and I get some quality pool time in, here's the rest of what I may be reading this summer- 

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear -British lady detective between World Wars
Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost -Travel book on China that I've read before but LOVED. Troost sees China almost exactly the same way I did.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs - It has pictures and images that are part of the story, so kind of a different premise
Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan -Don't know much about this one, but really, this title is so right up my alley.
The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson -Fictionalize North Korea
An Unmarked Grave by Charles Todd - Nurse/detective novel during WWI but the writers are a mother/son team which is interesting to me

Update from Anti-Trafficking Trip to Eastern Europe

I'm hoping to send out an update this weekend with more information about my recent trip to Eastern Europe.  It's way overdue, but there's been a lot to process and to try to figure out how to distill.  I did some preparation as part of a group presentation we gave at the office today about the recent trip and I thought since I already had those notes written up that I would go ahead and post them here.  These aren't perfectly edited and the transitions might not all be stellar, but it should begin to give you a glimpse of some of what we experienced.

Thanks so much for your support!!

It’s 11 am on a Thursday morning, and we’re walking through the streets by our hotel in Athens.  On the corner you can see a young, twenty-something guy walk out of a door with a half-finished frappacino and shortly thereafter another young man walks in looking like he’s taking a morning break – messenger bag slung over his shoulder and on his cell phone as he pushed the door open.  For all the world they look like they’re heading in and out of a Starbucks for a mid-morning coffee run.  In reality, that door they’re swinging in and out of is a brothel.  One of of over 300  legal brothels the ministry Nea Zoi has identified in the area of Athens they’re based in. 

In Bulgaria, and even in ministries I’ve worked with in the US, it’s the women you see.  The women who have faces and are out front on the street.  The sellers/pimps and the buyers/johns are the ones in shadow – lurking in alleys, doorways and slow moving cars.  In Greece, the women are locked out of sight, but you see the men.  It’s so casual, it’s so normal, and there’s no shame.  It makes me even more scared for the women whose only interaction are with their madam and men who’ve come to abuse their vulnerability.  And it makes me even madder at these men that now have faces.  But oddly enough, with seeing those faces also comes greater compassion and fervency of prayer for these men who are also victims – victims of their sin and urges, victims of their society and cultural upbringing. 

In both countries, one disturbing thing we saw is the involvement of family on both sides of the trafficking equation. In Greece, young  men are introduced to brothels through their own fathers.  Fathers frequently take their teenage sons to the brothels to introduce them to sex.  It’s a cultural tradition handed down through millennia, tracing its roots back to the temple prostitution we read of in the Bible.

 In Bulgaria, we saw how family takes an active role in trafficking or selling women.  The most beautiful of the young Roma women are sent by their “husbands”, the man their family gave them to, to earn money through prostitution.  One of the local missionaries described being in a Roma village one afternoon and watching as shiny freshly washed cars, one after another and stark contrast to the dirty poverty all around, picked up the women decked out in their “street” clothes to go work the ring road in the city. 

One thing that makes this work so hard is that the traffickers can use the same tactics across the board – abuse, rape, sleep deprivation, drugs, withholding food, warmth, affection, or dignity will break just about anyone’s will pretty quickly.  However, the recovery process looks so very different in each country, in each situation.  In Greece you have women from all over the world who have been trafficked.  Does someone speak their language?  Do we have materials to give them in Czech? They’re essentially stateless, so how do they get papers to be recognized by some country?  Access to socialized healthcare?  How do you contextualize the Gospel, dignity, and hope for women from a huge range of home countries and heart languages?

In Bulgaria the fight looks different because Roma women are trafficked by their own families.  Their “men” send them into the cities and have them work on the street to provide him with a new car, money to gamble, freedom from work.  “Rescuing” a Roma woman in Bulgaria isn’t about giving support to a women alone in a foreign place.  Instead, it has to be about convincing a women that she’s worth more than her husband, her family, her community has been telling her for her entire life.  She has to be willing to leave behind a man she’s called husband.  The community she was raised in.  And what about her children?  Will she get to keep them? 

Both these situations remind us that as horrible as human trafficking is, in reality, it’s merely a sympton of greater brokenness and evil.  How do we transform communities so that family relationships are valued and women are protected instead of exploited by their own husbands?  How do we influence culture and government so that the demand for paid sex decreases?  How do we fight culture to teach our young men the value of sex and purity?  How do we challenge our governments to make laws that protect exploited women and punish men selling and buying women? 

One thing a missionary said while we were in Bulgaria is that it’s one thing to be called to the issue of trafficking and it’s another to be called to working directly with the women.  Very few are actually called to work directly with trafficked women.  Many, if not all of us, are called to the issue – whether that’s increasing awareness, doing research, fighting for new legislation, or as pointed out in our office staff meeting yesterday “transforming communities.”  Planting churches and building communities that value familial relationships and the dignity of women, investing in our youth, these are all part of the work of preventing trafficking.  

Prayer Requests Prior to Trip

Hi All,

Thank you so much for all the love, support, and prayers you've offered to me in preparation for this trip.  This past week as been extraordinarily busy, so I'm very grateful for a few hours of quiet this morning (as well as some time to pack!).  It's been an incredible blessing to see all of the ways that God has provided in preparation for this trip - so many details worked out, all of the funds came in, a great team of women going, and all the arrangements both the missionaries and nationals have made on our behalf.  As we get ready to depart in just a few hours, I would love to share with you some ways you can be praying the next week if so led.  The dates of the trip our Sept 27-Oct 1 in Sofia, Bulgaria and Oct 2- 5 in Athens, Greece. 

-Travel plans and logistics (luggage weight with lots of supplies for the team, tight layover connections, workers on strike in various countries)

-Good health for our team

-Protection from danger or evil

-Open hearts and minds to receive what God has for us on this trip

-For good, strong relationships to develop quickly amongst our team

-And most important - for Light and Truth to shine forth in powerful ways in the lives of women and men trapped in the trafficking industry.  

Thank you again for your support and prayers.  I look forward to sharing with you all the ways that God has worked!!

Update on Mission Trip

Hi Friend,

All of the details are coming together - packing lists are being worked on, funds are coming in, hotels are being arranged.  Each day brings our team one step closer to this trip to work against sex-trafficking in Bulgaria and Greece.  There are so many different pieces that need to come together in order for this trip to happen, and little by little we're seeing them accomplished.  As one of the leaders on this trip, that's part of my role- to make sure things are arranged and organized and prepared for what's about to come.  

I wonder at my heart, though.  While it's great that our team is prepared for data plan coverage no matter our wireless carrier, is my heart being prepared?  Am I each day praying, and nurturing, and laying the ground work in my own heart for the places of darkness and despair and hope against all odds that I'm about to expose it to?  It's so easy for me to focus on the details, even to hide behind the work involved in coordinating this trip. 

And yet, at the same time, each day I'm reminded again and again that this issue is real - through our pre-trip reading assignment Girls Like Usor a newsletter from a friend in India who knows a 15 year old sold by her family to cover her uncle's debts, or even to my very own street where a pregnant young woman leans in and out of various cars and comes in out of apartment complexes with different men.  

As this trip draws closer, I would love your prayers for the details that still need to be arranged like our lodging in Greece, the remaining $400 in support I still need to come in, and for our team to be unified, but more than anything I would love for you to pray that my heart would be soft.  I fear that I will hide it or harden it in defense of what we may hear or in fear of what we may see.  Please pray that I would view those we minister to with the eyes of Christ.  And that my heart would be broken for the things that break the heart of God.  

I remain incredibly grateful to have you by my side in this endeavor.

Here are the options if you would like to give financially –

1.     Click this link  https://donations.mtw.org/donate/AddDesignation.aspx?No=EV5359 to donate online to EV5359 Bulgaria & Greece

2.     Send a check to the following address with EV5359 in the memo line

Mission to the World

1600 North Brown Rd

Lawrenceville, GA 30043

Learn Something New: A Cause to be Passionate About

I've mentioned before that in my 30s I started a plan to Learn Something New each year.  Year 1 was knitting, year 2 was gardening, and year 3 was, well, I wasn't sure what it was going to be because all of the things I really wanted to do (take a creative writing class, learn to play an instrument) cost money which isn't something I had a lot of to spare, what with also being in year 3 of crazy, random, drive-to-Charlotte-to-get-a-diagnosis (expensive) medical problems.  I found myself increasingly interested/horrified by what I was learning about the trafficking industry.   

What started out as watching a movie on trafficking at work and participating in a 5k, turned into going through training to volunteer with anti-trafficking ministries and showing that film I first saw to others in my community.  More recently, it's turned into outreach on the streets on Atlanta and now this opportunity to increase the vision for mercy in this issue in women across the southeast by seeing what God is doing in the world.  Read more below to see how "learning" about something new isn't always enough.  Some things require action.


Did you know that Atlanta is one of the top 15 cities in the US for most individuals trafficked in the US? Or that the average girl is trafficked at age 12-14?  The statistics may be horrifying but putting names and faces to this reality is even more devastating. In the past year I’ve been privileged to work alongside a local ministry to those who have been trafficked sexually. And while the situation is bad here in Atlanta, this is a global problem, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a single country not involved in either the supply or demand side of this equation. Mission to the World (MTW), the organization that I work for, has become increasingly involved in human trafficking ministry around the globe.    

It’s everywhere. And once your eyes have been opened to what’s going on, it’s hard to turn your back on the seemingly hopeless situations unfolding before us.

It is shocking to realize how prevalent this issue is in our very own communities.  Even though I’ve been involved in what’s going on in Atlanta for over a year, I was still surprised to learn that one exit up from my home is a hotel chain frequented by prostitutes and their customers.

Due to the widespread nature of this issue there is much we can learn from others fighting this battle. To that end, I have been invited to co-lead a mission trip through MTW to Bulgaria and Greece from September 27 – October 5.

In Bulgaria, where many women are procured for trafficking, we’ll be walking alongside full time missionaries and their ministry to give trafficked women a place to recover and a hope for their future. In Greece, we’ll help with street outreach and with ministries that train women to have sustainable skills once they are freed from prostitution.  There, brothels are not only legal but actually an integral part of cultural history.  While the ancient temples may be relics, the brisk trade for purchased sex remains woven into the fabric of modern Greek culture.

Our goal is to learn from others, increase our global understanding of this issue, and work together to figure out how we can mobilize our communities at home to fight this evil on both a local and global level.

Ideally, I'd love to invite you to join me on this trip. Imagine if you could personally come and we could learn together what it means to love some of the most-used and least-loved among us. (This trip is now full, but let me know if you'd be interested in a future trip).

However, if physically coming on the trip isn’t possible, would you be willing to join me in spirit through prayer?  This is daunting and scary and big, but God is in it! And your prayers are so very important.

Finally, another way important way to participate is by giving financially towards the cost of transportation and lodging. I’ve been asked to raise $2500 by September 14 to participate in this trip (only $600 remaining!), and having your partnership in this endeavor would be an enormous blessing.  Knowing you are united with me on this mission to those who are immersed in such darkness will bring hope and courage to a seemingly overwhelming situation.

Thank you for prayerfully considering how you can be involved!  

Here are the options if you would like to give financially –

1.     Click this link  https://donations.mtw.org/donate/AddDesignation.aspx?No=EV5359 to donate online to EV5359 Bulgaria & Greece

2.     Send a check to the following address with EV5359 in the memo line

Mission to the World

1600 North Brown Rd

Lawrenceville, GA 30043

How I became an accidental vegetarian

For Lent this year I tried something called The Plan (super original title, huh?).  You can check it out here on Amazon.  While I didn't find it too practical for the long-term, I did learn some pretty neat things from it.  One of those things was how to incorporate more vegetarian protein into my diet.  

I've been hypoglycemic since high school (I used to pass out all over the place - not fun) and so meat was an easy way to make sure that I was getting enough protein.  I used to eat meat easily twice a day and would usually have other animal based protein (cheese, milk, eggs) at meals when I wasn't eating meat.  However, following the menu on the plan, I learned lots about nuts and seeds in particular that could easily take the place of some of these animal products.  Throwing a handful of pumpkin seeds on a salad was a lot easier than grilling up a chicken breast and seemed to be just as helpful at keeping my protein levels up.

Even after I'd fallen off of The Plan (which really is very interesting and I would like to experiment with again at some point, it's also just very time intensive with the shopping and the making everything from scratch), I hung onto a lot of the foods that had been introduced.  Making salads with chickpeas, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds was faster (and cheaper!) than using meat or eggs or so that was an easy habit to pick up.  I bought a lot less meat and even the meat I did have was biding its time in the freezer.

One day in June I was out to eat and as I was ordering my meat-laden dinner I realized that it had been awhile since I'd last had meet.  "Awhile" as in 5 days ago.  I hadn't even noticed!  It wasn't any intentional decision, apparently I just don't ever cook meat at home anymore and I guess I hadn't eaten out for those five days.  

What was more shocking than anything was how EASY it was.  So easy that I didn't even notice it!  I tucked that info away and went on with life.  I noticed the next time I was eating meat was when I was out to eat again.  As I thought more about it, I decided that I'd become an "at home vegetarian."  I don't know it that's an official thing, but it's what I've decided works for me (see: cheap and easy).  

It's not a decision I made out of any particularly strong ethical stance (although the type of meat and meat products I'd prefer to eat as I learn more about how animals are treated is increasingly expensive), but I'm excited to see how life looks with a more plant-based diet.  You may not notice my at-home vegetarianism because when eating out all bets are off.  I like meat and enjoy eating it, but am just realizing I don't need as much of it as I thought I did.  This doesn't mean I won't totally enjoy my Chick-fil-a or order the filet mignon when out to eat (that may or may not have totally happened earlier this week).  

Next up, I'm actually flirting with the idea of being an at home vegan.  Through the same Plan, I learned more about how my body reacts to dairy and have eliminated most cow-based dairy from my home (Hey, tub of ice cream!  How'd you get in the freezer!?!).  I use rice milk now.  My cheese (when I have it) is goat cheddar (who knew they have all the kinds of cheese in goat?  It's not just that strong tasting soft stuff!).  I still have a container of (free range, no antibiotics, organic) brown eggs in my fridge, but what used to be dinner 3-4 times a week, is now dinner more like once every 2-3 weeks.  

Like with the meat, when I'm eating out or at a party I'm not worrying about it.  In fact, I may be found hunkered down by the palmetto cheese spread getting a dairy fix.  For me, it's not about getting rid of it completely, but about seeing if I can make do with less and what that looks like for my body and my life.  

Have you tried any dietary changes lately? Got any recommendations for yummy vegetarian dishes? 

P.S. I'm obviously not a very good vegetarian because spell check had to tell me how to spell it correctly.