My Heart for Trafficking

So I have been back in Canada now for almost 4 months, I can't beleive how fast time has gone by. I just thought I would give a bit of an update on my life now and what God has been teaching me since I have been home. There have been a lot of big adjustments coming back and stepping out of the environment of YWAM and although it has been hard at times, I think I have adjusted well. Although I still don't know exactly what the next step is for my life, God has really been speaking into my heart on many issues. One issue in particular is that of human trafficking.

I think that this is something that God has been preparing my heart for, for many years now. For me, when I saw a young girl walking the streets of my hometown, I was heartbroken that they had to live that life. I remember when Iwas young and driving with my mom and we saw girls downtown at night and my mom told me that she was a prostitute. I didn't want to beleive her at the time because I thought that she looked like a normal girl and why would a normal girl be a prostitute! Now I have come to realize that most girls that work the streets are "normal" girls and many are there against their will. Before I went to YWAM in Australia I didn't realize how true that really was and how immense this issue of injustice really was...

My school leaders were incredibly passionate about the issue of human trafficking and gave us a lot of information and brought in a lot of guest speakers to share how different organizations are approaching this problem. Iam extremly grateful that my leaders decided to share these things with me and my classmates at DTS because I feel like God used that to speak a lot fo passion into my life. Coming back to Canada I felt like I couldn't just ignore everything that I had learned! Women and children are suffering all over the world and are being abused by traffickers.

For those who don't know what human trafficking is, it is modern day slavery and it is more profitable than ever! There are actually more slaves in the world right now than there has ever been before in human history! This was very hard for me to comprehend as I have never seen a slave before... at least not that I knew of. Modern day slavery is hidden, it has a new face. The sale of people is actually the third largest money making business in the criminal world only behind the drugs and arms trades. But human trafficking is growing rapildy and it won't be long before it takes the number one spot. 88% of victims of human trafficking are women. Some common forms of human trafficking include sweatshops, forced labour, debt bondage and sex trafficking. The last of these is the one that I have become really passionate about, especially when it concerns children. There are over 2 million children forced into the sex trade each year. These children are forced to have sex with mutliple adults everyday. These children are often sold into the brothels by their families. Traffickers offer to take the daughters to the city and get them a job in a restaurant or as a nanny or maid so the families willingly sell their daughters. Sometimes families will sell their daughters knowing full well that they are going to a brothel. It is unacceptable that this is happening all over the world!

So this is what I was faced with coming back to Canada. What can I do to make a difference in this massive worldwide promlem? Well God has showed me that you can start with little steps. I decided to get involved with an organization called Destiny Rescue that I worked with overseas when I did my outreach in Mozambique. Their goal it to rescue girls out of prostitution by going undercover into brothels. They also do prevention programs and run for homes for rescued girls as well as for at risk children. Check out their webiste: http://www.destinyrescue.aus/ Since being back in Canada I have become a bit a spokesperson for this cause and have presented to various groups and individuals. I have also met a lot of other people who are passionate about this cause as well and we have just started meeting together to make plans for holding awareness events.

For me, this is what I think it means to be a Christian. To ask God to break your heart for what breaks his and then be his hands. Faith is all about action, you can't have one without the other. I will leave you with 2 verses and a short video clip of Destiny Rescue and their 26 second challenge that I have been speaking on.

James 1:27 "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

James 2:14-17 "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? 15Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."

Evangelism and Inductive Bible Study

Life has been getting pretty busy here, hence the blog with two weeks combined. Right now I have less than a week before I am going to be in Africa, which is crazy because the time has just flown by! We fly out of Brisbane on Saturday and it will probably take a good 24 hours to get there. We will be in Johanassberg for about 10 days or so and then we will bus it up to Mozambique to work with Destiny Rescue. That is where we will be for Christmas. We work there for 3 weeks and then we will probably head back down to South Africa and work in an orphanage for another 3 weeks. So that is our tentative plan for outreach... but who knows what will happen. There might not be much internet so the staff will be updating a team blog as often as possible. I will add the link to my blog for you to check out.


Evangelism week was good but super busy. During the week we went out and did evangelism in Maloolooba. I can't really go into detail about in on the blog due to privacy issues, but feel free to ask me about it in person if you are interested in learning more about what we did. During the mornings we had lectures on evangelism as well. The speaker was great and I learned a lot about why it is important to do evangelism. Basically it should be one of our main goals. If you know the best news in the whole world, isn't it wrong to keep it to yourself? Yes. If you truly love someone, you would tell them about Jesus. This doesn't mean you should go and shove the gospel down people's throats but rather that you tell them in love. This is definately something that I want to get better at and hopefully outreach will be a good opportunity to practice.

This last week was on inductive bible study which was actually a lot better than it sounds. The speaker was awesome and shared a lot of great stories. We studied to book of Philippians during the week. It is really hard to explain here in a blog, but I definately learned a lot about why it is so important to read your bible. There is a misconception out there that the bible is boring which is sooo not true. The bible is packed full of crazy amazing stories! And it makes so much sense when you read things in context. You have to read the bible as a whole and not just pick and choose verses out of context because that can lead to false teaching. I know this is just a quick summary of two weeks of stuff, but I am too exhausted to go into more detail right now... too much outreach on the brain :)

Prayer Requests:
Could you please pray for our outreach team, for safety and unity
Pray that God will use us to reach people and that we will make ourselves available
Pray for health for the team and that we won't get sick
And just that we have an amazing outreach and will see God move!

Prayer Week

To be honest, I don't even know where to start when I think about prayer week. Basically we didn't have lectures much, instead we were given a 2 hour prayer slot each day with small group where you would pray at the church for the alloted time. It ran all night and you could go to any additional prayer slots that you wanted. So it was pretty crazy! Many people pulled all nighters, I didn't stay up all night but I definately spent a lot of time praying. We had a prayer room as I mentioned before where you could meet and there was paper and felts and pencil crayons, and lots of boards put up on the walls to write on. It was an amazing week. I don't know if I have ever specifically set aside a 2 hour block to just pray before and I didn't really know what to expect. The first night we ended up praying a lot for the western world and the state of the church. I was absolutely amazed at how fast the two hours went by. It was a great experience and I couldn't wait to keep going. The second night we prayed for healing for various issues within our group. While we were praying I had this thought that we should go outside and just pray in the rain. I didn't say anything at first but then later after a girl said something about healing rain, I was like I think we have to do this. I knew that it was storming out because I could hear the thunder, but when we went outside... there was no rain. So I was like okay maybe this wasn't a good idea after all, but we stayed outside anyways and just prayed and sang worship songs. The lightening was absolutely amazing, the best I have ever seen in my life! Just as one girl was saying how epic the sky was we all looked at the exact same spot at the same time and God really put on a show for us. It was crazy cool lightening all across the sky... It was unbelievable! So we kept singing various worship songs outside and by then end there was definately rain and we were drenched! It was just a really cool night, there is something special about worshiping outside in creation. The power of the storm just reminded how powerful and mighty God really is!

The rest of the week was really good as well, but much harder. The last three days ended up being much more personal and I feel like I learned a lot about myself and God. I know that I want to know God so much more and move to that deeper level, but I was unsure of how to do that. So that is pretty much what I have been praying about this last while. I have had to do some really hard things, including giving some stuff away that I really fought against. I have definately learned that God will answer your prayers. If you ask God to push you to go deeper, He will do that and it won't necessarily be easy. In fact, it can be one of the hardest things you will ever have to do. I am definately starting to feel better though... I am glad that God is stretching me and moving me out of my comfort zone. Another good thing that has come out of this is that I feel like I hearing God more clearly now which is awesome! Right now I am doing our evangelism week and this is continuing, but I won't go into that very much until the week is over.

Outreach update: So it looks like Madagasscar is off the table as far as outreach in concerned. It is just too expensive to get there. We already had to pay $2500 for flights and it would be at least an additional $800 per person. So we will probably just stay in Mozambique and South Africa. I am not really that disappointed because I know that we will end up where God wants us and that may not be Madagasscar. Well that is all that I can really think of for now, I will try not to make the next blog so late! (Sorry mom...)

Relationships and Fraser Island

I have to say that this last week has been pretty eventful, especially due to your trip to Fraser Island for the weekend. But I will get to that shortly... first a quick blurb on relationships week. A couple taught the week and they were super cool! They covered a lot of stuff including communication, dating, family relationships, personality and conflict resolution. I actually learned a lot about myself this week which was good. I recognized areas of my life where I need to trust God more and so I have done a lot of praying. The couple who lead the lectures actually shared how they met and it was an absolutely amazing story! It is way too long to try and retell so sorry if you are curious... :) That is pretty much all I have to say about that...

So on Friday, Destiny Rescue came in and did a presentation. For those who don't know this is an organization that focuses on rescuing girls that are in the sex slave trade. They then put the girls in homes and give them education as well as vocational training. These girls that they rescue are all children from about age 4-17. Again I will say that these girls were forced into sex trafficing! This is something that we have learned a lot about... and I will be doing a blog on this topic later going into more detail about what I have learned and what it means for me. If anyone is interested just google human trafficing and I am sure you will find a lot of information as this is a massive issue today. In case you didn't know... there have never been more slaves in the world than there are now! Anyways, I don't want to go into too much depth now, but I will say that this issue is heavy on my heart. So needless to say, I loved the presentation! It was very informative and sad, but so encouraging at the same time. The orgainzation has only been around 8 years or so and it was started by the brother of the presenter. It is amazing what one man can do with God. Now Destiny Rescue has houses in Thailand, Cambodia, Mozambique, India and one other country I beleive. They also do prevention work as well. Anyways we are actually working with Destiny Rescue for a few weeks in Mozambique and I am soooo excited! I don't know what we will all be doing with them, but I know it will be amazing!

So now Fraser Island. Where to begin?? It was beautiful weather and a crazy adventure... no tour bus this time! We had four vehicles that we rented to drive on the island and it was insane. We got stuck before we even got on the ferry that takes you over to the island! So much of the first day was spent pushing vehicles out of the sand... which was very hot I must add. We had two minor accidents... but nothing that bad, just a few scrapes and small dents. Anyways I have to say that it was amazing to finally get to Lake Mackenzie! We were all hot and filthy and it felt amazing to swim in the water. Of course we had to do some more pushing after that... but it wasn't as bad as before. We camped at the Central Station campsite which was an adventure. We set up our tents and then cooked dinner. We had to boil a ton of water because we didn't bring enough and you arn't supposed to drink any of the water on the island. So I was very thirsty when I woke up this morning. (I have to say sleeping on the ground made even the YWAM beds sound comfortable and that is saying something because they suck) We drove through one of the resorts on the island on our way to the ship wreck and we stopped for some water and ice cream. It was much needed! So we checked out the ship wreck and then went to Eli Creek and hung out there until it was time to leave. The drive down the beach was absolutely beautiful! So overall I enjoyed my time on Fraser the second time around but it was much different. This trip was a bit rougher, but full of a lot of laughs and good times.... even though much of it was spent pushing the vehicles. Oh and on the way home to the base on the vans broke down. I don't know what happened...actually I don't even know if the people who stayed with it are even back yet. So... hopefully they got home without too many problems. So basically I think that covers the highlights of the week. Next week is prayer week and I am pretty excited. We each have a two hour prayer slot each day with a small group of people. I think it will be amazing, but I will have to let you know later!

Spiritul Warfare and Jewish Roots

WOW... I don't even know where to start! This week was very intense, but totally amazing. The lectures were awesome! I was pretty excited to learn about spiritual warfare because I haven't had much teaching about that before. The first day we covered the topic of angels and demons. We talked about the differnt kinds of angels: warrior, messenger and worshipping. We learned about the fallen angels and how Satan tries to wage war against us. He tries to bind us in sin and silence us. He makes us feel like we are the only ones struggling with something and then fills us with shame. These are feelings that I have felt before, and this week really encouraged me to believe that it doesn't have to be that way. The good news is that Satan has already been defeated by the cross and through Jesus we have authority over him. On wednesday night we did some worship and then decided to wage some spiritual warfare ourselves. If there were areas in our lives where we were struggling you could go up and share with the group and then we all prayed for them. It was actually a very powerful night. I love that the people here are so open and that there is no judgement so that everyone felt comfortable sharing what was on their heart.

The last two days of lectures this week were on Jewish Roots. Initially I was thinking...okay so are we going to talk about Old Testimant traditions and celebrations or something.... well I was very wrong. The speaker, was so knowledgable in that area and they were some of my favorite lectures. He talked about how we should look at the Jewish people as our older brother. God entered into a covenant with Isreal and that is still being honoured today. Through Jesus and the spread of the gospel, Christians are now fellow -heirs. Romans 11:11 shows that because Isreal didn't beleive in Jesus, it made it possible for the gentiles to receive salvation. Verse 8 states that God blinded them and I believe that He did that so the rest of the nations could receive the gospel, otherwise it would have remained a strictly Jewish thing. The good news is that God will remove that blinding and they will realize the truth about Jesus. Even today, this is happening as it has never happened before, mostly in part due to the severe persecution that the Jews have suffered at the hands of the church.

This is what the second day was mostly about, it was a history lesson on anti-semitism and the church. To be honest I was overwhelmed. I had no idea that it had been so bad over the centuries and it made me feel sick! The holocaust is only one example of how this has happened. I had heard a lot of the stories before, but when they were all told together it really made me understand how the Jewish peoples have suffered. The most intersting thing was how the speaker related this to the decline and restoration of the church. Over the years the chruch lost its Jewish roots, then gifts of the spirit, moves on the spirit and then the authority of the word. This was during the middle ages. Then by about the 16th century we started to gain these thigs back starting with the word being restored. This happened at the same time that Jewish people were flooding back to their homeland (Isreal) for the first time in centuries. Anyways we have gained all those things back now and I think that really says something about where we are in God's plan. There was another verse we were talking about, but I actually can't find it now so sorry, but it says something along the lines that after all nations of the earth hear the gospel, Jesus will return. So anyways if anyone has heard of the 10-40 window of unreached people groups. That is the main area that has left be reached. Anyways we are rapidly approaching that time, whether it be in our lifetime, or our childrens'. Regardless of what you believe about this idea... because i know it freaks a lot of people out... it should motivate you to make sure that you are right with God. For me it makes me see how important it is to serve God during this life and not worry about how much money I can make or if I can buy a car or house or anything like that. So... I hope this wasn't too confusing, but it is so hard to write everything down in a way that makes sense. My point was that this was a good week and I learned a lot about how it is important to remember our Jewish roots. God made a covenant with Isreal and as beleivers we have been adopted into the covenant!

Character and Nature of God

So this week our lectures were on the character and nature of God. It was a good week, but for the most part I felt like I already knew what he was talking about. It was definately good to be reminded just how much God actually loves us though. He is passionately in pursuit in each and every single one of us. God is just, holy, merciful, love, forgiving, compassionate, gracious, powerful, slow to anger... etc. A lot of people have a scewed vision of who God really is but as we went through the bible He declares and shows himself to be all of these great things!

This week also reminded me of the power of prayer. We looked at several scriptures with Moses and King Hezekaiah where God spoke, they pleaded with God and He changed his mind. For example, God said that he was going to destroy the Isrealites after they made the golden calf once they had been delivered from Egypt. Moses pleaded with God and explained why he shouldn't do that. God listened and did not destroy them. It is important to remember that our prayers do make a difference! I have also realized the importance of praying for your nation. I never really considered it that important before, but we should be interceding on the behalf of our nation regularily, especially when there is so much disunity in the church. The church should be the concience of the nation and I don't necessarily think that this is the case most of the time. The church should stand up for those why can't do it themselves and it should stand up for the moral issues, even though it isn't polically correct. So... long story short there, prayer is important :)

As far as outreach in concerned, there still isn't a definitive plan on what we are doing. Please pray for you leaders and the contacts that the are communicating with. I think that they are having a hard time communicating with Destiny Rescue as they haven't heard anything back yet. We did sort out our roles in the group this week. Me and another girl, Annikke, will be in charge of teaching english. I am excited about this, but nervous as I have never done this before. Any resources would be greatly apprecited!

The Fear of the Lord

This week we just finished learning about the Fear of the Lord. It was the fourth week of lectures and I have to say that I can't beleive that it has already been a month! I am amazed at how fast time has gone by.. the next thing I know I will be heading to Africa! But back to lectures. This was a topic that I have heard about beofre but I never really knew how to answer... why should we fear the Lord? We looked at lots and lots of scriptures and I think that I have a better understanding now. The speaker, Glen, drew a picture of a double edged sword with grace on one side and the law on the other side. We talk about grace so often in church that the law side of the sword is often forgotten. That creates lawless grace which is almost like a license to sin...which is not at all what God wants for us! If you swing too far to the law side then you have graceless law which is not good either because no one could actually completely fulfill the law as we all have sinned. So the key is to have balance between these two things. We also talked a lot about fear...obviously! Fear is not cowardise, which is actually a sin. Fear is having respect and honour for God with the realization that is truly is an Awesome (fearsome) God. In Proverbs it says that the Fear of the Lord is the begining of wisdom. To be honest, this week was extremly intense and it was a lot to take in and process, but it was absolutely amazing. The speaker had so much wisdom to share and had a lot of hands on experience in the missions field. There was a lot of talk about spiritual gifts as well and I have really been spending a lot of time asking God about mine. I still don't have an answer, but i know that if I keep seeking, I will find the answer.

As for Africa I still don't know too much more about outreach except that we have booked the plane tickets. We are flying from Brisbane to Sydney and then to Johansberg in South Africa..not sure where we are connecting from in between. Anyways we might spend a week or two there in Jberg before we bus it to Mozambique. We will still need to pay for a flight to and from Madagasscar so we are hoping that isn't too expensive. The staff are still waiting to hear back from differnt people and organizations so nothing is set yet, but it would be great if you could pray for that process.

Just a note on my personal growth... this DTS has been challenging but extremely rewarding. God has taught me a lot about myself and it has forced me to do a lot of soul searching. I have had to push myself and question what exactly I believe in and search out the bible for answers. So basically...it has been good!