Girls for sale...at McDonalds

I recently returned from 11 days in Thailand where I had the privilege to get to know some awesome people & join them in bringing light to a dark place. I wrote while I was there about our prayer walks & how they impacted me. The night after I wrote that, we got to go on outreach into the red light district. For the safety of those living & working in Bangkok, I can't tell you who I was with or even what part of the city I was in (secret spy stuff! lol). But I can tell you what I saw & what I learned.
After some awesome prayer & worship on a balcony overlooking the city, we broke into two teams and headed out into the dark, damp streets of Thailand's capitol. My group ended up sitting in a coffee shop. We didn't speak to anyone but Jesus, each other & our waitress. Why a coffee shop, you ask? You probably have some image in your mind when I say "red light district"; something like a slimy street with bright lights and women for sale. But in Bangkok we found girls for sale at a coffee shop...and at McDonald's. I don't know what your favorite coffee shop or local McDonald's is like but I'm betting there aren't girls openly for sale in them. In certain parts of Bangkok, after dark, girls are for sale everywhere. So we went to a coffee shop to pray for those girls waiting in that coffee shop for customers. We prayed for their customers too. We also went with a lady that will be returning to that area to eventually become a familiar face and hopefully a ray of hope to those girls.
I learned that night and that week in Bangkok that ending human trafficking is not always dramatic or instant. Rescue is not always police kicking down doors in a raid (which, done the right way, can be a good thing but that is a story for another day). Often rescue is a process and a journey. Sometimes love whispers quietly under the noise, "someone cares, you are not forgotten, you are worth rescuing, you are worthy of unconditional love." Just like Jesus stopped for that one woman at the well (John 4), love in Bangkok's red light district looks like stopping to pray for the women for sale in that coffee shop, or at McDonald's, or on the street corner.

...and just like that I'm back!

I am so happy to be typing on a real keyboard again! Smart Phones are great for short updates while traveling but not so much for typing long stories! I am back on American soil (hence the real keyboard) & trying to process those crazy, amazing, beautiful, hard, heart-breaking 11 days. I loved every minute of it. Well minus the minutes on the airplanes, the minute the rat ran over my foot & the minute I said goodbye, I loved every minute of it. My heart was so happy to be back in in Thailand; in some ways, it felt like coming home. So many things were familiar, like the language, the food, the smiles, the smells, the sounds, the humidity & rain. I even started to fall in love with the big-city-ness of Bangkok. The hardest part has been coming home. I cried when I said good bye to friends & realized I was also saying good bye to this place that felt like home with no idea when I'd be back again. Now I'm trying to get used to going back to work, being cold & eating things like meatloaf. These are all superficial things but they are all reminders of deeper things going on in my heart that I still don't understand. The trip seemed too short; just as I was falling in love all over again & settling in, it was time to jump on another murderous 20+ hour series of flights & it was all over. I guess I just got shocked at how soon the end showed up. But it hurt too.
  All of that to say, I will be posting more stories and pictures from the trip. I just need some more time to process it all first. So stay tuned!

a note from Bangkok

It's my third full day in Bangkok & we were trying to grab a quiet moment at one of the many malls. I say trying because as soon as I began writing, someone took up drumming practice in the mall's central plaza. Welcome to Thailand.
Anyway, we received our ministry orientation this morning & are set to begin two-three days of prayer ministry tomorrow. We prepared for an outreach to a red light district last night after church but as soon as our prayers ended the skies opened up in a rainy season monsoon. Welcome to Thailand.
We're also eating well and sleeping far less well (3 a.m. & I are getting pretty close). I'm really loving being back in Thailand even though Bangkok is a far cry from sweet little Chiang Mai. The city is much bigger, one of the world's largest, so there are more people. With more people there is more traffic, more dirt, more food & more rats. Yes rats. In Chiang Mai it was several months before I encountered one; I saw one on my first day here as he scampered over my foot. Welcome to Thailand.
On a more spiritual note, so far the thing that has hit me the most is our prayer walks. We've done two so far on the soi (street) we'll be doing some of our outreaches on this week. Saturday night we went for our first prayer walk. Its not as easy as it sounds, especially here. As you walk along the narrow side walks, trying not to trip on the uneven pavement, chocking on bus fumes & cigarette smoke, and trying not to get hit by a motorbike as you cross the narrow alleys, you are expected to pray & connect with God's heart. But I did manage to send up a few feeble requests. And I noticed that I've learned a lot about human trafficking/prostitution since the last time I found myself in a red light district.  Now  I know that those smiles, the fancy clothes & make-up, and the seemingly carefree joking are all hiding more pain than I will ever understand. And more than ever I'm reminded that the only thing I have to offer them, or anyone, is the living water God promised in the form of His son. Just like the Jewish man from Nazareth offered the Samaritan women at the well eternal, living water, I have the honor of offering it to this noisy, busy, dirty, delicious,  beautiful city. Welcome to Thailand.

about trust

Warning: it's about to get real in here. Some prose written on a rough morning this week:

There is work to do but I don't want to do it today. People need me to be helpful & joyful, they need my smile but I don't have it today.
The familiar rock-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach feeling, the tears falling, the lost loneliness, and the "what-ifs" are all back to haunt me. He is back to steal my peace, my restful sleep, and my smile, that ugly, grasping demon of fear.
Perfect love is supposed to cast out fear. But where is perfect love in the anger, the rudeness, the loneliness, the death, the pain, the unknown? Perfect love feels far away.
Perfect love feels far away and yet He's right there to whisper again:
"Trust Me."
How do I trust you?
We're back to that question; the one I asked when the car sent the bike to the curb & me with it.
The one I asked when pride sent an engagement to the curb & my heart with it. The one I asked when they told me I didn't have a seat on the plane. The one I asked when a little girl died from a preventable disease. It's the question we ask when babies don't live to breathe air and bullets sent young men into the arms of Jesus too soon. How do I trust one I can't see when all I can see says He isn't trustworthy?
Perfect Love whispers: "faith, not sight"
Then where do I get faith if I can't see it?
Hearing the words of the one that wants my trust. He says He is trustworthy, He says He is good, He says He is Faithful. He says He loves me. He says He will be with me to the end of the age. I don't know how long that is, but it sounds long.
I've been meditating on what this means: "He has brought me to His banquet hall, and His banner over me is love." (Song of Songs 2:4) I dont' think it means a cozy, fairy tale princess perfect dinning room. But it means He is there.
And He changes everything.
He Comforts, He heals, He restores, He makes all things new, He sets free, and He loves me.
So that's how I trust Him. I stay in the banquet hall where His banner over me is love. I listen to His whisper & rest in His arms. I hope for restoration, for freedom, & for peace. He hopes with me and does things I can't even see. So I just stay put with my heart & my everything in those perfect, nail scarred hands.

...plenty of hope :: part 2

  My first post called "There is hope...plenty of hope" started out as sharing a video that encouraged me greatly. But I kept thinking about "Maria" & I put myself in her shoes as I often do when I hear stories. And from that place I realized what a beautiful picture her rescue is of my own rescue from the Kingdom of Darkness.
  You see I was, we all were, born as victims of sin. And there we would have stayed for eternity but instead our magnificent rescuer came all the way into that skanky, dark, back ally brothel of sin, selfishness & pride to say "NO, not on my watch! She's mine! He's mine! I want them all!" And He brought us out into light, into freedom & into a place of restoration.

"He sent from on high, 

He took me; 

He drew me out of many waters. 

He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity but the LORD was my stay. 

He brought me forth also into a broad place; 

He rescued me because He delighted in me."

Psalm 18:16-19

There is hope...plenty of hope

In my post earlier this week I mentioned a lady named Laura Parker & the organization she helped found with her husband called Exodus Road. Yesterday she tweeted this video footage of a rescue mission by their Bravo Team in India. http://vimeo.com/72370568
The video brought tears to my eyes and made hope swell in my heart. Human trafficking is not just rapidly growing, ugly statistics. Human trafficking is ending. People are standing up to say "NO, Not on my watch! I won't turn a blind eye to this evil, I will fight it!" And those people aren't just white people from first world countries. Nationals are standing up to fight for freedom in India, in Cambodia, and in Thailand (to name a few). And victims are not only being rescued & restored for more to come in and take their place. Traffickers are being arrested & prosecuted. A message is being sent that it is unacceptable to treat God's beautiful creation this way. There is hope...plenty of hope.
But don't just watch the video & cheer! Ask God how you can be a part of more rescues like this one! If you need ideas, check out my post from Sunday.
Love & Blessings!

End It

I started learning about human trafficking in 2008 as I was preparing for my internship in Thailand. Since then, my eyes have been opened more & more to the size of this issue & the urgency of it. Some days I just want to jump on a plane and go bust into a brothel Laim Neeson/"Taken" style or SOMETHING! (No really, I actually thought about that one day during my run).
Then the Holy Spirit & common sense show up to remind me that doing something like THAT probably wouldn't be productive for anyone but there are things I can do right now. So for anyone else out there that is learning about this issue & getting mad about it like me, here are some ideas:

1) Pray: Why do we leave this as a last resort? Our prayers as children of the God of the Universe are powerful! "If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it." -Jesus in John 14:14
Pray for trafficking to end. Pray for courageous & just authorities around the world to have their eyes opened to what is happening in the back allies. Pray for hope, healing & rescue for the millions of men, women & children enslaved.

2) Give: Unlike Laim Neeson's character in Taken, those out on the field doing these rescues don't have unlimited financial resources. Maybe ask God if you can find a couple extra dollars to give to an organization fighting trafficking on the ground like the Hard Places Community or The Exodus Road.

3) Learn: Since I'm dreaming of someday being on the field in person doing something about this (don't worry mom, I have no plans to join a swat team or anything), I am doing a lot of reading.  Once you start digging, you find there are a lot of organizations working to end this atrocity. That is encouraging and it means we don't have to reinvent the proverbial wheel. We get to learn from people that have gone before us about what works and doesn't work.  The International Justice Mission is a great starting place to learn more about trafficking & some very practical work being done to end it. Another great resource is the Nefarious Documentary just know it is a very real picture of what is happening so it is painful to watch at times if you are like me. Individuals like Laura Parker are also great resources; she began The Exodus Road with her husband & blogs about their rescue missions. Following any of these organizations & resources on Twitter is a great way to find more of them. I love using technology to change the world!

4) Tell all your friends: I think a lot of people know that this is going on, but not a lot of people know there are literally millions of slaves in our world or that there is anything they can do about it.  If you follow me on twitter (@heathergrace717) I may have already blown up your twitter feed with my re-tweets about abolition, justice & such. I want everyone to know that this is happening and that anyone can help end it!

The 100th Note from the Sojourn

I've been writing "Notes from the Sojourn" since 2008; 100 posts in five years is nothing amazing but I think this blog is accomplishing what I set out to do in 2008. Even though physically, I am in the same geographic place I was then, so much has changed in these five years. I started this blog as a way to tell stories from my travels & adventures in far away places. As I told those stories & shared my heart, I processed them & learned from them. Through one of the hardest seasons of my life, I learned that it's not only in far off places that adventures happen & experiences change us. So I kept blogging, even though the people I started writing this blog for were living across the hall & across town and probably knew way more about my "adventures" then they wanted to know.

  I love looking back and seeing how I've grown & changed in five years. God has so beautifully woven people, experiences, places, pain, beauty, hope & love together to make me more like His Son in five years. If you asked five-years-ago-me where she thought she would be on July 14, 2013, her answer would be quite opposite from the reality I am living. Yet, these last five years have been full of more than I could have asked, hoped or imagined in 2008.

  And that makes me excited for the next five years, and ten years and twenty years and fifty years! I have no idea where I will be or what life will look like but I'm confident that the years will hold more than I can "ask or think according to the power that works within {me}" [Eph. 3:20]. God is so good and so faithful to His kids.

  Thank you to my thirteen followers and everyone else that stops in now and then to catch up on my life. Many blessings!

 

laughing at the days to come :: photo credit to B.Hammar Photography

(being besties with a photographer has it's perks! lol)

summer is here & so am I

  I haven't posted a blog in nearly three months. Life just took off after Traffick Jam 2013 and it hasn't done much slowing down since. Summer is fully here now which gives me a little more free time, but I seem to be good a quickly filling that time up agian. Here are a few updates:

•   Our Traffick Jam event was very sucessful; we raised over $4,000 for the Hard Places Community working to end child sex trafficking in Cambodia! There will be a few changes but I'm planning to be involved again next year to hopefully raise even more funds to rescue even more children from the horrors of human trafficking.
• I joined the twitter world of tweeting! @heathergrace717
• I fell in love with dates! (The kind that grow on trees, not the kind you go on to eat food) I'll be posting a recipie for date bars soon!
• My love of running has an outlet again & this year I'm running 5K three to four days a week. I'm looking at the possability of running a half-marathon in the fall too.
• And currently the most exciting update: I have travel plans for this fall! I've been invited to join a team traveling to Bangkok to bring some hope & love to the red-light districts and potentially other parts of the city too. Since my trip to Mozambique last summer, God has been reminding me how much of my heart I left in Thailand so I'm excited to go back & see what He has for me there. I am looking forward to catching up with some friends during my 10 days there as well. I'll be posting more details as I get them so stay tuned!

The Big Day!!

Tomorrow is The Big Day! I have been planning a 10 mile walk-a-thon to raise funds for The Hard Places Community in Cambodia. The walk is called Traffick Jam and it's happening tomorrow!

Planning and organizing this has pushed me so far outside my comfort zone which is good but I couldn't have done it for a cause I was less passionate about. I've also learned heeps about God's heart for mercy and justice as well as His faithfulness. Tonight, I'm putting all worries aside and hoping for a beautiful day tomorrow! 

The Whopper

Yes, The Whopper. And I'm not talking about the candy. This is a little lesson I'm learning in humility and balance.
  In preface let me say I've been on journey of learning to eat healthy and studying the organic, gluten-free, non-gmo, vegetarian and vegan ways of eating. I grew up with a mom that educated her kids on healthy eating and did what she could on our budget to feed us organic and healthy foods. {Insert blessings on Her here! Prov.31:28} It used to drive me crazy until I studied a little on my own and began to understand what God intended us to eat when He created our bodies. But lately, the more I learn the more I feel like I can't eat anything until I move to a farm and grow my own everything...which is pretty much impossible I might point out. How does one live in a world of genetically modified, processed, corn-starch-loaded, and preservative-filled foods AND take care of the gift of health God has given them? I'm still wrestling with that one but that is only part of this lesson.
  To continue The Whopper story: I've been doing my best to eat in a way that stewards the precious gift of health He has given me. So yes, that means I don't remember when the last time was that I had a Whopper, or any burger for that matter.
Then Thursday happened. I was sitting at my desk working away with my salad in the fridge waiting for me, when my co-worker arrived, Burger King bag in hand. This is where pride comes in. I had some very ungenerous thoughts comparing the bag's contents with my salad.
  Then came the fall that inevitably follows pride. My sweet co-worker walked up to my desk and said: "I had a buy one get one free coupon for a Whopper so I brought you one! I hope you don't mind onions." I politely thanked her and let that bag sit on my desk for about 15 minutes while I tried to decide what to do. I thought about making an excuse to go out to my car and putting it in the garbage. I also thought about taking it home and throwing it away. Then I thought, it was really sweet of her to think of me, She doesn't know my eating habits, and she was trying to be a blessing. So the wrestling match ended and I ate all 670 calories of that bleached white bun, genetically modified meat and slimy, nutrition-depleted lettuce, all covered in mayo. {That is still really hard to admit.}
  After I ate it, I felt horrible both physically and emotionally. "I am a failure and a hypocrite! I just ate the epitome of everything wrong with American food!" This was my pride talking. But I still didn't see it until I went to God to repent for eating that stuff. It was like He smiled at me and said "the only one holding this over your head is you, beloved." Then it hit me. This is what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 7 when He said:
"For in the way you judge, you will be judged..."
I was holding the world around me to an impossible standard, thinking that I had it all figured out & I was the only one eating "right". But when I held myself to the same impossible standard, of course I didn't measure up! So I repented of my pride instead of The Whopper.
  I still don't know what the right thing to do was in that situation. I still regret eating it because of the stomach and headache I had the rest of the afternoon. But God used that Whopper to convict my heart and bring me to a place of humility where He can work with me. Psalm 25:9 says "...{God} teaches the humble His way." I guess that is my answer; remain humble and let Him teach me what to eat and what not to eat.

Dreaming Big

"We are too young to realize that certain things are impossible... So we will do them anyway.” 

-William Wilberforce

I think this is part of what Jesus meant when He was holding children up as an example in Matthew 19:14. He said the "Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these (children)." Children are dreamers with endless imaginations. We are children with an endless heavenly Father. He told us nothing was impossible with Him, so why do we constantly have to make things "realistic" or "practical"? 

Two words: 

fear. 

&

disappointment. 

Two ugly little words that will keep us from changing the world if we let them. 

We've probably all been afraid of being disappointed at some point. And we've all been disappointed. 

But God said NOTHING was impossible for us or Him. 

"He replied, "Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'move from here to there,' and it will move; and NOTHING will be impossible to you." -Matthew 17:20

"With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God." -Mark 10:27

What if you couldn't fail?
What if nothing could stop you? 

What would you do? 

This spring I'm organizing a fundraiser for an organization working to end child sex trafficking in South East Asia. The fundraiser is called Traffick Jam and their tag line is this:

In one day, we can help bring child sex trafficking to a grinding halt.

Sounds audacious doesn't it? One day? A grinding halt? To the second fastest growing crime in the world?

Why not?

I'm learning to have faith like a child; to be to young to realize that certain things are impossible and do them anyway. People thought William Wilberforce was crazy for trying to end the trans-atlantic slave trade in England. They thought Abraham Lincoln was nuts for trying to do the same in America. And yet, it was done!

My prayer and passion is that the body of Christ would come together and partner with God's heart. That the bride of Christ would stand up and say this stops NOW!

So if your not busy on April 6, 2013, come walk 10 miles with us to end this crime against precious little ones that Jesus longs to draw to Himself. If you are busy that day, sponsor a walk-er for $10 or buy a t-shirt for $15!

I love words. Here are a few written by John Mark McMillan that inspired me this week.  

Do Everything Better - January 14, 2013

  I haven't written in a bit because life has been full. Today I had an hour free to...spend. I hate to kill or waste time when life is full so I decided to spend it in the most relaxing way I could think of after an extra full weekend with some precious young people. The most relaxing and accessable thing I could think of was a stop in at my favorite book store for a latte and some browsing. I think few people go to bookstores to actually buy books these days...at least I don't. But I love browsing book stores; reading a chapter here, a page or two there. Bookstores are a never ending realm of possibilities to me. Books are full of things waiting to be discovered.
  Today I read about the deeper meaning of choosing clothes (I actually get that a little bit but who really spends $XXX.XX on Jeans because they express your personality the best!), what to do on my next visit to Prague and Budapest (I wish!), and a chapter about trying to do everything (how timely God).
  I found that timely chapter while wandering through the Christian book section. I noticed the book because it had a picture of chocolate on the front and was titled "bittersweet". Written by Shauna Niequist, the book is a collection of thoughts and reflections on life's lessons. I only read one chapter but it "happened" to be the right one. God is good like that.
  Shauna (I feel like we're on a first name basis already) shared about her tendency to continually add to her checklist of things to do. Finally one day she wrote on her checklist: {Do Everything Better}. That and a conversation with her husband made her realize that she needed to change something. She was running herself ragged trying to be supermom, superwife, superchristian and an all around superwoman. She dreamed about a life where she wasn't tired all the time. One day Shauna received some advice from a wise woman that lead her to realize that doing the things she loved (and doing them well) meant NOT doing a host of other things. The result of these revelations was another list. Two actually. On one list she wrote the things she did do - things like loving God, caring for her marriage and family, entertaining friends, and (good for me) writing. The other list was things she did NOT do; things like gardening, baking, and making her own baby food.
  I immediately thought of my own very full and sometimes exhausting life. I have a very hard time saying no when there is a need to be filled. I guess I find myself trying to be Jesus. (Problem...um...yes). I honestly feel a little scared. What if I say no to something that I should do? But the opposite is true: what if I say yes to something I shouldn't do? When faced with a need, my first question should be to God. Do you want me to say yes? I'm also want to ask myself: is this something I love, something that makes me come alive? Obviously there are times to do things because they need to be done but if God tells me to say no, I can be confident that He has a plan to fill that need. We serve a God that does all things well; He can be trusted to fill every need. I learned that so practically last summer in Mozambique where I watched God meet need after need. This weekend, I got exhausted doing something I love, something that makes me come alive. I think it's time to look for things that I don't do so I can have more weekends like this one.