Fears, Anxieties, and Audacity.

I and my thin Phoenix-blood have been calling Palmer Lake, near Colorado Springs home for nearly two weeks now, and will yet be calling this town home for three and a half more.

I am here with 39 other missionaries attending a program bent on preparing us for the mission field. A heavy task this is. Instead of boring you with details of what I am learning here, allow me to share my mind.

Fear. I am fearful. I cannot explain the inner turmoil, the paradox of the excitement and joy of leaving overseas soon, a date that is so near, to the disquiet of leaving my family that has been such a necessary unit for the past year and a half. I am fearful in leaving my steadfast and stalwart support system of mentors and friends. Leaving what is common and safe and known for a place where I have no friends, little knowledge and confidence. God help me; I am scared.

Anxiety. I am anxious for the loneliness I believe will come with leaving such dear ones in the US. Who will call me when I am gone? Who can I vent frustrations to when my day is done? Who is going to celebrate the joys with me? Who will read my face and know when I am upset, simply because they know me well? Who will hold and hug me? Who will laugh with me? God help me; I am anxious.

Audacity. Who am I that I am this audacious to believe I can help, understand, live with, and not be torn asunder by the lives and stories of the women and children I will come to love? I am comfortable with the concept that it is my Jesus who must do the work, but am I able to step aside and be an instrument for Him whom heals? God help me; I am bold without any right to be.

And so I sit in this passage:

God's loyal love couldn't have run out,
his merciful love couldn't have dried up.
They're created new every morning.
How great your faithfulness!
I'm sticking with God (I say it over and over).
He's all I've got left.

God proves to be good to the one who passionately waits,
to the one who diligently seeks.
It's a good thing to quietly hope,
quietly hope for help from God.

Lamentations 3:22-26a [The Message]

America's Hidden Sex Slaves

Hi friends…I thought I would share this news article with you. Many of us in the West, while knowing about prostitution, are misguided by the notion that Human Trafficking, and in particular, Sex Trafficking is a problem found in 3rd world nations. Read an excerpt from The New York Times article by Nicholas Kristof found in The Week magazine…

Mention America’s “sex-trafficking” industry and most people think of foreign women smuggled into the country, said Nickolas Kristof. In fact, many sex slaves are “homegrown runaway kids.” Just last month, police in Laurel Md., freed 12-year-old girl who’d been imprisoned by a 42 –year-old man who was pimping her out from Washington D.C., to Atlantic City. Two days later, police discovered three other young women being held under threat of death at a motel a block away. So how widespread is this horror?

Thousands of underage American girls are involved in prostitution here; the typical case involves a terrified runaway who is picked up at a bus or train station by a pimp, who often offers her a meal, a place to stay, and convinces her he loves her. “The next thing she knows, she’s having sex with four men a night and all the money is going to her ‘boyfriend.’”

Due to a mix of fear, hopelessness, and “shattered self-esteem,” the girls don’t run away, and law enforcement does not consider them a top priority. Until cops get serious about arresting both pimps and johns, more young girls will become chattel in this distinctly American form of “21st-century slavery.”