I have just got back from an amazing conference in Tunbridge. I will blog more on that another time but right now I am picking up on something God broke my heart about before I went: human trafficking and the child sex trade around the world. The advice from people working in this are for those who want to help is get educated about the problem. That's really painful but here's a start:
We celebrate the abolition of the slave trade by William Wilberforce and that's good but don't be deceived into thinking that its stopped. Human trafficking is the third most profitable criminal activity in the world. There are 27 million slaves in the world today. In 2004 there were more slaves than were seized from Africa during four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Almost 80% are used for sex . Just under 20,000 slaves are brought into the USA every year. 50% of slaves in the world are children. 70% are women. Nearly 2 million children are in the commercial sex trade. 2 children a minute are trafficked for sexual exploitation.
The global scale and gut wrenching horror of this evil is totally overwhelming. If I am to face it and get involved I'm going to need to focus on doing the little I can do, the bit God has given me responsibly for, and then cry out to God for his Kingdom to come. Some principles of the kingdom I learnt recently was that though it stats small it will grow and work its way into everything. Bill Johnson said in the conference that the potential for the kingdom breaking out it the size of the need. The need of many millions of women and children around the world is huge.
Children are sold as slaves for less than $2 in some parts of the world. It cost less than £1000 to get a family out of slavery, give them the ability to support themselves and get their kids in school. (www.freetheslaves.net)
Here's some organisations I'm looking at:
- Rapha House http://raphahouse.org/, http://loverescueheal.wordpress.com/
- Iris ministries with Heidi and Roland Backer http://www.irismin.org/
- Rahab Ministries http://www.rahabministriesthailand.com/
Father, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
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