Sex for Food

28Apr

Sex for Food

The Food Fund helps people who are desperate. Desperation can creep stealthily in, such as during a prolonged drought, come crashing in as a result of a flood, earthquake, typhoon or war, or infect generations due to endemic poverty. It also comes at the hands of evil men and women who steal the innocence of children to profit from their bodies in the modern, worldwide slave market for sex and labor.

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22Apr

You’ve Got (Encouraging) Mail

Dealing every day with the ugly realities of human trafficking and slavery depresses us at times. We struggle with protecting our minds while at the same time maintaining soft hearts that weep with the multitudes who are bought, sold and abused. And we often find ourselves crying out to the Lord with such words as, Why do you allow this God? Our hearts felt especially heavy as we told you last time about the secret war that rages for the lives of a generation.

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27Mar

The Secret War

It sounds like something from a spy novel. Secret plans, getaway vehicles, corrupt bureaucracy, kidnapping and, of course, plenty of bad guys. But this is not fiction. This tragic story is being played out now, as I write this, in an undisclosed country. The enemies are depraved human beings eager to line greedy pockets, and "an entrenched, corrupt system—one that profits from the sale of its innocent, most vulnerable citizens to prop up an ailing economy" on one hand, and poverty, desperation, hunger and extremely broken, dysfunctional families on the other.

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01Mar

Human Trafficking/Slavery Fund

Rescue the perishing, the Bible says. You who gave out of the compassion of your hearts to the Human Trafficking/Slavery Fund in 2014 followed Jesus' heart—you've helped protect many children and young women from those who wish to profit from their bodies, and you've helped rescue and restore those already trapped. Let us tell you how.

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07Feb

Bed Bus to Poipet [Jeff’s 2nd Blog from Cambodia/Philippines]

I had never heard of a "bed bus" until I boarded one bound for Poipet, a small city on Cambodia's border with Thailand. After squeezing down an aisle that thin people have to walk sideways to fit through—two tiers of beds down each side—I soon discovered that the bunks were double-occupancy, meaning I had to share the last remaining 3.5-foot-wide by 5-foot-long bunk, all the way in the back of the bus, with another person for the 9-hour ride through the dark, bumpy night.

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04Feb

Sidewalks in the Sky [Jeff’s 1st Blog from Cambodia/Philippines]

A sign should be posted, I thought, that warns those fearful of heights not to enter. I was walking into a riverfront slum, one in which every home was built on stilts—some very high stilts. Even the sidewalks that weaved through this collision of cobbled-together buildings were built on interconnected stilts that tied everything together in what seemed an uneasy truce with gravity. I didn't want to look down, as it was impossible to avoid seeing the ground far below through the gaping gaps between boards—but if I didn't, a slight misstep might seriously ruin my day!

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01Feb

Do you know what a Restavek is?

Restavek. It's a word that you've likely never heard. But everyone in Haiti knows what it means. Although derived from two French words (reste avec), that mean "to stay with," the more literal translation of restavek is "child slave." Haiti's restaveks are children who are sent by their deeply-impoverished rural parents to work as live-in domestic servants in the homes of city families who are somewhat better off. There are as many as 300,000 restaveks in Haiti, a reflection of the desperation of hundreds of thousands of parents who can't escape the world's poorest nation.

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16Dec

Small Girl, Big Faith

Her name means “Small Girl” in her native Khmer language, really? I thought as I looked down on the pint-size girl in front of me. Well, at least it was much easier to pronounce than her real name. I couldn’t help see the irony in the fact that she really was a small girl, even by Cambodian standards. But God, who sees the heart, already knew how big she was on the inside. Small Girl came from a poor family in a poor village. In 2011, out of pressure to pay off her family’s debt, she and her older sister moved to Phnom Penh to find work at a beer garden, where uneducated girls find easy work selling drinks and sex. But Small Girl soon met someone from a ministry called Precious Women, a Heaven’s Family partner, who told her that she didn’t have to work in a beer garden. Small Girl heard the gospel, and also received a scholarship offer for 4 years if she would return home and finish high school, the very thing she wished to do.

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19Nov

A Home for Jopai

Jopai slept along a street in the slums of Cebu City, the Philippines, each night. Her home consisted of an old tarp draped over a discarded metal frame. She shared that space with her mother and siblings—Joy, her sister, and 2 younger brothers. Her mother did all she could to provide for the 5 of them, but although she worked hard all day cleaning fish, she earned only about a dollar a day—barely enough to buy the rice and soup they needed to survive each day. All else was a luxury they couldn’t afford, including the children’s education.

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