Taken.

It has "taken" me a long time to watch this movie. I intended to watch it in the movie theater, but life is busy and I never had the time to go and see it. So I "redboxed" it yesterday and watched it with Debby while we were at her sister's house.

I loved the movie, not only was it on a subject close to my heart, but it was a very well-done film.

It reminded me of when I first saw the documentary CIY made on human trafficking called "Baht". After I saw it, I first wanted to throw up. Then I wanted to kill people who would do this to women and children. At the time, I wasn't thinking about Liam Neeson (who did a great job in this movie, but obviously it hadn't come out yet), I was thinking about what it would take to make an "Iron Man" outfit, and then go to the brothels of Cambodia and rescue every girl I saw and destroy the bad guys.

Those thoughts came back to me after watching Taken.

The problem is using violence, although satisfying I'm sure, can't solve the problem of human trafficking. If you get rid of a gang of Albanians who are profiting from trafficking, it only leaves a vacuum for another group to come in and fill. If you rescue a thousand girls from Cambodian brothels, the system will only replace them with a thousand more. That doesn't mean we shouldn't care or that rescue operations shouldn't take place, but there are deeper issues that need to be taken care of if we will ever see trafficking eliminated in our lifetime.

One of those is the "demand" side of trafficking. The reason why it's such a profitable business is because the demand for prostitutes, sexual torture and pedophilia is huge. That's a huge issue that needs to be addressed.

There are of course other issues involved as well: police corruption, etc.

But I did enjoy the movie. And I'm glad it has done so well and made a ton of money. Hopefully this will help raise awareness of the issue.

I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Outta Here!

I pretty much abhor most reality t.v. shows, especially any kind of celebrity reality t.v. show. However, this season of "I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Outta Here!" is tempting to watch. Why? Because it has Stephen Baldwin on it. And not because of his conversion to Christianity or anything like that. It's because the charity he's chose to play for is my favorite - Love146.

Here is Stephen on the Jimmy Fallon show talking about the upcoming reality event.

God Of This City

I'm not an American Idol fan by any means - never watched the show except for maybe one episode - but I just found out that this year's winner, Kris Allen, is a worship leader and has recorded a version of "God Of This City", which was first heard in the U.S. through the Passion project "God Of This City." A band from Ireland called Bluetree wrote the song, and I kind of like their version the best, because the verses feel more haunting before you get to the chorus.

Anyway, at this web page, you can see and hear Kris Allen's version. All you have to do is click on the play icon on the black square on the page, and enjoy!

What I didn't realize - and the reason I'm putting this on my anti-trafficking blog instead of my personal blog - is that the song God Of This City was written after the band went on a missions trip to Thailand. Here's an excerpt from that web page:

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Belfast, Ireland-based modern worship band Bluetree, whose acclaimed album, God Of This City, has become one the best selling Christian recordings this year, receives a boost this week from American Idol winner Kris Allen. Allen has been performing the title track to Bluetree’s album, “God Of This City,” a song birthed by the band in a brothel in Thailand.

An anthem being sung worldwide, “God Of This City” was written by Bluetree during a mission trip and while the band was on stage performing worship songs in the Climax Bar, a club which doubles as a brothel in the Red Light district of Pattaya, Thailand. The song became a message of hope for the people of Pattaya and is now being sung in churches across the world, with the Willow Creek Association recently concluding its worship pastor seminar with the song. It was further recorded by Chris Tomlin and became the name and theme for the latest Passion project and world tour.

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You can also hear the story behind the song by clicking on the play icon on the far right of the page.

Stop Traffick Week

I apologize - it's been a long time since I've posted in here. It's not that I'm no longer passionate about human trafficking, it's that I've been really busy with my new job and haven't had time apart from work, family and landscaping to really do much of anything else.

I thought this video and emphasis is pretty cool - even though it's mainly about what's going on in the Chicago area - but check it out. I promise to be more regular in posting here really soon.

Stop Traffick (05.16-05.21) from Traffick Free on Vimeo.

Blood:Water Mission Forty Days Challenge

I'm sorry for not writing anything in this blog in awhile - finding a job will do that for ya.

Even though I believe God has given me a passion for ending trafficking and slavery, there are a lot of great missions organizations that are doing great things, and I thought I would highlight a challenge by one here.

Blood:Water Mission is challenging people starting March 1st (that would be tomorrow) to give up drinking everything but water for 40 days. Then at the end of the 40 days, take the money that you saved drinking only water and give it to Blood:Water Mission for water projects that they are doing around the world.

I'm thinking of doing it - I really only drink coffee and water anyway. I'm not sure about the coffee thing though, I am hopefully starting a new job which means I have to actually wake up in the morning and be alert during the day. Hmmm, I think I need to go pray about it!

Born Into Brothels

I love the library. Especially at this juncture of my life, with not having a job and no money coming in.

The library that my family and I frequent is the Washington Centerville Library, and it has a pretty large collection of movies and my kind of books. We've been going about every week or so, and I've found some great books to read and movies to watch.

Last week, I borrowed Born Into Brothels - I had heard that this was a good documentary, but never really thought about picking it up until I went to the documentary movie section of the library and saw this on the shelf.

Wow.

It's the story of a group of children in the Calcutta red light district of India. The co-writer of the documentary is a lady by the name of Zana who is a photographer. She started coming to this part of Calcutta to take photographs; however, the more time she spent with the kids who were born here and who live here with their prostitute moms and families, the more she fell in love with them. She decides to teach them photography and her dream for them is to go to boarding school where they can get an education and hopefully be able to leave the horrifying world of prostitution.

The movie shows different snapshots that were taken by the kids, and tells each child's story. My favorite picture is below - it's of one of the girls' friends and I just love the vibrancy of colors as well as the expression on the girl's face.


I recommend this movie to anyone who wants to know more about what it's like to live that kind of life and to see the world of prostitution through the eyes of a child. It's a story that will keep you in its grip - as Zana tries to get some of these kids into school and as she tries to encourage one of the boys to live out his dream of being a photographer, you will be heartbroken as well as encouraged.

A Search Engine That Gives Back.

Sometimes we look at the issues we care about, and if they are huge issues that are hard to get our heads around, we can get frustrated and feel like there is no way we can make a difference, that we can even make a small dent in the problem.

Well, we are wrong.

There are many different "small" things that we can do each day to help people. A few months ago, on my other blog, I mentioned a website called Freerice.com, where you can simply answer some word definition questions (multiple choice to make it even easier) and donate grains of rice to the World Food Bank.

I found another interesting website today.

It's called Goodsearch.com, and it's simply a search engine (powered by Yahoo!) that will donate money to your favorite charity or school simply by using the Goodsearch search engine instead of Google or Yahoo or other search engines. I put in Love146 as my search engine and then spent about thirty minutes today searching for things I already needed to search for anyway.

Who knows, perhaps even something as simple as searching for things on the internet could change the world.