Diana lives in the Philippines. She endured abuse at her family’s hands, including sexual abuse that resulted in a pregnancy when she was 12. Her family forced her to get an abortion.

Diana hated her life, hated herself—she threw her little 12-year-old body into the path of a truck.

She lived.

She was rescued from her abusive home and brought to the Round Home, Love 146′s safe house.

Today’s found poem is from a video on the Love 146 website called “Diana’s Love Story”, in which she shares her story of healing and restoration.

The Leaf and the Tree

I used to be like this leaf.
When the storm comes,
the leaves of the tree
fall.

And sometimes I felt that I
was the tree
whose leaves all
fell.

Hopeless. I felt that my life
was hopeless.
I felt that ever since I was born
I have always
had problems, as if I was
conceived
in problems. And then
I felt like a leaf that was
withered. Lost.
Dead.
I felt dead.
I felt all alone.
I felt hopeless.

Now I am like a big
strong
tree.
It is so strong that whatever typhoon comes
it will not fall.
It will still be here.
Even though some of its branches are gone,
the tree will still sway happily
as if declaring
that she continues.

There may be many storms, but
the leaves continue to move
with meaning.
Like me
now.

If I did not come to the Round
Home I would still be hopeless. Like
death.
Giving up every time something bad happened.
But now
I’m different.
I’m like a strong tree that no one can fool with.
I cannot be downtrodden
and laughed at any more.

Here in my heart
is what the mommies in the home
have taught me. They are the people
who loved me
who valued me
at a time when I
thought I was alone.
It was here
that I felt love. It was here
that I became
strong.
It was here
that I learned

how to be
loved

and how to love
myself and other people
and God.

I
shall not
be moved.

This post is part of my Stop Slavery series, a fundraiser for International Justice Mission and Love 146: for every comment, ten lovely women and I will donate a total of $10.50 ($5.25 to Love 146′s aftercare programs for girls like Diana and Serey and Pross, who have been rescued from the sex trade and another $5.25 to IJM).

It’s September, and we’ve had a rash of tooth losses, including Jane’s first two baby teeth falling out, before she’s even five, which is unheard of in our family. We’re late tooth-losers around here.

“Irsy is older than Jane,” Jack continues, “and she’s probably got loose teeth. Do you think she has a pillow?”

I don’t know. I have no idea if Irsy has access to such things as pillows. Her family is poor and rural, and if they have pillows, they’re not the kind of thing Jack has in mind.

“I think we should make her a pillow,” Jack tells me.

I explain that Compassion International won’t deliver a package to Irsy, only mail.

He thinks for a moment. “Then let’s just make the case, Mama. Jane and I will embroider it, and you can sew it.”

I try not to choke. I don’t sew. Instead I smile and say, “Sure.” I figure he’ll forget about this in a day or two and then I won’t have to deal with it.

He doesn’t. He writes Irsy a letter and asks her what she enjoys doing. “So we know what to put on the pillow, Mama.”

When he gets Irsy’s letter back, he says, “She likes riding her bike and playing with dolls. So I think we should put a picture of a bike and a doll on her pillow.”

“Okay,” I say, “but that’s only two things. You wanted to embroider four squares. What’s going to go on the other two?”

He and Jane flip through the embroidery-for-kids book I’ve checked out of the library. “I want to make this flower.” Jane points to a picture. It looks simple enough. I figure we can manage that flower.

Jack looks through the whole book. “I don’t know,” he says.

I turn to a page with pictures of embroidered monograms and names. “What if we just embroidered her name in the last square?”

Jack’s face lights up. “That’d be good!”

We go to the fabric store and he and Jane choose a bit of plain cream-colored fabric to embroider on and a pink fabric with small flowers that they want me to quilt around the edges.

Quilt? This project is getting out of hand.

But I want to encourage my children to be compassionate, to care about other people, and if that means quilting a pillow case for a little girl in Guatemala, well, I’ll figure it out. I buy the fabric.

At home, I trace Irsy’s name and a picture of a bicycle, a doll, and a flower onto small rectangles of the creamy cotton and help Jack and Jane embroider them.

Then the embroidered pieces sit in my bedroom for several months as I try not to think about having to quilt them. Every once in a while Jack says, “When are we going to finish Irsy’s pillow?”

Finally, when Irsy’s sixth birthday comes and goes and I have still done nothing about the pillow—”It was supposed to be a birthday present, Mama!” Jack scolds me—I email my friend Glyn who is an avid quilter and ask her if she’ll help us. She emails back and says she’d love to.

She comes over after lunch one afternoon and helps Jack and Jane quilt Irsy’s pillow together. What would have taken me weeks (what had already taken me months because of sheer procrastination) took Glyn two hours—and that was with Jack and Jane helping her sew.

The finished pillow is beautiful.

I hope Irsy is as happy in receiving it as my kids were in making it.

I pieced together the following found poem from a Love 146 video about their Round Home, a safe house in the Philippines for sex trafficking survivors.

Serey

We were very poor, but my parents
loved me. My mother is blind
and cannot work, so when a woman
from Manila came to my home and offered me
a job in a department store, I thought, This
is a gift from God,
this opportunity! I could work
and send the money to my family!

I left home.
But instead of taking me
to a department store, the woman brought me to
a brothel.
I speak very good
English, and I’m pretty.
There, these gifts—
became curses:
I was horribly popular
with the men who came to the brothel. Eight,
ten, sometimes twelve men
a day.

After a month, I got hold of a cell phone.
I called my family, asked them to come get me.

My father and brother came to Manila,
came to the brothel,
announced who they were and that
they’d come to get me back,
but the owner
wouldn’t let them in.
He blocked them out.

Two
long
years
I was in that brothel until
finally, a police raid, and I was
brought to the safe house.
The house-mother welcomed me
and loved me. But all the time,
I cried.
I couldn’t
stop
crying.

The other girls played volleyball, they ran
around the field, they laughed
together.

Slowly,
so
slowly,
I started to join them.
I learned
to laugh again, too. It was
a safe place. It was a home.
The house-mother, she saw me
as a person, a whole person with a
self. She said it was a gift to watch my
self emerge from the shell of
despair and
fear. She said
it was a beautiful self, like
a butterfly, a caring self.

And then, after many
more months, the house-mother said
it was the proper time, and
she brought me home.

My mother clasped
me in her arms and would not
let me go. She wept. I wept. She touched
my face, to see me, over and
over, and she kept saying, My baby,
my baby,
my baby.

Two more years passed, and I met
a man I love very much,
a man who will do all he can for me,
the man I married. That day, I smiled
for him. It was not the fake smile
I had to give all those years to men
who did not see me, who used
me like a thing to be bought or sold. This,
this was a real smile. A smile
of true happiness, of joy,
of love.

Now, I have fully come home,
home
to love, home
to life, home
to myself.

My life has become
beautiful.

*****

This post is part of my Stop Slavery series, a fundraiser for International Justice Mission and Love 146: for every comment, ten lovely women and I will donate a total of $10.50 ($5.25 to Love 146′s aftercare programs for girls like Serey who have been rescued from the sex trade and another $5.25 to IJM).

Jane and I drop the napkins we’re folding and follow him out of the house, Jane at a dead run, I at a brisk walk.

When we get outside, Jack’s looking up into the sky. “Where are they? Where are they?” His eyes scan a circle of blue from the neighbor’s maple to the ridgeline of our roof.

“There!” he cries suddenly, pointing to a spot in the sky just beyond the top of the fig tree. “Look!”

Jane and I look. Two flocks of Canada geese wing their way northwest in two V’s, one big and long; the other, small and short.

I watch the leader of the long V drop back into the flock, watch the flock’s V wobble and re-form to accommodate the change.

We stand in the backyard with our necks craned, watching them till they disappear in the distance, somewhere above Blue Ridge, I’d guess. Or possibly the Sound.

Jack sighs. “Wasn’t that cool?”

I’m grinning like a very fool. Over a couple flocks of honking geese. And once again, I’m aware that I have a truly wonderful life: geese flying overhead and a son flying indoors to call us out to see them.

*****

On this first Friday of May, I count a few more of the endless gifts:

2520. Blue sky.

2521. Sunshine.

2522. An old man walking his dog.

2523. White plum blossoms clustering on branches overhanging the sidewalk—low enough that I could bury my face in them!

2524. Red tulips.

2525. Pink tulips.

2526. Yellow daffodils.

2527. Purple sweet william.

2528. Bleeding hearts.

2529. Grape hyacinth.

2530. Tiny white lilies.

2531. Blue and pink and white and variegated hyacinth blooming in the neighbor’s front yard—and their succulent scent! Delicious!

2532. Showing the hyacinth to the boys and watching them sniff the petals.

Won’t you please join me in counting the gifts? You can head over to A Holy Experience and join Ann Voskamp’s gratitude community. Or you can just start your own list: write a few things for which you’re grateful in the comments or grab whatever paper is closest and whatever writing utensil you can reach, and start naming and numbering the gifts. It will change your life. (And if you do begin a gift list, would you please let me know?)

It’s also worth another $5.25 to International Justice Mission, whose work we’ll focus on today. (So I’m comment-trolling again: please, leave a comment! It only takes a moment, and it’s worth money to both of these worthy organizations.)

Former U.N. War-Crimes Investigator Gary Haugen founded IJM 15 years ago with the vision of working with local legal systems to secure protection and justice for victims of abuse and oppression. IJM has a collaborative casework model in which their investigators, lawyers, and social workers intervene in individual cases of abuse. They partner with state and local authorities to achieve four goals:

victim relief (getting the victim out of the abusive situation)

perpetrator accountability (ensuring that perpetrators experience the legal consequences of their actions)

survivor aftercare (ensuring that victims have the support and resources to respond to the emotional and physical needs resulting from their abuse and to rebuild their lives)

structural transformation (strengthening communities and local justice systems to prevent abuse of other at-risk people)

IJM’s website is full of stories of undercover operations, brothel raids and stings, and legal victories for victims of oppression. They are hard stories, but hopeful.

In Terrify No More, Gary Haugen tells the story of one such undercover operation in Cambodia in 2003. (If you watch the 15th anniversary video, you will see a short clip of this rescue—and how very young some of the victims were.) I’ve taken Haugen’s words from chapter two of the book and turned them into a found poem:

The Girls of Svay Pak

Rumors of a small, lawless village—
scores of girls, even very young girls,
tiny girls, just
five and six and seven,
sold on an open market
to be used and abused by sex tourists.

We have never seen anything
like this—so many young girls
very young girls
sold and abused
raped and molested
in broad daylight—
such brutal arrogance.

Dozens and scores
of children
young women
held
against their wills,
forced
to serve sex
customers in dingy
cubicles that would look like
a very small bedroom or walk-in closet
to most Western kids—with posters
on the walls and stuffed animals
in a corner—these
are the pens where men come
to exploit them.

A western tourist in Phnom Penh
asks a taxi driver for a ride
to Svay Pak. The driver knows
what the tourist wants
but drives him anyway—
he gets a commission from
the brothel keeper for
every customer he drives
in:

a growing web of protection
around a despicable industry:
the more people who profit from it,
the more acceptance it gains,
the more normalized it becomes until

it becomes just
the way things are.

The massive and routine business
of selling and raping and molesting
children
is just

the way things are

even
among people of
goodwill.

The darkness has grown
that thick,
so thick that dozens
and scores of children
can be openly sold
to pedophiles and sadists and
it is just
the way things are.

Our mission:
to break the deadly
cycle of resignation and
despair,
to prove that it is
possible

to unravel the web
to rescue the children
to send the perpetrators to prison
to change the calculation

about what

is

possible.

*****
This post is part of my Stop Slavery series, a fundraiser for International Justice Mission and Love 146: for every comment, ten lovely women and I will donate a total of $10.50 ($5.25 to Love 146′s aftercare programs for girls rescued from the sex trade and another $5.25 to IJM).

Images courtesy of International Justice Mission.

So, for your viewing pleasure, here are three videos I’ve seen in recent months that made me smile, sigh happily, or laugh. You’ve probably seen one (or all) of them, but that’s okay. Laughter is great medicine.

First, the story of a bookstore, a World War II propaganda poster, and a motto to live by.

I liked that one so much I bought the mug.

*****

Second, here’s Billy Collins, one of my favorite living poets, giving a TED talk. Make sure you watch the whole thing. The last poem is a hoot. (Many thanks to my T.S. Poetry colleague, Matthew Kreider, for putting this one in front of me.)

*****

Third, my sister introduced me to Guy on a Buffalo in January. If you don’t know Guy on a Buffalo, you’re in for a treat. Or maybe not: my husband finds it merely amusing, whereas I laugh so hard I have to cross my legs.

Baby in the weeds? Awesome! Git outta here kitty cat!

This means that each comment is now worth $10.50! If we receive all 100 comments that we’re hoping for, we’ll donate over $1000 to these two organizations! (So please, leave a comment!)

Today, I’m highlighting the work of Love 146, an organization that works specifically to end child sex slavery and exploitation. They focus on three primary areas: prevention, aftercare, and research.

Their prevention efforts are focused on three geographical areas: Asia, the United States, and Europe. In Asia, they focus on intervention with at-risk boys in India, education and infrastructure-building in at-risk communities along the Thai-Cambodia border, and empowering local NGO’s to lead and sustain the abolition movement in their area.

Their aftercare programs (which is where the money we’re donating to them will go) include a safe house in the Philippines for girls who have been rescued from sexual slavery and a training program for those who work with rescued girls.

Love 146 is also actively involved in researching the best ways to prevent sexual slavery and exploitation and the best ways to care for and reintegrate those who have endured the horror of sexual slavery.

All this is wonderful and hopeful, and I’m so glad we get to participate in the work that Love 146 is doing.

But a big part of the reason I chose to support Love 146 is because of the story of behind their name. Co-founder Rob Morris tells the story. The words below are his; the line breaks (and some punctuation) are mine.

We found ourselves standing
shoulder to shoulder
with predators
in a small room, looking
at little girls through
a pane of glass.

All of the girls wore red
dresses with a number
pinned to their dress for
identification.

They sat, blankly
watching cartoons on TV. They were
vacant,
shells
of what a child
should be.
There was no light
in their eyes, no life. Their light
had been taken
from them.

These children—
raped each night,
every night—they were so
young.
Thirteen, eleven—
it was hard
to tell. Sorrow covered their faces
with nothingness.

Except one girl.

One girl who wouldn’t
watch the cartoons.
Her number was 146.
She was looking beyond
the glass.

She was staring out at us with a
piercing gaze. There was still fight
in her eyes. There was still
life
in this girl.

Later, a raid on
the brothel—children were rescued. But the girl—
the girl who wore
number 146—

was not there.

We do not know:
What happened to her?

We will never
forget

her.

*****
This post is part of my Stop Slavery series, a fundraiser for International Justice Mission and Love 146: for every comment, ten lovely women and I will donate a total of $10.50 ($5.25 to Love 146′s aftercare programs for girls rescued from the sex trade and another $5.25 to IJM.)

Images courtesy of Love 146.

$120? How is that possible? No, I did not get 120 comments on that post.

I got something better: seven women who matched my donations to IJM and Love 146! Because of the generosity of Lisa Bridges, Brenda Burnett, Tara Taylor Chase, Glyn Devereaux, Dianne Ross, Tania Runyan, and Tiffany Werner, we are now donating $7.50 ($3.75 to IJM and another $3.75 to Love 146) for every comment!

I am blown away by the generosity of these women, and humbled by all the responses to Friday’s post. I took one little step off the porch, and you all picked me up and carried me the rest of the way down.

Thank you.

Today, we’re going to look at the sad reality of sex trafficking. Here are some horrifying statistics (drawn mostly from the Love 146 website):

• Human trafficking is a $32 billion a year industry; only drug trafficking is a more lucrative crime. Almost $28 billion of that $32 billion comes from commercial sexual exploitation (prostitution, pornography, sex tourism).
• In 2006: 800,000 people were trafficked across international borders. This number does not include people who were trafficked within their own country.
• 1.2 million children are trafficked every year.
• Of those trafficked across international borders, 80% are female and almost half are minors. Most of them are sold into the sex trade.
• Every minute, two children are trafficked for sexual exploitation. That means that in the time you’ve read this post so far, two more children have fallen prey to greed and perversion.
• Even in the United States, 100,000 children are forced into prostitution or pornography every year.

Those numbers are staggering and horrifying and, at least for me, mind-numbingly inaccessible.

Because the truth is: those numbers aren’t numbers. Each number stands for a real person, a human being who is precious in the sight of God.

Each of those 1.2 million children has a unique story and, more, a unique soul. And each of those children’s souls is being devoured and destroyed by predation and exploitation.

Reading some of these stories, hearing them, watching them, I feel ill and overwhelmed and powerless. I want to turn away, to pretend such horror does not exist. But Jesus does not turn away from the unimaginable suffering of children.

And as someone who claims to follow him, I cannot turn away, either. I will not turn away. I do not yet know what I will do beyond this blog series, other than weep and pray pray pray for God’s deliverance of every last one of these children. For now, I will weep and pray—and testify.

Here, then, are the stories of two girls, kidnapped in Cambodia and sold to a brothel in Phnom Penh. The words are theirs, transcribed from this heart-breaking video; only the line breaks are mine.

Pross
The worst part
was the fear. The fear
was overwhelming. If you resisted,
they electrocuted you. Sometimes,
they electrocuted me
twice a day if I
argued too much.

Sena
They wet your shirt and they
tie you up so
you won’t try to run away.
They put a wire—a live wire—
inside of you.

Pross
In the room, they tied your
hands, and outside
there was a guard.

Sena
These are the rooms they’d use
to torture girls and
electrocute them. There must
have been
many girls
who died
in these rooms. I spent
two years
in a place like this. I’m cold
and afraid.
Tonight
I won’t sleep.

Pross
They stitched me up—
three times.
I got pregnant
twice.
The second time
they waited till I
was four months pregnant before
they gave me the abortion. I begged
and pleaded
for mercy, and the mama-san
stabbed my eye with
a piece
of metal.

*****
Your comment on this post will raise $3.75 for International Justice Mission, which fights slavery around the world, and another $3.75 for Love 146′s aftercare programs for girls like Pross and Sena.

*****
Photo by Marilyn deGuehery of Love 146. The hands are those of the girls at the Round Home, Love 146′s aftercare safehouse in the Philippines.

Having not read The Lord of the Rings books for a dozen years, I have been floored by Tolkien’s language, his ability to paint a vivid picture with nothing but words. Here, for example, at the beginning of the chapter, “A Knife in the Dark,” he evokes the blood-chilling terror that is the Black Riders:

Darkness lay on Buckland; a mist strayed in the dells and along the river-bank. The house at Crickhollow stood silent. Fatty Bolger opened the door cautiously and peeered out. A feeling of fear had been growing on him all day, and he was unable to rest or go to bed: there was a brooding threat in the breathless night-air. As he stared out into the gloom, a black shadow moved under the trees; the gate seemed to open of its own accord and close again without a sound. Terror seized him. He shrank back, and for a moment he stood trembling in the hall. Then he shut and locked the door.

The night deepened. There came the soft sound of horses led with stealth along the lane. Outside the gate they stopped, and three black figures entered, like shades of night creeping across the ground. One went to the door, one to the corner of the house on either side; and there they stood, as still as the shadows of stones, while night went slowly on…

There was a faint stir in the leaves, and a cock crowed far away. The cold hour before dawn was passing. The figure by the door moved. In the dark without moon or stars a drawn blade gleamed, as if a chill light had been unsheathed. There was a blow, soft but heavy, and the door shuddered.

For those of you who are only familiar with the movies, you’re missing out. Doug, who’s a big fan of those movies, said the other night, “You know, rereading this, I find I like the book better than the movie. Tolkien tells such a compelling story. And with such amazing language.” Indeed.

*****

During the day, I have been re-reading Little House on the Prairie to Jack and Jane (at their request). I love this book. Laura Ingalls Wilder, like Tolkien, is a master at creating a picture with words. Consider this:

Mary and Laura…could smell bacon and coffee and hear pancakes sizzling, and they scrambled out of bed….

They washed their hands and faces in the tin washbasin on the wagon-step. Ma combed every snarl out of their hair, while Pa brought fresh water from the creek.

Then they sat on the clean grass and ate pancakes and bacon and molasses from the tin plates in their laps.

All around them shadows were moving over the waving grasses, while the sun rose. Meadow larks were springing straight up from the billows of grass into the high, clear sky, singing as they went. Small pearly clouds drifted in the immense blueness overhad. In all the weed-tops tiny birds were swinging and singing in tiny voices. Pa said they were dickcissels.

“Dickie, dickie!” Laura called back to them. “Dickie bird!”

“Eat your breakfast, Laura,” Ma said…”It isn’t good manners to sing at table. Or when you’re eating,” she added, because there was no table. 

There was only the enormous, empty prairie, with grasses blowing in waves of light and shadow across it, and the great blue sky above it, and birds flying up from it and singing with joy because the sun was rising. And on the whole enormous prairie there was no sign that any other human being had ever been there.

In all that space of land and sky stood the lonely, small, covered wagon. And close to it sat Pa and Ma and Laura and Mary and Baby Carrie, eating their breakfasts.

Wilder’s writing is like the sky on a sunny blue day: clear and so beautiful it catches at my throat and makes me want to be caught up in it, to become one with it.

I want to write like that: evocative, engaging, vivid…edible.

*****

Since April is National Poetry Month, I thought I’d highlight a few of our family’s favorite poetry books.

First is the classic Favorite Poems Old and New, compiled by Helen Ferris, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. This is really more of a resource for parents than a read-to-your-kids book, though I’ve read to my kids from it on many occasions.

It’s a great place to find poetry to memorize, or to find a number of poems by a single poet—Eleanor Farjeon, say, or Rachel Field, or Walter de la Mare. We (try to) study one poet per season and this book has been indispensable in introducing us to our poet-of-the-quarter.

Second is the Barefoot Book of Classic Poems, compiled and illustrated by Jackie Morris. This is a beautiful book. The selection of poetry ranges from poems by Robert Louis Stevenson to Emily Dickinson, W.B. Yeats, and Dylan Thomas…and many, many more poets whom I don’t tend to think of as “children’s poets.”

This isn’t just a great book to share with children. It’s also a great way for adults who want to start reading poetry to dip their toes into poetic waters. With just one poem and a gorgeous illustration on every page, this is a book to sip and savor.

Third is the newest addition to our poetry library: Forget-Me-Nots: Poems to Learn by Heart, compiled by Mary Ann Hoberman, illustrated by Michael Emberley. As we read it, Jack, Jane, and I, dipping in here and there, I feel inspired to choose a couple of my favorite poems from the book to add to my mental repertoire of things-I-can-recite-by-heart.

Now it’s your turn: what books have wowed you recently with their pristine or evocative or beautiful language? What poems have you savored in this month of celebrating poetry?

At the same time that I was feeling those go-cut-your-hair nudges, I was also feeling other nudges, ones I liked even less than the hair-cutting ones.

I was feeling nudged to get off the porch, and I didn’t want to. I like sitting here in my rocker, wrapped in a cozy quilt, surrounded by four healthy, beautiful children. I am (mostly) happy and content.

Except when the world intrudes. And it does. You have to be even more insular than I am to not be at least marginally aware of the deep pain of this world.

So today, I’m finally getting off the porch. It’s taken almost a year for me to take this step. I’m not sure why I’m so scared. Maybe it’s because I can’t see past the first step: I don’t know where this is going to lead.

It might just be one step.

Or it might be the first step on a long journey whose ending I do not know. And I don’t like not knowing.

Or perhaps I’m afraid my heart will break. I’ve been in the place of heartbreak, and it’s not fun. It’s a place of grace, to be sure, but it’s a severe grace, and I don’t want any more severe grace, thank you very much.

Hence my long waiting on these nudges, my sitting here on the porch watching the world go by. Or not watching: more like sitting here staring at my feet, or my belly button.

But God is nothing if not persistent. Over this past year, the nudges have not gone away. No, they’ve increased in frequency. It seems like everywhere I look, people are writing about it. Everywhere I listen, they’re talking about it.

What is “it”?

It is human trafficking. Specifically, it is young girls (and boys, too, though to a lesser extent) being sold into slavery as sex slaves.

I have wrestled with putting this issue out here on my blog. It is a hard issue. The stories hurt my heart. I have not wanted to face them.

If I have to get off the porch, can’t I invite people to build a well? Or support a fledgling organic farm in the developing world? Or sponsor a child in Latin America?

All of those are good—excellent—things. But God keeps directing my eyes to these young girls who are living lives of such horror I can’t even imagine it, keeps putting their stories close to my heart, keeps bringing this issue back and back and back.

You know that story Anne Lamott tells, about how God kept following her home from church like a stray cat, and she kept slamming the door in his face, until finally, he wore her down and she said, “F— it, you can come in.”

Yeah. That’s about how I feel. Fine, I want to say to God. Have it your way. I’ll get off the porch, okay?

So this is me, getting off the porch:

During Easter (which is seven weeks, not one day, long), I will write one post per week about human trafficking in order to raise awareness of this issue.

But I won’t just be raising awareness, I’ll also be raising money. For every comment I get on these posts, I will donate 50¢ each to International Justice Mission and Love 146 (that’s $1 per comment up to $100 total), two organizations that are working to stop human trafficking and end the sex trade.

In the next few weeks, I’ll write more about each organization and their work. For now, here’s the skinny on how you can help:

1. Leave a comment: every comment is worth 50¢ to IJM and Love 146.
2. Email a link to this post to a friend or two, or
3. Post the link on Facebook and/or Twitter.
4. Match my donation.

If you decide to make a matching donation, please simply indicate in your comment how much you want to donate per comment and what your upper donation limit is. Remember that I will make my donation based on the total number of comments on all posts in this series (seven between now and Pentecost).

Please don’t feel pressure to do any (let alone all) of these things, but if you feel led, I’d love to have you come alongside me in this Easter stepping-out-of-my-comfort-zone-and-off-the-porch. I won’t feel quite so uncomfortable if I have company!

Won’t you join me?