Human Trafficking

I know that anyone reading this blog has been breathlessly waiting for the first posting.  I am sorry that it has taken me so long to write.  I was waiting to write once I had gotten to Fiji.  I live in Virginia, making the trip to Fiji a pretty big ordeal.  However, it managed to be an even bigger ordeal than I anticipated.  Little did I know that washing a passport in the washing machine ends up being a huge problem to overbearing people in the customs office of the airport in Fiji.  After spending 10 straight hours on a flight from LAX to Fiji, I made my glorious arrival onto Fijian soil.  I enjoyed my stay for all of 2 hours before I was shipped back to LAX feeling more like a human refugee than the world traveler I had attempted to be.  Yes, that sentence just rhymed, call me Busta.  (That was a terrible joke but I have to try to hook in anyone reading this)  Apparently customs officials do not take kindly to the bent pages and bleeding ink that washing machines unleash on passports.  To make a long story short, I spent two stressful days in LA getting a new passport and ticket meanwhile being treated to witnessing a traditional Indian wedding complete with elephant riding and large, loud drums in the lobby of my hotel while hotshot businessmen tried to manuever around festively-clad dancing women.  Pretty crazy couple days.

But now I am in Suva, Fiji, working with an organization called Homes of Hope.  You can check them out at www.hopefiji.org.  They are a non-profit organization who takes in single mothers to give them a place to live, schooling for their child, vocational training so they can earn a living, parenthood courses, allows them to finish high school if needed, and disciples them in the life of Christ.  The desire of the directors, Mark and Lynnie Roche, is to equip the women (some of them as young as 16) to be stable, sufficient women who are no longer subjected to abuse or trafficking and have an active relationship with Jesus. 

My next post will have more information about human traffficking worldwide and specifically in Fiji.  But just so you know, the US State Department releases a Trafficking in Persons report each year.  This year's report estimated that 800,000 people are bought and sold across national boundaries.  And that is only the people who cross borders.  If this number, combined with other country-specific estimates are correct, there are more people in slavery now than ever before in history.  That is a staggering statement. 

Check out a video testimony of one of the girls here on campus.  It is appalling that someone can be subjected to living with a history like this.  Here is the link, click on "Salote's Story"