Duane & Becky's Story

Once upon a time, there was a man named Duane, who loved India. So he came to Cascade, Idaho to work with more people who also love India. That's where he met a cute dread-head named Becky. Together they had fun, hiking with friends, and soaking in the hot springs.

Then their team went on a Faith road trip, which ended up being 3 weeks long. That resulted in suspicious things such as: Duane getting really protective when the home-sick NYC kid gave Becky a hug, because she was from his state. “Sorry” the boy said, “she must be your girlfriend…” Well, not yet, but it sure did appear to be true…Or in San Francisco, when Becky had the worst sinus infection ever, took nightquil and slept for two days. Duane was really concerned…you would have thought she was dying…

Then in Mendocino, California, there was that long walk, barefoot on the beach, watching the sunset, and talking for hours. It was the most romantic date ever, except for the part where Becky didn’t know if Duane liked her, but she knew she was falling for him.

A couple days later, in Discovery Bay, Duane said to Becky, “would you like to go down to the beach and watch the sunset with me?” The response was a smile and a nod. As the sun set he confessed that he liked her, and she said, "I thought so" and awkwardly left him hanging, so he had to ask, "um, do you feel the same way?" "Oh, yes!!!"

After a long, flirtatious drive back to Idaho, the couple talked to their leaders, and officially started dating.

At last it came time to meet the parents on a camping trip in Moab. The couple had fun, mountain biking, hiking, and sleeping outside in hammocks! As a joke they took a picture of them wearing rings, and e-mailed it to some friends. This is referred to as the time they “accidentally” looked a rings… but it worked out conveniently for Duane. Dresses as pirates they returned to their excited friends. It was rather disappointing to admit, it was just a joke.

As they prayed about what their future would look like, rather than Duane stay in Idaho, it seemed that it was time for Becky to move on. At the pirate/hippie good-bye party, Becky was given a “thank you” so big that it didn’t fit on the card, and Duane was awarded with the right to take one staff member of his choice to Colorado.

The day after Becky arrived in Colorado Springs Duane insisted they go for a walk in the Garden of the Gods. She put her camera in her pocket, and noticed he had something in his pocket, which didn’t look like his phone, but it wasn’t a ring box either, so she wasn’t too suspicious.

As they walked, he talked about how this was his playground, and finally it was going to be a romantic spot, now that his princess was here. As they rounded a corner of “Twin Spires” Duane talked about how the 2 different colored rocks somehow merged into one, like a married rock, if that is possible. There were flowers and a card on the ground. Becky figured he must have had a friend put it there. Since he is a romantic guy anyway, this might just be a “welcome to Colorado” gift.

The card had pictures of them on the front and inside a picture of Duane with…her mom and step-dad? Duane said, “I just had a crazy weekend in Pennsylvania, and I called your Dad too,” as he got down on one knee and pulled out a ring and put it on her finger. She kissed him, for the first time, (since they weren’t going to kiss until we are engaged), and now they were engaged!

A distant voice yelled, “so, is that a yes?” That’s when she noticed our photographer stalker, and discovered that the random thing in Duane’s pocket was the voice recorder…so yes, they have it all on video…

What I Have Learned...

How do we minister to street kids?
How do we rescue girls out of prostitution?
How do we have faith for an end to abuse and violence?
How do we live our lives knowing that the evils and injustices of the world are so much worse than we can even imagine?
How do we have hope in the midst of this?

I don’t have all of the answers
I can’t solve the world’s problems
But I do know the One who holds the world in His hands

He loves the widow who is struggling to survive
He loves the orphan who is lost and alone
He loves the children who run to the streets to escape the violence at home
He loves the girls who are trapped in prostitution with no way out
He loves the boys who have been forced to kill their friends

I cannot help them on my own.
It’s too hard
The needs are too overwhelming
The situations are too depressing
The statistics are too hopeless

I need more of Him.
I need to know His love
I need to feel His presence
I need to live in His peace
I need to be filled with His hope

Everything I do must be following His lead
What I say must come from what He’s spoken to me
How I love the hurting must be from the overflow of His love for me
All I do comes from Him
I must pray, listen, obey

Is that really so simple?
No, I have to know His voice
I have to spend time in His Word
In prayer
In worship
I have to know His truth,
so I can fight the lies of the enemy
I have to be confident in His love,
so I can keep walking when times are hard
knowing, He is with me!
I have to be able to praise Him
for who He is
in spite of what I see around me

He cares
He loves
He rescues
He restores

He is a God of Justice
In the end He wins
Evil looses

The slaves will be free
The broken will be healed
The orphan will have a home

Regardless of what happens here on earth,
“this suffering is not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Rom 8:18)
In the end, we win.

Interview with a Trafficker

How does a person end up trafficking others? They are not born traffickers, they have a story too. This is my summary of Ro’s interview with a trafficker:

As a baby born in Eastern Europe, he was abandoned by his mom, and his dad would abuse him and would throw knives at him for the littlest mistake. Eventually he stabbed his father. He hurt other people so they couldn’t hurt him. He went to jail, and became top-dog. He stole all the time. He became the drug dealer for that city, and loaned money then enslaved people to repay him. Everyone in the city knew him and was afraid of him.

He had a wife, and used 3 others girls too, who he also sent out to the street to get more money for him. They went, because they didn’t want to lose their position as part of his gang, and he supplied the drugs they needed to numb their pain.

Then a girl he was interested in, invited him to a drug-rehab thing, so he went, and then stayed for a Word study. A lady there gave him money and said “buy yourself something delicious” and he was surprised by her love. Then the Father began to speak to him in crazy ways (like Saul/Paul in the Bible), he meet the Father. He tried to pay for his groceries instead of stealing, and the girl at the store was so shocked and confused. She meet the Father too, because if He could change this man, than He must be real. The man spent some time growing in his relationship with the Father, and then he felt called to go back and reach his family – his gang family. Who better to reach these people, then someone who is already so influential in that community?

The story makes me think of something one speaker said – that guys who have sexually abused others will never change. That was overwhelmingly hopeless information. I thought that with the Father, nothing is impossible? Sure there are lots of Hitler’s in the world who start genocides and murder thousands of people (it happens all of the time in Africa). I have only ever heard of one genocide leader who changed – Saul/Paul (in the Word). Look at what an impact that one life made, even still today as we read his letters in the Word. So yeah, maybe 999 out of 1000 never change, but one does. And maybe more people would too if we weren’t so afraid of them…

What is the most important thing? Loving people – not being distracted by what they do or how they have hurt others. The Father loves the traffickers too. He hates what they do, but loves them. They are His children too…

Human Trafficking and Modern-day Slavery

This week Ro is teaching us about Human Trafficking. It’s kind of a crazy subject, resulting in excessive quantities of notes. How do we fight something as huge, yet as secret as Human Trafficking? We start by raising awareness, because evil and injustice thrives in darkness and deception. So here’s some of what we’ve been learning so far…

Slavery Still Exists TODAY, in America even…

Ever hear those stories of teens running away and just disappearing? Or see “missing kid” posters at the grocery store? Where do those kids end up? I’d say there’s a good chance they’ve become victims of Human Trafficking.

An estimated 27,000,000 people are trafficked worldwide.
The majority are women trafficked for the purpose of sex slavery (prostitution, pornography). Traffickers earn back in 1 week the money they paid to buy a girl, by selling the girl 10-40 times a night, which is what happens in the brothels in Mumbai, India.

People are trafficked into forced labor or forced begging - sometimes children are intentionally disfigured like in the movie “Slumdog Millionaire”. Yes it really happens.

Children are forced to be soldiers – as seen in the movie “Blood Diamond”


The craziest one is organ theft. The wealthy get what they want at the expense of the poor. Men in India have their kidneys stolen! In China babies are killed purposely and their organs are used for Western transplants. Sort of along those lines, I just watched the movie “My Sister’s Keeper” which is kind of about forced organ donation, it’s a good movie, but rather sad.

Though there are a lot of movies like “Trade” and “Taken”, Ro explained that Human Trafficking is more like a TV Series – it goes on and on with twists in the plot and exceptions to the rule. The characters are:
- Victim = could be anybody, regardless of age, sex, race, ethnicity
- Traffickers who could be a family member, drug dealer, boyfriend, brothel owner, criminal, or pimp.
- The Consumer - sex addicts, porn, brothel owners, strip clubs, hotel, shoppers, and their demand: I want…to fulfill sexual fantasies, buy things cheaply, cheap labor, be rich, feel powerful.

Whether we know it or not, we’re all involved in the bigger plot of trafficking and slavery, because we buy food and clothing and prefer it to be cheap, but we don’t know where it’s coming from or how it’s made – slave labor? 70% of USA’s chocolate comes from the Ivory Coast via child slave labor.


Here in Costa Rica, men come for “sex tourism” There’s a big lie among these “Consumers” that the women and girls like their “job” and enjoy giving men what they want, because it makes the girls feel good about themselves to be with a man, or whatever. Seriously? What the heck is wrong with them? It makes me so angry.

Trafficking in the USA/Mexico

For movie night last week we watched "Trade." It is a story of a Mexican girl who was kidnapped and trafficked to the USA to be sold. It's a pretty depressing story, yet also maybe not as bad as real life, as the ending of the movie isn't the norm. I don't want to ruin the movie for you, in case you want to watch it. Warning: it is rated R, and you will be depressed after watching it, but it is good to be aware of what's going on in our country.

I found a recent news article about trafficking across the Mexico/USA boarder. "Maria" was lured by the promise of a job, only to be kidnapped and trafficked. According to the article "more than 20,000 women and children are trafficked from Mexico to the USA each year." Maria managed to escape and told US special agents about the trafficking, and now they have begun investigating.

Fighting Slavery in Cambodia

I saw an article yesterday on CNN about a man named Cohen, who goes undercover to get information to give to the police in order to rescue underage girls who are trapped in prostitution. The article is the story of how he rescued Jonty and her sister Channy, 2 girls who worked at a karaoke bar in Cambodia.

It is depressing to hear over and over about how child prostitution and trafficking is so common. Cohen said, "I would rank Cambodia right up there with India as one of the worst places in the world for sex-trafficking." It seems that so little is done to stop it, so it is encouraging to read a story about rescue. Apparently it's a serious problem in India too

Kidnapped?

A little bunny-trail from class this week is that having a good motive, isn’t enough, because really good people can do really stupid stuff. We are all human after all. But good intentions are nice, but we need to grow in wisdom.

That brings to mind an article Rachel told us about. A well meaning group went to Haiti and attempted to rescue 33 orphans. But when they tried to cross the border into the Dominican Republic, they didn’t have the necessary paper work and were arrested for child trafficking.

As a student at a “Children At Risk School” the first thought is, “what were you thinking?” But I realize I probably would have had the same idea not that long ago.

But now knowing the huge risk of children being trafficked out of Haiti, I appreciate the government taking action to protect these children. Though it seems that in the chaotic after-math of a huge earthquake, the Haitian government has more important things to do than deal with deciding if this group is just a bunch of well-meaning people, or actually are trafficking children.

As it turns out at least 10 of the children aren’t even orphans.

Local Things to do...

Wednesday and Friday afternoons we volunteer with local organizations. This week onWednesday we went to Casa Viva and learned about their foster care program. In the up-coming weeks we will volunteer there and spend time with 5 siblings who are in separate foster homes. We'll pick them up from their houses, and they will get to spend time with each other and with us. This week was just orientation, but I am excited to get to know the kids next week.

Friday we went down town and prayed in the parks. The area has a lot of street children and prostitution (which is legal here), but also child prostitution (which is illegal). Thursday evening we had watched a documentary called “Innocence Lost.” One chapter was about San Jose. Some of the tourist who were interviewed said things like, “these girls enjoy their work” and “they like to please a man, it makes them feel good about themselves.” The truth is most girls are trapped in prostitution for various reasons. Some were kicked out of their house, or left because of abuse, and life on the streets and poverty has forced them to find some way to make money in order to survive. Others may have been kidnapped or sold into prostitution. None of them enjoy it or want to be there. Most all of them feel worthless and have no other way to get a job and making a living.