What is the role of a man in the fight against human trafficking?

I read this awesome blog by a radical guy named Matthew Snyder. Today he posted a blog proposing the question: What is the role of a man in the fight against human trafficking? I immediately started typing away, and before I knew it, I had typed almost two pages single spaced... So I decided instead of posting it as a comment on his blog, I would answer his question on my own blog.

I believe the only way to eradicate human trafficking is to end demand. So what is the role of the man in fighting human trafficking? Set a standard for other men, to NEVER look at porn. Start a movement of pure men who are above the sex industry. Pornography is the "gateway drug" into sex trafficking. If there there were no men willing to pay to have sex, there wouldn't be girls on the streets selling their bodies. People put blame on the girls for being whores and the pimps for being traffickers, but I think the blame needs to be shifted to the johns. Those sluts are coerced captives. Those pimps are business men who are just as screwed up as the girls. It's the johns who started innocently looking at porn while their wives were nursing the babies in the other room. Then they were hooked and it became an addiction. Shortly, the videos and pictures just weren't enough. Their wives weren't putting out enough and were just normal. They needed something more. It's the johns who need to sleep with a prostitute.

Men need to make higher standards. Men need to eradicate the pornography industry because it's a drug just as bad as cocaine. Men need to start loving their families more than themselves. Men need to stop talking to their buddies about sex and start talking about holding one another accountable to not look at porn. Every time porn is accessed it creates demand for more. That demand leads to demand for sex to be sold. That demand for selling sex leads to 11 year olds being coerced by some cool guy who is ten years older than her who actually treats her nice and tells her that he loves her. Then the next thing she knows, she's agreeing to run away from home and move to Vegas with her "boyfriend." Then he tells her they need cash to survive, so he needs her to have sex with one of his friends; that it would make him so happy. She is in love, so of course she will. Suddenly, she's 17, her name is now "Princess," she's bottom ho, and brings in $1,500 a night.

Despite all that, women also need to set a higher standard for themselves. Dressing sleazy will never be considered a good thing. Girls need to have confidence and self-worth. However a lot of that comes from having strong fathers and father-figures in their lives, something that is definitely lacking these days.  Men just need to step it up.

That answer is mainly for ending human trafficking in America, but honestly, I feel like it goes for the entire world. When I was walking through Kamathipura, one of the main redlight districts in Mumbai, this summer, I looked into the eyes of the men on the streets and experienced how they saw me as a piece of meat, nothing more. Most of the world views women as possessions. That's just the way it is. To be completely honest, it sucks. I know I'm not going to be received in much of the ministry that I want to do because I'm female. In fact, I feel like I can't actually move to India to start my life until I get married, so that when I go into a hostile village in North India, I will have a man with me to help us be received rather than immediately rejected for my sex and skin color. Personally, I need a man who is going to spend hours in prayer with me and for me every time I walk into a brothel and talk to the girls. I need a man who is so above reproach that I won't have to worry when he and I walk through the redlight districts past scantily dressed women. I pray always for my future husband that his thoughts would be so focused on heaven and things above that he can't even see the devils schemes to reel in his thought life, because his thoughts have already been purchased and they belong to Jesus Christ.

Honestly, our society needs a wake up call. Our world needs a Savior. We were put on this earth to be salt and light, and I'm afraid a lot of todays "Christians" have lost their saltiness. I pray that through groups of us "burning ones" would begin to set the world on fire with the love of Jesus. We are called to be ministers of reconciliation, so let's get to it. There is a world in need. It's time to stand up for the cause of the poor and needy. Today is the day to speak up for the voiceless.

big news, lots of homework, and a great God

This is probably the fourth or fifth time that I've sat down and starting tapping away at a blog post... yet I haven't posted any. Why do you ask? I don't even have time to breathe. Quite literally, I probably need to be working on my breathing more because my asthma is acting up so badly, but I don't have time. It's sort of like every week is finals week; not because of the exams, but because of the amount of time I spend studying. Allow me to update you on my life.

I'm graduating a year early after all. I'm officially a senior at Liberty University. I won't be able to walk in May because I'll have two classes and my internship to complete over the summer, but I will have my bachelor's degree by August. You might ask, so Casey, after you graduate, what are your plans? Well this is my big news. Big, big, BIG news.

I planting a church with a group of incredible people in … wait for it … LAS VEGAS !

Say WHAT, Casey ?!?

Yep, in 8-9 months, I'm packing up my life and moving 2,000 miles across the country into the desert lands of Sin City. This is my first public announcement. Thus far, only close friends and family know my big plans.

Our church planting team is comprised of some of the greatest people I know. A professor of mine from freshman year, who happens to be my best friend's dad, is going to be the lead pastor. I am so blessed and excited to be serving on a team with such godly men and women. You can check out Dr. Earley's blog by clicking here. Our church is going to be called Grace City Church.

I'll let you explore Grace City Church's website, but here's a taste of our heartbeat for this church:

Grace City is a church that is committed to doing very hard things In really tough places so God gets all the glory. 

Grace City Church is a life-giving faith community devoted to Jesus through absolute obedience to everything He commanded. 

We strive to live extra-ordinary lives of prayer, discipleship, disciple-making, worship, the Word of God, evangelism, and love. 

We want to be a house of prayer for all nations that exhales disciples who will take the gospel all over the world or die trying. 

In May of 2012, we will be moving to downtown Las Vegas, Nevada a few blocks from the Las Vegas Strip and across the street from UNLV.

I'm excited and blessed and I hope you are too. This is going to be a crazy adventure I go on. I'm currently looking for a health promotion internship in Vegas for the summer and ideally I'll be able to find a real job to start in August in my field of study. I think it would be incredible to work for a health department or a non-profit, creating programs and awareness campaigns for various issues in the health field. I plan on staying in Vegas for as long as I feel the Lord leading and then move to India. Living in India is my long-term goal.

As for the present, I just got prescribed to use a nebulizer twice daily for my asthma. I had to stop doing one of the ministries that I've been involved in for the last couple years because I am so overwhelmed with school. I'm taking 18 hours and I work about 19 hours a week and I have SO MUCH homework. I adore my classes and am learning more than I have ever learned in school, but they are time consuming.

Despite the rough season of chaos that I'm dwelling in, Jesus is remaining so faithful. He has really just put the most incredible people in my life to wrap their arms around me when I fall to the ground and don't think I can make it another day. Also the Lord has truly given me the strength to walk out my saintly identity that I have found in Him. I can honestly say that I love myself and am beautiful, which is a HUGE step for me. I find myself desperately seeking time with the Lord. Jude 20-21 say: “But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.” In moments of fear and defeat where my faith starts to waiver, the Lord stirs me to pray in the Holy Spirit and that is what has kept me going these last 5 weeks, since school began. I am so thankful to the Lord for His reminders and freedom and healing that He brings.


Here is a video I made testifying about the freedom Jesus has given me.

On another note, two years ago today, I received a full deliverance from the Lord and my life was turned upside-down. I praise Him for the work that He has done in me over the last two years. I'm definitely a different person and I know many people who can vouch for that. Thank You Lord.

I now need to go study, but I'm eager to hear everyone's responses to my public announcement about moving to Vegas. Looking forward to hearing from you!

birthday vlog

Here is the video blog that I made on my birthday.  I never got internet that was good enough to upload a video, so now that I'm in America, I figured I'd let everyone in on the crazy video blogs that I made and the written blogs that I was unable to post. 

ten, do, ek, SMILE !

Here are links to the albums of my photos from India, ENJOY!

Team 1 (my first two weeks in India)

Trisha and I’s adventures (my third week in India)

Team 2 (my fourth and fifth weeks in India)

Christian Elephants

In the village I stayed in, in the mountains of Orissa, over 200 Christians were killed in 2008. Hundreds of houses were burnt to the ground, five thousand people displaced. The fear has not stopped these Jesus warriors. They have 180 churches with only 30 church buildings.

I'm not really sure how to type out my thoughts from this experience.

• I was sick the whole time. I have a nasty head cold, and if you know me well, you know how I am when I get colds.
• I ate with my hands the entire stay. We were not given silverware. Thus I now feel that I am allowed to call myself a real Indian. (We even once ate out of a leaf bowl).
• I hate Indian food.
• I taught Sunday school.
• I met Compassion kids. :)
• I visited churches that were burnt down and broken.
• I heard testimonies.
• I saw hope.
• I also saw fear [and felt fear].
• I was given many bouquets of flowers.
• I encountered Holy Spirit hardcore in an orphanage.
• I saw monkeys. I was in the real jungle.
• I made friends.
• I received a prophetic word.
• I saw vision.
• I encountered scripture coming to life to me for the first time.
• I sang songs with little girls.
• I drank chai and ate biscuits.
• I ate food that was prepared with un-purified well water. As in, all the food I ate was prepared with un-purified well water.
• I was afraid.
• I have red dots all over my body... I'm pretty sure it's bed bugs. Fun.
• I learned how to count to five and say dog and rooster in a language called “Que.”
• I experienced a lot of power outages.
• I took many photos.

That's a synopsis. So why is this titled “Christian Elephants,” you might ask? Right after all the attacks and persecution, many elephants came out from the jungle and damaged a lot of Hindu's and Animist's houses in the villages. So the Christians call the elephants “Christian Elephants.” Talk about Jesus. :)

Freedom

I left America 18 days ago. This is the longest I have ever been in a foreign country. Today I am having a very chill day. Tomorrow is my 20^th birthday. I have been dying to be 20 for years, since most of my friends are older, but now that I'm actually turning 20, I find it very strange. Like I'm entering new territory or something. And I guess I am; I'll no longer be a teenager. This is my first birthday I've spent overseas. New territory of life in new territory of the world.

For most people, if you're reading this you're interested in my trip, hearing about what I've been doing and how God is moving. However, as I'm sure you've noticed, I blog about life and Christ, not so much day to day ministry. This isn't my “mission trip blog,” this is my life blog. I've had it for 3 years. This is my personal online diary that I allow the world to see. I want to be an open book. If you look through older posts, you will find hardship, tears, anger, pain, love, life, renewal, joy, etc. All that being said, if you're just interested in hearing just about my day in India, stop reading now.

Two weeks ago I got the privilege of meeting a little girl named Shabonna. If I told you anything about the ministry I'm working with before I left the country, I probably told you a story about a pair of siblings who would sleep under their mother's bed while she “worked” at night. How their mother got sick and was kicked out of the brothel. How the mother died of AIDS in the street with the kids sitting with her. How BTC picked them up and took them to the AIDS home. How the little brother had AIDS and the older sister told him she would never let anything happen to him. Well when I walked into the Jubilee 4 (the AIDS home), I was met by a bright little girl who introduced herself to me as Shabonna. Before I could even ask my leader if this was the same Shabonna from the story, I knew in my heart it was her. I watched her the whole evening. I watched her leadership, I watched as all the kids came in from school they ran and jumped into her arms, I watched as she held the small children and gave them kisses, I watched as she humbly received gifts just waiting to share them with the other children.

I've shed many tears thinking about this little girl in her hardships. To now see her as the bright shining star of my King, I was filled with so much joy. I look forward to sit down and talk to her for a bit and explain to her just how much she looks like Jesus.

I struggle a lot with condemnation and self-hatred. Even as I write this, I feel the Lord giving me a grace to overcome this huge part of my life and to give a message to the girls at Ashagram. I'm having a hard time trying to organize my thoughts, so forgive me if this is a bit jumbled.

Two of the women on the first India team adopted me as their spiritual daughter, so I now have two spiritual moms; Andrea and Alis. They are amazing women. The night we left Jubilee 4 I was telling Alis that I was so amazed by Shabonna and that I want to be like that. I want to have so much love welling up from inside of me that people are drawn to me. Typing that out makes it sound very arrogant, but I didn't mean it like that at all. I only love because God first loved me and love is not self-seeking. I am not seeking adoration from people, I was seeking the ability to give love better. Alis looked at me and was like, “Casey you already do that. When I looked at Shabonna I thought of you and how much you love people and how they love you. Whenever you step foot at Jubilee 1 and 2 you are surrounded by a group of girls who are latched onto you. You shine bright.” I completely denied it and shoved her statement under the rug of my heart, hidden away, ashamed.

Why would I be ashamed of a compliment? Because of the condemnation I have allowed to choke my life. Jesus planted me in fertile soil, but I let the enemy plant a thorn bush next to me, because I felt I didn't deserve to experience joy.

So here is my stand to freedom. I have lived in a place of self-hatred for too long. I love people and that is a beautiful gift from my Papa. This is not over, but here's to a new start, a new beginning, a new freedom, a new decade of life. (:

In Christ Alone

I'm sitting on the ledge of a building on a huge teen challenge compound in India. It's extremely hot and humid. I'm literally dripping sweat and I'm just sitting here. But just to tell you how faithful my Papa is, I just said to Him, man I wish there was more of a breeze and immediately the wind starting blowing. My Father is good.  Here is a picture of where I am sitting as I write this (I don't have internet, so I probably wrote it several days before you are actually reading it).

Today has been a good day.  This morning I lead a devotional to former prostitutes who are either young Christians or unsaved.  I shared with them a little of my testimony and told them how they see me as pure, when they are in Christ, He sees them as pure.  It was really early in the morning and sort of hard to give the message with the translator.  I'm not sure if any of them really got what I was trying to say, but I know Holy Spirit will lead them into the truth they needed to receive from my words.

After that, I went to breakfast, ate a roll and chai, then dashed back to the girls dorms to teach a class. I've taught people stuff before, particularly in my HLTH and COMS classes back at Liberty, but this was the first time I've ever been the real teacher, teaching a real class, with a really important message. Class was one hour long. This time my translator was the sweetest girl that I sat with at dinner last night. She is seriously precious. She's 21 and has been with BTC for 12 or 13 years, since she was very young. It makes me so sad to know that if she's at Ashagram that means she has worked on “the strip” selling her body...  Which would make her 7 years old when she was “working.”  Heartbreaking. Her name is Anu. I'm really excited to get close to her. 

Anyways, Anu was my amazing translator. I made her laugh a lot. I'm not used to teaching, let alone teaching through a translator. I know I told all of you that I would be teaching health classes, and I will, but this class is actually a teen challenge class that everyone at Ashagram is required to go through. They have to go through this class and get a certificate before they can even get baptized. Baptism is a big deal here. But that is besides the point.  The book I am teaching is called Successful Christian Living. Chapter One is called “Who Am I?” All the sweet girls and ladies in my class were new believers. I think the youngest in my class was 13 years old. There were a couple older ladies, but most of them were in their teens. Teens rescued out of prostitution. Teens choosing to live for Jesus. They were all so beautiful. Since Anu was my translator, I got to get really interactive with them.  I had them tell me what people call them or what they call themselves.  I got answers like “fat,” “gorilla,” one girl was called “platform” because she has a big, flat nose. It was great to get them thinking and talking.  I wrote these words down on a dry erase board.  Then I would mark one out and say, “You are not _____, you are ______.”  Telling them who they are in Christ: God's child, Christ's friend, loved, purchased, free, growing, etc.  I had them read the scripture that went with each promise of God in Hindi. It was seriously so cool.  Almost makes me want to be a women's ministry major... well not really, but I am loving teaching this class.  I'm so excited to keep teaching it over the next few weeks and really get to know these girls. 

That has been today so far.  Yesterday was not so lovely.  I'm not going to go into great detail, but I was under a major attack from the enemy.  Lately when I can't sleep, the Lord has really been speaking loudly to me in the middle of the night.  So at like 1AM I typed on my ipod, “I think this may be the first time that I have ever understood myself to be actively falling in love with Love. I've said that I love Love many times, but I think that I am truly experiencing real joy for the first time in my life, because I am loving so much and really living love, in tern, experiencing real love. I have realized that you can't fall in love with Love without loving. Haha, I loveee joy.”  Maybe that doesn't make since to you, maybe that spoke volumes to you, but for me, it's these late night revelations that are keeping me faithful when the spiritual warfare is strong. 

Please keep praying for me. Pray for my girls. A big prayer request is that on Sunday I think I'm going to be playing Revelation Song on guitar in front of the church while my group sings it...  And well I'm just trusting God to get me better at guitar before then.  I borrowed a guitar to try to learn the song.

Shoutout to my guitar playing friends... Check out my attempt at a makeshift capo.