Dear Friends & Family,

It’s official. I have been here at YWAM for almost a month. Tuesday will make it a month. :) So much has happened. I thank God for all of the changes he has made in my life already. And I know that there are more changes to come.

This week we learned about Social Justice & God’s Goodness. Karisse Schilling was our speaker. She is an amazing speaker. God has really given her a heart to end human trafficking. Social Justice covers a lot of injustices but we mainly learned about human trafficking because Karisse is most familiar with that subject.

For those who do not know what human trafficking is I will start with the definition.

Human Trafficking is:

- The recruitment, transportation, or harboring of a person

- By means of threat, force, or deception

- For sex, labor, slave-like exploitation, or the removal of organs

There are over 27,000,000 victims of Human Trafficking today. That’s more than any other time in history.

Trafficking victims are generally young, seeking opportunities and/or poor. A lot are trafficked by a close family member or friend. Trafficked victims are usually taken into an unknown culture.

We learned a lot of statics this week. But we also learned that we just can’t sit around and do nothing. This is a big problem and for it to end we have to play our part.  Something Karisse said is “the enemy’s tactic is to overwhelm, paralyze, and distract us”. Doing nothing about this, is just what the enemy wants us to do. And there are a lot of things you can do, even if it seems little, it is worth doing. We learned of someone who taught some villages how to grow food. And because there was no longer a hunger issue they were less at stake for being trafficked.

Something you can do right here at home is make sure what coffee and chocolate you buy is slave-free. A lot of cocoa beans and coffee beans are harvested by slaves. If you look, there are some out there that say they are slave-free. There are not a lot, but now there are at least, now there are some. You can also write to companies like Hersey’s or Nestlé’s and tell them you want to know that the chocolate you are eating is not produced by slaves.

My challenge to you is to do something. Research this problem. Tell your friends about this. Facebook about Human Trafficking. Do what I did, write a blog about it. There is something you can do. We are all pieces of a puzzle, and in order for the picture to be complete, we all must play our part. Every part matters. Find your part, and do something. Human trafficking is not something that can be ended overnight. This will take time, but it can be ended.

On Tuesday I did my local outreach with homework helpers again. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoy math and like to helping the kids figure out they’re math problems.

A Praise report: on Thursday we learned the plane ticket prices, instead of being $2,200 like we thought they would have to be. We now have plane tickets for $1,600. This is a really good price for the season we are flying in. And plus we leave 5 days sooner. :D So that means we leave for outreach on the 12^th of December. We also thought that we might have to fly in like pairs, but we get to leave as a group. This is totally a God thing.

Prayer requests: Funds for outreach (I cannot say enough how we need prayer for money to come in. If you are in a place to give, and God tugs on your heart, please give. If you can’t give, pray for God to tug on someone who can give.), the kids who attend homework help (for them to be diligent working on their homework and that we have opportunities to share the gospel with them), for good health, and that outreach prep would go well.

My blessings and love to all of you. I miss you all.

Haleigh