First Farewell

The time has come for me to return home. I do not know how I feel about it all. I miss my family and friends, but this experience has given me a whole new set. I have visited the places I had only read about in my books.. from Florence's David, Italy's Cinque Terre, Paris's Eiffel Tower and Louvre, London's Big Ben, Athen's Acropolis, and the Netherlands to see Corrie Ten Boom and Anne Frank's house.. to name a few. I have been to 7 countries, attempted to speak 5 languages, and stood in two places at one time. I have climbed up churches, towers, mountains, and windmills. I have walked where the Apostle Paul, James Bond, literary artists, famous sculptors and painters, Romans and Greeks.. have walked. I have gone on eleven different flights, been thrown up next to while in transit... twice, slept in a small euro van with seven people (in the drivers seat which I did not know how to lean back), and seen a tram/bike/car accident. I have hiked and bungee jumped over a lake in the Swiss Alps, crashed a German wedding, driven across France, explored an ice castle, cliff dived, rode quads across an island, biked all over Europe, and mastered public transportation. I have ridden metro's in the heat of summer, forgotten to ask bus drivers to stop, and gotten lost on the trams. I have worn all my clothing in an airport, dragged my luggage across many different cities.. including some that only offered stairs, had a bus follow me with everyone pointing me where to go, attempted to get directions from people who spoke no English all the while accidentally having my shirt unbuttoned, had my computer break down and consequently now have a new computer with a French keyboard, and had my first experience of being pick pocketed. I swam in Lake Geneva, the Aegean, and the Mediterranean. I have eaten more cheese, bread, and chocolate than any person should eat in a lifetime. I learned about numerous cultures and became friends with so many different types of people. I visited old friends and lived with new ones.

I was able to speak and debate with people in international organizations. I was able to be taught by some amazing professors. I was loved and accepted. I was challenged. In the words of my Professor Leo, "the past 30 days in Geneva consider you endured 27 eighty-minute lectures; 13 two-hour international agency visits (sometimes longer); 4 mission visits (twice to the U.S. Mission); 5 tours; 3 days and two nights in Jungfrau; a day-visit to CERN, a meeting at the Geneva City Hall;and 7 hours of crisis group presentations. This of course does not include the time you spent doing the class readings; time in the libraries, one-on-one appointments with agency officials; visits to waste energy plants; preparing the crisis groups, special sessions you organized and riding public transit to and from meetings." I think that sums up Geneva.

I learned about and worked with people that are suffering. I will never forget the things I saw in Greece. I know what true bondage looks like. I have seen the destruction of hope reflected in a precious person's eyes. This memory has been burned into my mind forever.  I have found my passions. I saw and felt pain that cannot be described. I felt joy and peace that surpasses comprehension. I fell in love with traveling . I found who I was in so many ways that are too personal to write. Is it possible to grow up in a matter of two months? I will never again be the same.

More then ever I believe that the most important thing next to loving God in life is loving people. I think this is God's heart. He is a lover of life.. He is a lover of people. I want to do that my whole life. I want to never be inhibited by fear or held back by doubts. I want to live a vibrant and abundant life. I want to stumble and fall...  I want to be lost and then found. I think a beautiful life is an imperfect life... who can see God through man's "perfection" anyways?  I want to live a life that glorifies the Lord even in my mistakes and weaknesses. Hope. I want to bring hope and joy to every person I meet. My heart overflows with all these wants and desires. This is one of my favorite quotes..

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt

I am so blessed by my parents and everyone who helped me get here. Thank you. I could go on and on.. No doubt I will probably write another part to my goodbye to Europe when I get home and have more time to reflect... but for now.. this is my goodbye.

Because I never posted pictures...Greece.

Cute donkey herder old men.

Omonia.. the area in Athens that the office was in.

We counted how many stairs we would walk in a day... around 800 give or take a few. 

Santorini Has the most beautiful sunsets.

This is Peg... She became my second mom and best friend on this trip. P.S. We are outside the sold out Avita opera at an ancient Colosseum below the Acropolis that we got in for free... Thank you Cella and thank you Jesus.

Lots of street musicians.. she is below the Acropolis. I loved hearing the music.

I people watch... so cute.

In Corinth... walking on the ancient main road.. the EXACT road Paul would have walked.

Part of the team

Mars Hill with the Acropolis in the back. 

We went to Aegina for down time... and bike riding :-)

The team on top of the Acro Corinth.. where the temple of Aphrodite once stood.

I could not take pictures on the streets with what we were doing.. but I think this sums up what its like.  Taken on my way home from our office.

Prayer and Worship before going out.

My Amendment

So I have been doing research on policy regarding trafficking and prostitution. Surprisingly (or not) there is not much framework within the UN or even many countries dictating a good way of dealing with trafficking. Implementation of any government policy at a local level is even more sparse. As stated previously, I have been looking at how Sweden made it illegal to visit a prostitute. In my zealous state of wanting justice for girls in prostitution, I took off any responsibility that the prostituted women have. The law essentially still makes prostitution legal which is not a place I would want to go. Prostitution should never be considered a business. Although I see that in a lot of ways, the Swedish law makes trafficked victims better able to come forward about their plight by taking the fear of prosecution away, but it has decriminalized the institution of prostitution. I think they thought that without customers the women would be at a lesser risk to be prostituted. In some ways, I think this is true, but trafficking is part of the black market driven by organized crime.. the allowance for one to be a "prostitute" still allows for traffickers to skate around the legal framework. This idea makes it a business.. where the pimps are not responsible.. just the purchasers. I asked a friend what he thought about this and he said that it "was like drug dealers who could deal drugs without penalty."

It hurts sometimes to own and put into perspective that the women who do have a choice to be in prostitution (even if they have been abused etc) are still doing something that is wrong. I so always want to protect them, but I forget that are consequences of ones actions. There has to be a standard of truth to be followed. At some point, I cannot keep falling back on the trauma that led to the woman resorting to prostitution as an excuse for their actions. There has to be some acceptance of personal responsibility. I can have compassion for their plight, but I cannot condone their choice. Its a hard concept to grasp, but I do think its important. I think what makes it hard is the idea of prostitution even really being a choice. What choice did the girl who was raped by her father growing up and thrown out on the streets have? Sometimes the distinction between trafficked and choice becomes very blurry. Is exploitation a choice?

Besides, a pimp or trafficker should be on the top of the list of the ones to prosecute. In regards to the law, it could very well make it easy for the traffickers or pimps say that they were not doing anything wrong.. essentially passing the blame over to purchasers and vindicating them from responsibility. I do believe there needs to be a shift in the focus from prosecuting those that are prostituted and exploited to focusing on the pimps and buyers.. in all this I do believe that prostitution should never be legalized.

So many different thoughts.. sometimes its hard to put them all into order. I will keep writing, but please be patient with me because I am still processing. I may need to amend some statements as I go.

Wouldn't it be nice to be all knowing? The joining of responsibility, consequences, grace, mercy, compassion, justice, law, and absolutes is a hard one. My brain definitely is at war with itself many times. Often, the clash of emotional response and logic is hard to navigate. I have a lot of questions for the God that is fully capable of being all these things at the same time. How much harder would it be to try to understand anything without a godly worldview or a framework stemming from a God of absolute Truth? Or lacking any worldview or framework at all? You know the saying "so open minded your brains fall out". I would probably say it is more like "so open minded.. that your brain has lost any capacity to hold a stance because it has collapsed due to the complete chaos and constant conflict".

If I have not Love

So there is something that has been on my heart that I have wanted to say. Its going to be short and simple. I am not trying to spark a debate or to even argue my point. It is not my purpose in writing this. I only want to express what I have seen of God's sovereignty while I have been abroad.

God is not bound by our theologies or intellectual perception of who He is. We serve a relational God who we must see as whole; as being everything He says He is.. even when it does not make sense. It is because our human minds fail to completely ad fully understand God that the relational aspect is so important.

In regards to salvation, I can only tell you this.

I have helped with the orphanages in Mexico. I have been to the slums in Jamaica. I have been apart of medical clinics in villages in Indonesia. I have met with ambassadors, missionaries, and leaders of international organizations. I have worked in the US court system. I have worked with prostitutes in Greece. In all this, I can tell you one thing, God is love. This is what I know of Him from scripture and from our friendship. He is just and sovereign, but his sovereignty is not limited to His divine right to choose, but is expanded by His love and as a direct reflection of that love, His gift of personal choice.


Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. *1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Legality?

As I have been studying sex slavery and human trafficking, a few questions keep coming to mind. Why has human trafficking risen so much in recent years? Why is sex slavery so predominant? I mean this atrocity is pretty much detested across political and religious lines. It goes beyond the pimps and the traffickers. It goes beyond just "sex slavery". What is the root cause? It is the legalization and acceptance of prostitution. It is our culture. Culture has created a demand for it. Our culture has become so sexualized. Porn and the objectification of women being at the forefront. We have perverted what it means to be a man. The role of man has been lost. The importance of that role has been diminished.

In Greece, I profoundly felt this. When I looked at the girls in the streets, I knew that the majority of the people who put them there were men. The ones going after their services were men. I am not going to bash on men here. I did not have feelings that men are despicable, but rather I saw the importance of men.
Prostitution and sex slavery is a direct result of the perversion of the role that God has placed men in.
It does not even have to be Christian men, but men as a whole. I think there are standards and an intrinsic order to how God has set up the world. You do this.. this happens. Men I believe are meant to love and directly from that love.. to protect. Respect is an act of love. What happens when a boy is not taught to respect women? What happens when we take away a man's role as a leader and a protector? I am not saying that women are inferior or weaker and meant to be subordinate to all men. I am saying that I believe men have a duty to protect and to be I guess for lack of a better words.. warriors..fighters. What happens when society castrates men? It is agreed upon that a man that uses and abuses a woman is not really a man. How does this change when it comes to prostitution or even porn? Sexual exploitation is sexual exploitation. Why is it when you see a girl who is struggling through life.. it is always said.. Oh she has dad issues? Families are falling apart, children are hurting, and our country suffers because of the lack of knowledge of what it means to be a real man. Women are definitely not off the hook. Who do you think castrated half these men? Who has detested the role of men? Who has diminished and lessened the importance of real men? Ladies, I would like you to raise your hands. In our quest to be "equal" we forgot that we are different. Taking control of your sexuality.. what a joke.. you just made it easy to be used.. and ten dollars says that at the end of the day some part of you still hurts. Making a man respect you is as much for you as it is for him. Teaching and demanding a boy to respect women and girls is of the utmost importance. This becomes hard when there is no Dad to display that, but I do believe mothers have alot of say in the matter. Once again, we come back to the importance of a good father. Some fathers pass away, but they were good, as long as they were good. Because a father will flavor the kind of man that boy will become.

Sorry for my incomplete tangent.

Sweden actually made it illegal to visit a prostitute. They did not make it illegal to be a prostitute in order to shift the prosecution to the men. They figured if they cut the demand by prosecuting the users.. there would be a reduction of sex slavery. And it worked. Prostitution is a direct link to sex slavery. Where prostitution is legal.. sex slavery abounds. Gunilla Ecksberg was a leading woman in the implementation of the legislation in Sweden. She terms prostitution as male violence against women. This is the angle at which she attacked human trafficking and sex slavery.

"If prostitution is male violence against women, then it is a crime and consequently, there is a perpetrator. So, we need to focus on all the perpetrators in the debate on prostitution, not just the traffickers or the pimps, but the immediate perpetrator – the man who commits the prostitution act on the prostituted woman who is no different than a rapist."

The whole choice thing.. when does any girl really have a choice?

"They boil prostitution down to individual choice. If you analyze choice you recognize that choice is only possible if you choose from equal alternatives. You have to distinguish between making a decision and having a genuine choice....Pimps, traffickers, and buyers as sex tourists go to countries where women exist in oppressive social, political, legal and economic contexts or where there have been armed conflicts or natural catastrophes...to recruit and purchase women and girls into the prostitution industry. And when you look at prostitution/trafficking within countries, it’s the same thing. Men exploit the fact that women are marginalized/oppressed for different reasons e.g.. their victims may be girls who’ve run away from home because they’re being raped by their fathers or other male relatives, or women who are vulnerable due to drug use, leaving battering husbands etc."

The whole glitz and glamour of prostitution is a lie. Let us talk about the act of prostitution and its effects on society.

" Second Question: What do men do to women in prostitution? The pro-prostitution lobby will never answer the second question. They talk about how it’s dangerous to be prostituted on street corners because you risk being murdered, and how much better women will fare in legal brothels, but they never talk about the actual prostitution act that the buyers do to the women: the penetration, the touching, the humiliation. And this is the same wherever women and being prostituted. If they would talk about the prostitution act and understand profoundly the harm of prostitution, their whole analytic context would fall apart. It’s easy to talk about health standards and gynecological exams, but when we talk about the actual prostitution act, they can’t handle that and have no arguments.
The third question is: (3) What are the effects of prostitution on the women in prostitution as well as society at large? Prostitution doesn’t just have individual impacts on women in prostitution. It impacts all women in that society. If you have a country that thinks it’s appropriate and acceptable that women are to be for sale then you normalize the idea that men have the right to buy and sexually exploit not just a particularly marginalized subclass of women, but all of us."

This woman is very obviously a strong feminist. I am not a feminist or rather I think in christian communities we do not like to use that word. But Jesus I believe was the first feminist. In that he brought great amount of respect and love for women. He cherished them. Especially those like Mary Magdelene who had been so rejected and hurt in life. I mean what is the commandment that the Lord gave to husbands. To LOVE their wives. How wonderful. To LOVE. What a great God we serve. Women were meant to be loved. Prostitution. Sex slavery. This is a perversion of mans love.

If you would like to read Gunilla Ecksburgs interview here it is: http://action.web.ca/home/catw/readingroom.shtml?x=124788

1 Corinthians 13:4-7
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Ephesians 5:25-28
25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

Love you... Love me

I have left Greece and I am now in Switzerland for my UCLA study abroad program. I miss Greece, but I am so excited to get going with my program here in Geneva. As I reflect on my time in Greece, I think the most striking thing to me was the way the Lord changed how I viewed myself.

It can Be hard to be a Christian girl.

So here is the shout out to every girl who wanted to be perfect and failed. I am right there with you. There is something about knowing what you are supposed to be, having that image in your head, but feeling like a complete failure in trying to attain it. Along with all the other complications of the insecurities that bind us as women, sometimes I find that within the church we add a whole new element of guilt. I am too much, but I am not enough. I am not who I am supposed to be. I need to be more. I need to hide more.
I have always had this mental image in my head: on the op of a mountain stands the perfect woman. She is not real, but rather an image to attain. She is who every woman "should" aspire to be. She is kind, compassionate, gentle, delicate, sweet, giving, everything to everyone.. you know sugar and spice and everything nice. At the bottom of the mountain is me. My goal is to get to the top. To attain this image and to embody it. But I needed to climb the steep mountain. While I am climbing though, there are others throwing rocks at me. I am hit over and over. I cant get up the mountain. I feel so discouraged. Many of the people throwing rocks are other christians which adds a whole other hurt. I always felt there was something inately wrong with me. No matter how hard I tried I could not be her. I could not be what I deemed to be "perfect". I am clumsy. I often say the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. Sometimes my passion overrides my sense of reason. I am not always gentle and kind. I am not delicate by any stretch of the imagination. I always felt I guess you could say inadequate at the core of my being. I could strive to accomplish whatever I wanted to, but there was always this deep insecurity about who I was.

But I never pushed this view on any other girl but me.

I have talked with many girls that have felt the same as me. Its funny how the things we struggle with sometimes become what we are most passionate about. I never want any girl to not understand what she is worth. While I was in Greece, I grieved for the women in the streets. I could not fathom how they viewed themselves. The depth of their hurts and insecurities. The ways I have felt caused a lot of pain, but this was way beyond that. They had been destroyed at the core of who they were. I wanted them to see themselves as I saw them. As talented, beautiful, funny, and altogether precious women that were loved by their heavenly Father. I prayed for them constantly. During worship, I would praise the Lord for who He was, and ask that the girls would see who they were in Him. You know what happened? The Lord showed me who I was. In my quest to love these girls, I began to love myself. The Lord lifted the burden I felt for my lack of perfection, for all the mistakes I had made. The more I began to realize who I was.. the more love I felt for these girls. Can I even express the abundant joy and overflowing love that stirs inside me? There is no way I could express it.

Here is my tangent.. sometimes I just write.. so bear with me.

The one thing I hate.. absolutely detest.. is the way that judgement has replaced a heart of love. Please take this in context.. I know there is a place for judging. But what is the greatest of these: to Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind , and soul... and to love your neighbor as yourself? No.. we have become pretentious in our knowledge of the Word. We criticize not only the unsaved but so often we are so cruel to one another. We stay in our christian circles where we are safe. We do not really have to fight for anything. We are comfortable. But have you ever taken time to look at the people around you? I mean really look. Everyday we miss a chance to love someone. There are so many hurting people in the world. They are not just the prostituted women in Athens. People are dying inside while we live our lives knowing the truth. We criticize and bring others down. We deem people unholy without ever knowing their story. They are the girl at the check out counter who has to work instead of go to school because her family fell apart. Or the girl at school who everyone calls a whore...Did you know that she had been sexually abused growing up as a child? There are so many hurting people. We do not need to travel far to find them. Look outside your window or rather look at the one sitting next to you in church.

They are evreywhere.

While in Geneva, I am doing research, going to school, and meeting with officials and ambassadors. I already have a meeting set up with the leaders from the UN AntiTrafficking Unit, as well as officials from the human rights council. I have started my classes with a group of undergraduate and graduate students. We are studing globalization and global goverance in the context of urban planning in third world countries. We will also be doing a research project. I have chosen human trafficking as my topic and will begin to narrow it down soon. For one of the classes I am doing a different research project on forced migration in the context of regional conflicts. We are visiting all the global orgs while we are here after we spend time in class. So pretty much its 9 to 5 everyday. Pray that the Lord will show me how to glorify Him in all this. I want to work at a governmental level on the issue of human trafficking, but it is not enough to just get these girls out and to end it. I want to give them hope. I want to give them peace. There is only One who gives a peace that passes all understanding. There is only One who will set them free from all bondage. Pray that the Lord will reveal how I will be able to work in the secular realm while still allowing this to be about Him.

I will continue to write when I get a chance. I warn you. I am very nerdy so I apologize if it may get boring.

"By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35)

"We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death" (1 John 3:14).