We are getting intense. Today we watched the documentary “Bangkok Girl” about a nineteen-year-old Thai girl named Pla. It was such a heart-breaking story, seeing her smile, hearing her stories, witnessing her journey as she went from a painful childhood to working as a bartender to finally falling into the trap of a life as a prostitute. By the end of the movie, she had died, probably killed by her pimp or one of the johns who came to visit her. It made the struggles of these women so personal and gave us a glimpse into their lives. I am reminded that she was just a year younger than me, that she has dealt with things I’d never dreamed of facing. We also had presentations done by Dan Fibiger, who works with organization As You Sow, and Kique Bazan from Not For Sale. Dan told us about the sex trafficking taking place in Cambodia. I hadn’t realized the magnitude of the darkness covering this land. Over the last forty years, the country has been devastated by civil war and genocide. It’s completely normal to see children roaming the streets without arms or legs because they lost them in land mine explosions. And whatever men can’t find in Thailand to satisfy their sexual appetites, they go to Cambodia to receive. We learned about the corruption of many of the Western organizations who are there to help and learned how they actually worsen the problems. From Kique, we learned about the struggles of street children in Peru. The government enforced a “Social Cleansing Policy,” which called for death squads to go out and kill the street kids. The kids were often raped and sexually exploited, and what brings in a lot of confusion and gray areas about this issue is that many of the pimps in Peru are actually women who had been sexually exploited as girls. I’m becoming more and more aware of the immensity of the gray areas in the issues of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Our group debriefed over Mediterranean food, talking, and lots of laughter, but I’m still haunted by these stories, by their faces. Some of us feel ready for what we’ll face in Thailand and Cambodia; the rest aren’t as sure. Through it all, we’re trusting in God to give us divine love for those who are being oppressed, a righteous and holy anger at those who are doing the oppressing, and a supernatural hope for God’s justice and mercy to be revealed here on earth. Please pray for God’s precious children, who are suffering, both those who are being trafficked and exploited, and those who are being trapped by the enemy to carry out this evil.