ghost

The ghosts of who I've been and the things I've become. I feel nothing or everything. I hate some things, love some things. This was a year of revelation. My distracted years of youth are past and my eyes have been opened to what they were once blind to. This is the last year of my teens, and I am saying goodbye. But I am saying hello to so much more. Purpose. Dream. Passion. Meaning. Understanding. No longer a chameleon of what people expect from me, I am a collage of the woman who's been hiding. Goodbye 2009, it is good to be rid of you.

Church.

I hate the reality of church.

I hate fake people. Jesus didn't come to teach us how to cover up our faults; He came so we can learn to love, and become more like Him. It's impossible for me to pretend anymore. I spent way too many years trying to be someone everyone could like. Being good, being skinny, being popular. Those are nice things. But not when it's a show.

I have a friend named Fran. She's my hero. She knows where it's at.

This is not a hate letter to the church. It's an invitation. An invitation to a revolution. Wake up and smell the coffee, heaven-bound!

I am also sleep-deprived and buzzed up on caffeine.


Gosh I want to throw a brick at something.

Sex Trafficking: It is Happening in Our Backyard

September 8th, 2009 by Jane Marie Smith and Dr. Gary Scott Smith

A story in last week’s news focused on the mysterious reappearance of Jaycee Lee Dugard, a 29-year-old woman who had been kidnapped 18 years earlier—snatched into a car while walking home from school. As the details of her imprisonment emerge, the horror is inescapable. Hidden in a filthy backyard complex, she was forced to serve as a sex slave for her jailer—even bearing him two children during her captivity. Can she ever live a normal life? What does the future hold for her children—young teenage girls who rarely left the backyard in which they were born? Will her captor receive the punishment he so soundly deserves?

We’ve heard and been repulsed by such stories before. Three years ago a young German woman, Natascha Kampusch, escaped from an Austrian cellar after being held captive for eight years. Nearly a year after her 2002 abduction from her bedroom and forced “marriage” to her kidnapper, Elizabeth Smart was rescued when an elderly couple recognized her after seeing her story on television. When confronted with the gruesome details of these crimes, we wonder how something like this could happen. What kind of person could treat a child so callously and brutally? At least, we often comfort ourselves, such abductions are rare.
Unfortunately that’s not the case. Every day girls all over the world lose their innocence to heartless “owners” who are profiting from the sale of their young bodies in the sex trade. They “work” in brothels in Eastern Asia, India, Europe, and yes, in the United States. Just last week five people in Houston were arrested and charged with trafficking children—children they had forced into sexual servitude.

The U.S. State Department estimates that about half of the two million people trafficked across international borders each year are minors, the majority of whom are forced into commercial sexual exploitation. These children, occasionally as young as seven or eight, are sexually and emotionally brutalized until they are sufficiently broken to serve as many as 20 customers a day. Vulnerable to the lure of traffickers because they are poor, uneducated, and often orphaned, these girls succumb to tempting offers for seemingly lucrative jobs in other countries. When they arrive, however, in their new homes, they are stripped of their passports, their dignity, and their freedom. Their captors control them by physically and emotionally abusing them and by denying them access to money or other means of escape. Rarely can they speak the language of the country where they are being exploited; many are warned that their families will be murdered if they flee.

In the United States, where studies reveal that the average age at which a girl enters prostitution is 12 or 13, vulnerable populations include runaways, foster children, and illegal immigrants. Most have been sexually abused at home or on the streets. Trafficking recruiters lurk near Southern California high schools and target immigrant girls, threatening to turn their families over to Immigration Services if they don’t begin to turn tricks. Pimps often gain control of runaway girls with kindness—before raping, beating, and drugging them into submission and forcing them to walk the streets. Sadly, if they are picked up by the police, they are often treated as criminals instead of as the victims they are.

It’s time we recognized the evil of this practice and work together to end it. It’s time we, like William Wilberforce and William Lloyd Garrison before us, become abolitionists. To do so, we must first learn as much as we can about sex trafficking and those it affects. We should support the work of nonprofit agencies like the Salvation Army’s program for the abolition of sexual trafficking, the International Justice Mission, Shared Hope International, and Stop Child Trafficking Now to end this vile practice. We can contact state and federal lawmakers and encourage them to enforce existing anti-trafficking legislation and to enact stronger measures against slavery. Language in these laws needs to mandate that victims be treated as such instead of as criminals. And since as many as 100,000 children are currently victimized by commercial sexual exploitation in the United States, we need to be watchful and report suspicious activities to the State Department’s trafficking victims hotline (888-373-7888).

The treatment these children—both in this country and overseas—receive at the hands of their captors is so brutal that few Americans believe it is happening—but it is. We cannot imagine reading thousands of headlines a day about children being kidnapped and sexually exploited, but it is the reality we must face. We need to be as outraged by child sex slavery as we are by the stories of Jaycee Lee Dugard, Natascha Kampusch, and Elizabeth Smart. And we must hold out a hand of hope and rescue to these abused and desperate children.

source: http://catholicexchange.com/2009/09/08/121665/

Soul Mate.

I realized something today.

I've realized that a soul mate is not necessarily your romantic other half. It's that person you're destined to be with forever.
That person who complements you perfectly. In your thoughts, your emotions, your ministry, everything.

That person you can't live without.
That person who's always on the same page as you no matter how far apart you are or how long it's been since you talked.


That person who eases that aching inside when they are close.



Sierra Lynn Goss is that person to me.

Struggles

There is a gaping hole in my chest, burning at the edges. This thing called depression fights to surround me. There is nothing I can do to sooth it. No night of rest, no fun and mindless outing. No prayer, no verse, no song, no poem, no thing.

This overwhelming sense of hopelessness encompasses my soul.

EHPESIANS 5:1-21!

"Let no one deceive you with empty words..."

"...for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light...."

"For this reason it says, 'AWAKE O sleeper, and ARISE from the dead! And Christ shall make day dawn upon you and give you light!"



I can almost see it, this dream I'm dreaming, but, there's a voice inside my head saying, "You'll never reach it." Every step I'm taking, every move I make feels lost with no direction, my faith is shaking. But I've got to keep trying. Gotta keep my head held high. There's always going to be another mountain, I'm always gonna want to make it move. Always going to be an uphill battle, sometimes I'm gonna have to lose. It's not about how fast I get there, not about what's waiting on the other side, it's the climb. (never in my WILDEST dreams did I think those words would speak to me)



"Feel grief, but respond with rejoicing."




Just keep pushing on..

THE RESCUE ANTHEM

There are those who expect
the unexpected
Those who cast their vote
for hope
Those who believe that good
Will triumph over evil
WE ARE THOSE PEOPLE

We are the Masses, misfits, moguls, media, millennials
Doing what we can now
With what we have
Our voice
Our impact is only limited
By our willingness to change

We are abducting ourselves
To pose the question to our leaders:
IS THEIR LIFE AS VALUABLE AS MINE?

We are shaping human history
By closing the divide between
Resources and Responsibility
Distance and Disinterest
Awareness and Action

This is about redefining our role in the world
Putting Purpose before Profit
It's about ending the longest running war in Africa
Setting a precedent for Justice
And finishing what was started

We are here to amplify the chorus of their cries:
RESCUE JOSEPH KONY'S CHILD SOLDIERS

Awake, O Sleeper

This is probably going to be one of those, "Hannah is being transparent and wants to spill her feelings out to the entire cyber world" kind of posts.

Where do I begin?

Life here, where I am, is rough. It's hard. It's grueling. BUT, it's exactly where I am supposed to be. God is the coolest Being I have ever known.

While I sit here, in the so-called "mundane" of Northern Kentucky life, I realize something.


It's not so mundane after all.


I suppose when you go around traveling the world and all, coming back home seems simple, and boring. Why come back here??? What could there possibly still be for me here, in Northern Kentucky??? Nothing but boring days. And people living boring lives. People who don't look past the walls of their suburban homes and cheery churches.

Oh but I was wrong. Apparently, I don't know everything. And apparently, just because I traveled the world doesn't mean I'm too cool for NKY. Oh no.


I'm doing a lot here in the fight against slavery. Did you know human trafficking goes on in Northern Kentucky and the Cincinnati area? Well, it does. And it's really exciting where God is taking me with all of this. But it's a very emotional journey at the same time. I am a very over-emotional and dramatic person. And I am just learning to reign my emotions in and keep them in check. So this emersion into one of the most disgusting, horrifying, perverted, evil industries in this world today has wreaked havoc on my emotional well-being.

I have terrible dreams every night. Not technically terrible in content, but very strange, emotional dreams that make me feel icky, depressed, or distracted from truth when I wake up, and throughout the day. Prayer against these is very important.


I work at Dunkin' Donuts now, which I personally think rocks. I hate donuts, and I hate coffee, but I love my co-workers. That's another mission field God has given me, and it also comes with some very cool friends. The only unfortunate things about this job is the pay, and no health benefits... So I'm kind of in a bind until I find something better. I need something better. And that makes me sad because I love working there.

I continue to hold on to my dream of going back to San Francisco, and one day doing mission work in Ukraine. But for now, God has me in Kentucky. And even though things can be terribly rough, and sometimes depressing and suffocating, that's why I have God, comedy, and my kid siblings.



Ever heard of the Wizards of Wavorly Place? Yeah, they keep me sane.



Life is good, God is better.
"Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall make day dawn upon you and give you light."


Oh, ps, I met Justin Dillon. Just FYI...

Seven Layer Face

A Poem By Hannah Hendricks
Dedicated to Sierra Lynn Goss

To the end is no end
To burst and to bloom
To run is to mosey
From our impending doom

The stars are the teacups
The rain and the flowers
Each minute a second
Of this lonely hour

The torture is torment
Of this troubled soul
The friendly are missing
You are far from home

He gets you this dark one
His treats and his tricks
He haunts you in sadness
Your faint heart he kicks

The spring-time brings old hurts
Spider webs of lace
Remember who you were
Seven Layer Face


From two-face to freedom
Your heart is mending
But his mask-ed whispers
Your will is bending

Alone you are nothing
Just one you will fall
So rise up and stand strong
As one you are all

The grass is your straw hat
Your socks and your shirt
He still fights for your thoughts
To cause you more hurt

But arise, O sleeper!
A call from the throne
Remember your calling
You are not alone

The spring-time brings new growth
Spider webs of grace
Remember who you are
Heaven layered face

Lifeline

I am being tested as we speak. Sometimes I feel my life is falling apart, even though I know this truth that keeps me going.
God is good, amidst difficult circumstances. I am NOT going to lose sight of my dreams. I will hold tight to them, while persevering through this.
God has also blessed me with a car, and a job. Both this past week. So now I can begin saving for San Francisco in January (if I get accepted). Ukraine is no longer happening this summer, which I am ok with. God's plan is perfect, and I know I will end up there someday.

A word of advice: It is ALWAYS a good thing to be transparent. Honest with yourself, God, and others. There is no freer a feeling.


This is what I listen to while I worship Jesus, in this moment.

With an urgent, careful stare,
I see panic in those eyes.
If I see you lying there,
Hoping this was the last time

If you hear a distant sound,
And some footsteps by your side.
When the world comes crashing down.
I will find you if you hide.

If you wish it, wish it now.
If you wish it, wish it loud.

We all make mistakes.
Here's your Lifeline.
If you want it, I want to.

There’s a field near the dream.
I watched it grow with whitest light.
I watched us all reach out and lean.
For the strength to touch the sky.

If you hear a distant sound.
And some footsteps by your side.
If you feel like coming round.
I will take you for a ride.

If you wish it, wish it now.
If you wish it, wish it loud.

We all make mistakes.
Here's your Lifeline.
If you want it, I want to.

"Lifeline" -Angels & Airwaves

SEX TRAFFICKING - First of a Four Part Special Report

NOTE: THE CONTENTS OF THIS NOTE ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN


San Francisco is a major center for International Crime Networks that smuggle and enslave.


Many of San Francisco's Asian massage parlors -- long an established part of the city's sexually permissive culture -- have degenerated into something much more sinister: international sex slave shops.

Once limited to infamous locales such as Bombay and Bangkok, sex trafficking is now an $8 billion international business, with San Francisco among its largest commercial centers.

San Francisco's liberal attitude toward sex, the city's history of arresting prostitutes instead of pimps, and its large immigrant population have made it one of the top American cities for international sex traffickers to do business undetected, according to Donna Hughes, a national expert on sex trafficking at the University of Rhode Island.

"It makes me sick to my stomach," said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. "Girls are being forced to come to this country, their families back home and threatened, and they are being raped repeatedly, over and over."

Because sex trafficking is so far underground, the number of victims in the United States and worldwide is not known, and the statistics vary wildly.

The most often citied numbers come from the U.S. State Department, which estimates that 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked for forced labor and sex worldwide each year -- and that 80 percent are women and girls. Most trafficked females, the department says, are exploited in commercial sex outlets.

Relying on research from the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department estimates there are 14,500 to 17,500 human trafficking victims brought into the United States each year -- but does not quantify how many of those are sex victims. Some advocacy groups place the number of U.S. victims much higher, while others criticize the government for overstating the problem.

"The number will always be an estimate, because trafficking victims don't stand in line and raise their hands to be counted, but it's the best estimate we have," said Ambassador John Miller, director of the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. The CIA wont' divulge its research methods, but based its figures on 1,500 sources, including law enforcement data, government data, academic research, international reports and newspaper stories.

Women trafficked for the sex industry are predominantly from South East Asia, the former Soviet Union and South America -- lured to the United States by promises of lucrative jobs as models or hostesses, only to be sold to brothels, strip clubs and outcall services and extorted into working off thousands of dollars in surprise travel debts to their new "owners."

Federal investigators say that even those who come to the United States with the idea of working as high-society call girls cannot imagine the captivity and degrading workload they face.

"Human trafficking is a multibillion-dollar business in terms of profits, it's on a path to overtake drug and arms trafficking," said Barry Tang, an Immigration and Customers Enforcement attache with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in South Korea. "There's a highly organized logistical network between Korea and the United States with recruiters, brokers, intermediaries, taxi drivers and madams." (all help smuggle girls in)

The United States is among the top three destination countries for sex traffickers, along with Japan and Australia. Once in the United States, traffickers most often set up shop in California, New York, Texas and Las Vegas.

It's an underground world, but in more than 100 interviews with federal agents, experts and sex trafficking victims in California and South Korea, a picture emerges about how international traffickers buy and sell women between Asia and the West Coast.

"Overseas, the trafficker is usually a woman. She recruits from clubs, bars, colleges, pool halls and restaurants," said Deputy Special Agent Mark F. Wollman, who oversees San Francisco for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Recruiters fill the want ads in papers and the Internet, targeting vulnerable young women with fake job offers for waitresses, models and hostesses in America.

Traffickers fly women to Canada or Mexico, and walk or drive them into California. In Canada, they slip through Indian reservations off-limits to the U.S. Border Patrol, often at night, and sometimes along snow-packed trails.

In Mexico, the traffickers lead the women over the same treacherous desert paths worn down by migrants heading to "El Norte" for work. More women come through airport customs in San Francisco and Los Angeles, using fake passports and student or tourist visas made for them by their traffickers.

It's relatively easy for traffickers to evade authorities at the checkpoints -- land, air or sea -- becuse women still don't realize at that point that they are being tricked.

"It's not like the movies where you open a trunk and you interview them and they tell you everything," said Lauren Mack, special-agent-in-charge with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego. "They aren't going to tell you they're victimized because they aren't -- yet."

Once in California, the women are taken most often to Los Angeles or San Francisco, where they are hidden inside homes, massage parlors, apartments and basements, only to learn that the job offer was just a ploy. Typically they are locked inside their place of business, forced to have sex with as many as a dozen men a day. Sometimes victims are forced to live in the brothel, too, where five or six "co-workers" are crammed into one room.

Their "owners" confiscate their travel documents until the women pay off exorbitant sums. Often captors will ensure the women never pay off their debts, by tacking on fees for food, clothing or rent. Some fine the women for displeasing customers, being late to work, fighting or a host of other possible transgressions.

Yuki, 25, who fears for her safety and only have her first name to The Chronicle during an interview in Seoul, said she was trafficked from South Korea to a karaoke bar in Inglewood (Los Angeles County), where she was assured that she would simply be serving drinks to men. Once there, she was ordered to sell $3,000 worth of drinks each month. When she failed, she was sent to the "touching room", a private quite where men could have their way with her for $400.

Sex slaves who work in massage parlors and bars are often locked in their place of business by double security doors, monitored by surveillance cameras and only let outside under the guard of crooked taxi drivers who ferry them to their next sex appointment.

Women report being beaten, raped and starved by their keepers. Kim, who also withheld her last name, told The Chronicle in an interview in South Korea that she was forced to pay $4,400 for plastic surgery to open her eyes and make her nose thinner and pointier, "like Marilyn Monroe."

Both women eventually escaped their captors and now live as shut-ins in Seoul, spending their time on the phone or the Internet or watching TV, too afraid to go outside and cross paths with someone from the network that trafficked them.

They are scred because sex trafficking rings are often run by criminal organizations that aren't afraid to use violence to protect the billions they generate.

Although it's not known how much money the San Francisco market generates for sex traffickers, federal agents confiscated $2 million in cash from 10 Asian massage parlors during a San Francisco raid in summer 2005.

Local police say the bust didn't make a dent in the illegal sex trade.

"The number of Asian massage parlors has doubled in San Francisco in the last two years," said Capt. Tim Hettrich of the San Francisco police vice unit. "Profits are huge. I have nine people working on this. I need three times that many to keep up."


The San Francisco Chronicle

what next?

Yes. It's me. still floating in Limbo, but trying to find a course to make my way out of here.


I just returned from YWAM, as you know. I did my three months of Lecture Phase in San Francisco, then two months of outreach in Thailand and other parts of South East Asia. I got back about 2 1/2 weeks ago.

And no, I don't plan on going to college next (shocking, I know). But with that said, I now feel pressured to explain, in detail, my plans for the future. :) I must warn you, nothing is set in stone.

I have begun to study the Russian language. I plan on becoming fluent. Ukraine (and recently Russia) has been on my heart for a long time, and I think I will probably end up doing mission work of some sort over there someday. Whether it be living there permanently, or temporary, I don't know. I do believe, however, that I will end up living either in, or somewhere near Europe someday. But who knows.

I really want to go to Ukraine this summer for about a month, and check out the mission opportunities there, and hang out at different YWAM bases, but depending on money, we'll see if it works into God's plan. I also want to visit some friends in Switzerland.

I'm currently applying for staff at the YWAM base in San Francisco. If I get accepted I would like to staff there for at least two years, as a supported missionary. From there, I don't know. I'll probably end up doing a secondary school with YWAM. Something like a School of Worship or School of Evangelism or Biblical Studies or something. I don't know.

And these are just plans. Subject to change at any given time due to life-changing events or still, small voices in my ear. :)




But until then, I am in Kentucky. Trying to be content with the life that I live. Enjoying the time with my family, making lunch dates with old friends, and reaching out to new ones.


It is sometimes difficult to stay focused here, back "home". It's so weird to call it home. It doesn't feel like home at all anymore. But I couldn't tell you what it feels like, because I don't know. Just... weird... I sit around all day and mope. I eat too much food and am getting fat. I spend too much time on the computer, chatting it up on facebook, keeping in contact with my DTS family. Yes, my family. They are my family. The people I am the closest to on this stupid little planet.


But now, it is time to get my life together! I can't sit around, waiting for the next amazing thing to happen. Each day has just as much potential as the next! It's time to wake up early! Hop on that treadmill! Start calling around and get a job so I can go to Ukraine! I need to continue making the steps necessary to get me where I want to go, or I will be stuck in this place forever.



I want to be the person who pursues her dreams in the face of hardship and adversity when common sense tells me it is impossible.

Limbo

What do I do with my life now?

I have returned after five months spent in San Francisco, and South East Asia. I feel as if I don't exactly fit here anymore. Here, in Northern Kentucky. Is this my home? By all literal terms, yes. But it doesn't feel like home...

Josh Warner told me that after a week of being home, I'd be ready to go on to the next thing.


It took about 36 hours.

Now comes the time in my life when I hang in limbo. Unsure of where to go next... I know I need to go to Ukraine. But what do I do before that time comes?


Re-Entry into the real-world is posing to be more difficult than I thought. Old temptations are knocking at my door. Laziness. Apathy. I don't want to lose sight of my calling.



I need to buy myself a planner and get my life organized.


Who wants to help me paint my room?