ODW - One Days Wages

I am truthfully irresponsible when it comes to things we all need to be responsible for. Like for instance, I smoked for two to three years (can't remember when I actually started) and when I thought about quitting six months ago I had a hell of a time doing it. In fact I didn't quit until the beginning of December. All that time between July and December I actually started smoking more. I know why I did it, but that is something I'll relate to you later. I also have been bad, and still have occasions where I am pretty lame, about being responsible with money. I have spent so much money on things that don't matter at all. I have bought expensive meals when I can't afford gas, I bought seven dollar packs of smokes and had to buy another two days later when I couldn't afford it. I have been, on top of all that, relationally irresponsible. I used people for my own gratifications, not so much because I wanted to hurt them or because I was obsessed with ruining peoples lives. Naw, I did it because I wouldn't think about what my actions meant to them. I would feel bad all the time afterwards. (I'm talking about being the kind of guy you warn your female friends about). These things have had deep control over my life. They have had.

They do not anymore. There are a few things that have driven these scum covered desires for the chaos all duress creates, duress in my experience can be created by the person under it. I have been freed! Very freed! I still have trouble with the money thing, I am getting better, but I have been so frickin freed from the other things, it is amazing. It has been a three and half year battle and I have been up to my ears in the lifeblood of demons slain. (I write poetry once in a while.)

About three years ago, after my beautiful God really shook me and created in me a clearer vision and showed me a deeply loving and ridiculous grace driven heart, I discovered the truth about Human Trafficking. Having just been shown, for the first time it seemed, a God whose heart was bigger than any I had ever heard about, bigger it seems than any possible logician could account for. I had, under impeccable logic and understanding begun to emulate his heart. (I'm just kidding about the impeccable part, logic seems to be a problem for me when it comes to faith. Either I have to have logic in order to understand the concept of God, or I can have faith and forget about logic and begin to know God.) Well I spent a lot of the first month with Human Trafficking as a point of sorrow, a point I didn't want to point out to anyone. I didn't talk about it for a long time. The place I discovered Human Trafficking was through a website for men called 'The Deadly Viper" or something cool like that, they even had a sweet website. Well on the bottom of the site they had links to other sites that the men of God who visited the vipersite would be interested in. Being that I was beginning this whole man of God stuff I thought I'd check it out. Little did I know that the Not For Sale Campaign website, i.e. http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/ (btw this is a really long url), was on this list. I didn't even know what it was. I sat there and looked at the banner at the top that read '27 Million People Are Enslaved in the World Today'. When I read it, I kind of chuckled, I honestly chuckled, I didn't think it was true, I thought it was a marketing gimmick for some sales pitch. It couldn't be true, there was no way I could be a little over 20 years old and there could be slaves. That ended a long time ago when our ancestors fought the great Civil War and the great Emancipator Abraham Lincoln took that fateful humanitarian step to free all the people of African descent from slavery. I spent half an hour looking through the site trying to find out what they were trying to sell. By minute 29 it began to dawn on me that this could possibly be real. By minute 30, my life began to be rocked with emotions I was not equipped to deal with. I sat there struck dumb for a long time, don't know how long, no one knows in those moments. Eventually I closed the firefox (I have since switched to Safari for easy rss access) and walked through my pastors kitchen to my bedroom in the lower portion of their house. (I lived at their house for a year and a half after being asked to move in for a month of recovery.)

It has been three years since I began to know about Human Trafficking, the polite term for modern slavery. I spent some of those months in bitter anger at all those who could possibly sell another human being, especially when it came to sex slavery. I became bitterly sad with the realization that girls as young as 5 were being exploited up to 30 times a night by johns, the polite term for men who visit prostitutes. I became enraged as I learned about the exploitation within my own country, I mean come on! "The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency estimates that 50,000 people are trafficked into or transited through the U.S.A. annually as sex slaves, domestics, garment, and agricultural slaves." - http://www.gchope.org/human-slavery-statistics.html

After I was bitterly angry, bitterly sad, and enraged, I began a student org on my campus to deal with this issue, I did a lot of individual research. I talked to a lot of people about this problem I spent a lot of time delving the issues. I began to realize that the major factor that caused people to end up in the situation where they could be trafficked came when there was bitter poverty. Where the options were to sell themselves, or their children, or die of starvation.

One Days Wages (ODW). This is a cool place to cause great change. There are a lot of organizations out there combating poverty and I highly recommend ODW. The founders are Eugene and Minhee Cho. They have decided to donate one years wages, an amazing thing! I am so proud of the human race when I hear about people like Eugene and Minhee! Check out their site, they ask that we donate one days wage, a day of work to end poverty, to make an impact on taking away a cause for slavery. Go to http://www.onedayswages.org/ to learn more. This is an awesome opportunity to be part of something that demonstrates the new philanthropy of a new empowered generation. Btw, one days wage is only .4% of a persons annual wage.

"It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching." - St. Francis of Assisi