IRM Update

"Indian Rescue Mission successfully rescued one minor girl aged 15 yrs from forced prostitution in Pune red light area on May 10, 2011 at around 20.18 hrs. She lost her mother at a very young age and she was trafficked from another state to Pune city on a false promise of job. Thank you each one of you who have prayed, supported and made this possible. And THANKS to God who helped us for this rescue. Brothel Keeper is arrested."

The Numbers

''Globally, some 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year, according to a 2007 report from the U.S. State Department. Of that number, more than 70% are female and half are children. However, a 2009 United Nations report stated that around 20% of all trafficking victims are children.'' CNN's Project Freedom, 4th May 2011

Indian Rescue Mission

This was sent to us by our friends at Indian Rescue Mission-it's a short introduction to who they are and their mission.



Blessings,

KB

P.S. The Tallest Man On Earth is my Monday music today.

God Grew Tired Of Us

The documentary God Grew Tired Of Us came out a few years ago so it's not a 'new' movie, but since it was my first time to see it, it was new to me.

It narrates the tale of the Lost Boys of Sudan-a group of boys that were forced to flee their motherland because of war and violence. In their exodus they wandered through the desert and faced trials varying from starvation to illness to lions and air raid bombings. Their numbers dwindled from more than 20,000 to 12,000 by the time they reached the refugee camp. Temporary relief was found in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, but it was short lived and they soon were transplanted to a refugee camp in northern Kenya. Another trek across the wilderness. Another long trip littered with disease and heartache. Another stint in a refugee camp.

Fifteen years later, the boys are now men and a select few were given the opportunity to come to the United States-another wilderness within itself. The boys adjust to living in apartments, shopping in a grocery store, working in the United States and facing the loneliness inherent in being new in a foreign land.

I can't say enough beautiful things about this movie. I was captivated by it from opening to end credits and shed a great many tears throughout. It is a sweet story of redemption that I highly recommend to everyone.



Blessings,

KB

P.S. The Weepies are appropriate for such soft weather outside.

humanrights.gov

The United States government has launched a new website: humanrights.gov, an easily accessible and user friendly page to gain access to press releases, articles, studies and breaking news on human rights issues from all over the world. Their section on trafficking is a wealth of information from such people as Ambassador Luis CdeBaca and Secretary of State Clinton.

Just My Imagination



Five Days A Week In Latin

 I am notorious for living in daydreams. During college and high school, I would often take knitting needles to class in an effort to occupy my hands and focus my mind on the lecture at hand. Doodles on the side of the page, knitting, shredding little gum wrappers-these were signs that I was soaking up the information presented before me. If you ever saw me sitting still, eyes foreword, you could guarantee I was already gone.

This is part of the reason I love the show Scrubs so much. The lead character, J.D., is continuously drifting off into an imagination sidebar of ludicrous situations, living in his own fantasies.



As cute and funny as kittens being an appropriate substitute for CPR is, it bothers me how much that represents my day to day. That I allow my mind to circle ideas and topics of things that aren't challenging, aren't changing me. How self centered my thoughts are.

"Slow Dancing In A Burning Room" is just fantastic, John.

No matter what you think of John Mayer or his music or the girls he's dated, there's no denying that he's a very, very bright guy. He was quoted last year as saying the following and this excerpt from it eloquently shows the dangers of continually living in a safe but self centered mind set:

"I grew up in my own head. As soon as I lose that control, once I have to deal with someone else’s desires, I cut and run. I’m pretty culpable about being hard to live with. I have had a good run of imagining things into reality. I’ve got a huge streak of successes based on my own inventions. If you tell me I’m wrong or that I’m overthinking something, well, overthinking has given me everything in my career. I have a hard time not looking at anxiety disorder as being like an ATM. I can invent things really well. When I meet somebody, I’m in a situation in which I can’t run it because another person is involved. That means letting someone else talk, not waiting for them to remind you of something interesting you had in mind....What that explains is that I’m more comfortable in my imagination than I am in actual human discovery." John Mayer,  February 2010

It costs us something to think of others-it's a gamble living in community and the first step towards that risk is acknowledging others. Donald Miller said it well in his book Blue Like Jazz, "But the trouble with deep belief is that it costs something. And there is something inside me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn't like the truth at all because it carries responsibility, and if I actually believe these things I have to do something about them. It is so, so cumbersome to believe anything."

I've been spending a lot of time on the website Wrecked, a website for social action for spiritual misfits. I read an article that asked the question "what wrecks you? what can't you stand?" This question is supposed to be a compass towards your passions and your called ministry. Sometimes I think the more appropriate question would be "does anything wreck you? does anything break your heart?"

For me, it is much easier to remain insulated in my thoughts, in my fantasies than to think about ugly things. There is no guilt or cumbersome belief in thinking about bridesmaids dresses at potential weddings, or how cool it would be to play at the Ryman one day, or writing a novel that would be shelved next to The Great Gatsby in homes everywhere. How selfish I am with the mind that God has given me, a mind designed to think and grow and love and serve Him. How wasteful for me to give away precious storage space to these trite thoughts instead of thinking about the people in Japan suffering apocalyptic events, the malaria ridden children in Africa or the millions of children being trafficked in India right now. If only I loved my neighbor as much as I loved myself-I'd probably think of them more often.

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time:

"I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind." Emily Bronte

Here's to hoping that we can dwell on things that change us, challenge us. Ideas that run through us and alter the color of our minds. Here's to being wrecked for something.

Blessings,

KB

P.S. Mat Kearney's "City of Black & White" is bringing the sunshine today.

Unearthing Sexual Exploitation

Unearthing Sexual Exploitation

more practically

More practically. This is what is about to go down. The Kati, Katie and I...or as I refer to us...Katrati...will be going to India at the end of this year to lay some groundwork for this organization. There is a lot of steps that needs to be taken in India once we have the organizational framework set up here. We will have to go through the process of registering all over again in the state that we will be working in. Fortunately we have an amazing group of Indian friends overseas who believe in what we want to do and are just as excited as we are about getting this project off the ground. And this is all happening fast. A week ago this was only an idea. Now we are incorporated, are proceeding with getting non-profit status, and have friends in India looking at properties for us.
This is what will happen once we are in India. We will be meeting with local orphanages, community leaders, government officials, trafficking victims, and commercial sex workers to network and perform a needs assessment for our program. While we are creating a clear-cut plan for our work we want to adopt an approach that can adapt to the local needs and issues that of our community. Many development/aid organizations frameworks are contrived outside the country's borders and without sufficient understanding of local cultures and issues.
The plan for December:
Perform needs assessment in New Delhi and Calcutta for our children's rehabilitation center.
Visit and work with several centers, orphanages, and red light districts....take lots of notes
Drink my first real Indian chai tea
Meet and network with local community and government leaders
Visit communities and decide on a site for our first center
Look at and possibly purchase property
Begin organization registration in India
do some filmwork and photography so we can show our work in India back to our friends in America
Change lives

After this the Kati(e)(s) and I will be returning to the US to make preparations for a more permanent move to India. I will be completing the last of my PhD coursework (yay). Then we will return to India as soon as possible to oversee the program. We have set the goal, and I think realistically (although idealistically) at having a center running with 40 to 50 children within a year of startup (September 10th). We've got a lot of ideas for this program that I'm completely stoked about and to be quite honest, almost giddy about, that I will hash out next time. Lastly, we have some of the most amazing friends in India and the United States that anyone could possibly imagine who have really rallied around us and this cause and quite honestly blown our minds. We could not do any of this without you. We're so psyched about what is happening we haven't been getting much sleep the last two weeks. Seriously. Which reminds me. Its after midnight. Peace and love.

Here we go

I'm sure that you have been where I am now. In a chair. One that is on a plane or in a car or on a boat or a motorcycle or even a train that is pointed in a direction that you don't know if you are ready to go. Your heart caught in the tension of the excitement and sheer terror of what you have done. Wondering how you got here. Knowing there is no way out. As if your mind is suddenly awakened from a sleep that your body did not recognize. Like when you finally jump off the side of the cliff overlooking the glassy water and fate gives you a few seconds to turn over your choices in your head. This time the temperature of the water is the last thing on your mind. Plane flights are cliff dives turned into hours. And jumps like this require months of suspense. All this to say: I'm not quite sure how we got here. But I am so excited. I think for me it somehow has to be blamed on a million moments culminating into one. I was sitting in a chair just like I am now. One that was on a boat. And maybe it was the combination of brain freeze from eating frozen yogurt too fast as an island was turning from a mountain into a hill into a dot on an ocean and a racing wall of water from the sky was erasing all my canvas and turning every color gray. There was nothing special about the moment. The yogurt was cheap. My skin was still cold and wet from me thinking it would be a good idea to go outside on a boat on an ocean in a storm. The painful piercing of the rain and the ferocity of the wind that felt like it could at any whim lift me from the deck was unlike anything I had ever felt. But sitting in that chair I somehow knew that the days of speaking of what I would someday do had ended. I felt a leap inside my heart. A leap off of a cliff.

So here we are. We--Kati Hultman, Katie Beth, and I (Travis Frugé)-- have all decided to take this leap together. We are starting children's homes in India called Ashraya Mission. Ashraya is the transliteration of the Hindi word for Refuge. In three months we will be in India looking at properties in Calcutta and New Delhi. We plan to have our first children in the program in less than a year.
Most importantly, we hope that our work will be effective in rescuing and restoring these victims and in representing the life Jesus lived. How are we going to do all this? (and that's just Phase 1). I imagine we will have to work very hard. I imagine this is more huge than I can imagine. But I also know that no one ever changed the world by thinking about how hard it would be. So. I hope you're in. Suffice it to say that we need help. Technically, all the help we can get. So if you're a film-maker. We need that. If you're a nurse. We need that. If you're a teacher. Definitely. It really doesn't matter what you do. We need your ideas and your skills and your support and your prayers. We can't do this on our own. And I don't think that we were meant to.