Week 2: Sex Shops and Outreach Talks

10.8.10

Hey, everyone!

One update a week is my goal here. Here is a brief recap of the week. We had a guest speaker in Phil Cunningham. He’s not related to Loren by the way. We had quiet the overview of the justice issues this week. Poverty, human trafficking, fair trade, etc.

Phil is a cool guy who has an awesome campaign to help spread awareness of justice issues. This month of October he has a prayer each day of the month and each Monday is a challenge to action: things like fasting and different things. 

stepsofjustice.org

So, yesterday we did this scavenger hunt thing around Auckland. My team went to a youth center and found out the current things happening in the juvenile systems here. A recent law passed on the first that allows them to dig deeper and look into the overall situation going on instead of just the offense the youth makes. We got a tour and prayed for them.

We toured the rich side of Auckland and had some interesting cultural questions to ask. We went to a mosque to talk with people there and unfortunately they had a funeral. The final place we had to go to we could not find, but the most interesting time had to be the sex shops.

We had to find out how the legalization of prostitution affected their business as well as the recession. We split up into a group of 2 and one of 3 and had an interesting experience. The female store attendants both turned me away from questions. The males answered our questions. We were also supposed to find a prostitute and ask her how much “full service” costs...! We didn’t see any out and about around 2pm, but apparently you can find them on the back alley ways. We prayed over the red light district here. On a side note, the “rich” side of town...Ponsonby Street intersects directly with the red light “bad” side of town - K’ Road. 

On Tuesday we watched a movie called “Call & Response” it has some good artists in it -- Switchfoot, Imogen Heap, etc. It covers the wide range of slavery issues in the world as well and is quite heart breaking.

So we had to chose our outreach locations this week. Here were the two main options:

1. South Africa: sex trafficking recovery, cerebral palsey kids home, etc.
2. Middle East: (either Israel or Jordan) teaching English, working in refugee camps
3. Wild Card (would have to be lead by students): Thailand (sex trafficking recovery) or Vanuatu (working to build water tanks, etc)

My heart hasn’t changed and I want to work in sex trafficking recovery even though Cambodia isn’t an option, Phil our speaker has connections there which could very well come into play later. So, I chose 1) Thailand and 2) South Africa (we had to give two choices).

Hope all things are going well back home, please send me emails...notes...facebook stuff, etc. I will try to update as much as I can but the internet situation here is really poor and I may lose touch at points.

Random note: I’m excited to start working on “All Around Me” by Flyleaf for worship soon HEHE!