Our Brothers are RISING in our AMIDST!

Our Brothers ARE RISING in our AMIDST: My SISTERS Take Heart.

Today is International Women's day.  This morning, two men within fifteen minutes of my posting from  responded, giving finances I need that I might go to Nepal.  Today I am uploading a couple of youtube videos of our Brothers who are taking a stand against the exploitation of women and children by speaking TRUTHFULLY to men in front of us.  Today is a good DAY of HOPE Rising in the midst of Humanly created, perpetrated and perpetuated pain and human loss of life, love and dignity.

Today is a good day because men are speaking to men on behalf of women, children and men.  Today It is my brothers who restored HOPE in my heart after reading research done in the United States.
Did you know:
Of Women trafficked in the US:

41% experience Hopelessness?
64% experience suicidal thoughts?
63% experience hurting themselves?

Did you know according to research women in the US compared to women trafficked internationally sustain:
28% more broken bones
30% higher rate of bruises
40% higher rate of head injuries
17% higher rate of mouth and teeth injuries
53% higher rate of stab wounds and sprains
(Sex Trafficking of Women in the United States: International and Domestic Trends
            By Janice G. Raymond, University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

QUITE POUNDING STATISTICS
These are women whom are trafficked from as early an age as 6.
These are women whom men and some women believe actually enter the trade willingly as if it were their choice of livelihood.

All the time as I read about the horrendous circumstances of human trafficking, I also read and think about how the conditions of the US in general create an environment where this Gross Human activity is occurring.  Somehow the posture of VIOLENCE in the US is pervasive and promotive of the slave trade and the violence perpetuated and perpetrated there.  Somehow the fact that Global studies report the US as one of the worst countries to live in for Women and Women's rights seems connected to the information above.  And as a Christian Pastor I do believe firmly that Christian Churches teaching women must be subservient and servants to and of men, and or that women are less than equal in anyway before God, somehow, these Christian churches contribute to the overall and precise predicaments of the marginalization, disenfranchisement, poverty and pain of women.

I am traveling to Nepal, which has begun already my longer journey here at home, in the midst of a place where women and girls and boys and young men and transgendered people: suffer.

As a Woman made fearfully, wonderfully, beautifully in the same manner and from the same outpouring of LOVE that everyone is born of, I am determined to bring more LOVE, where brutality has reigned.  Thank you for your support, for your willingness to RAISE CHANGE.

Good NEWS! Total Raised as of this morning = $1680.00 with $3,120.00 to go
My first deadline is approaching! By March 15 I need to send in $2,800.00

Ideas: 
Share my Blog with everyone you know! 
As you begin lent, consider setting aside funds as a way of fasting...
As a lenten practice consider in prayer what ways you may have been acculturated to perpetuate the circumstances of human trafficking, even by being silent, and prayerfully consider contributing to change!
Donate electronically:http://www.gofundme.com/Hope-Rising-Amidst
Donate by Check(Tax Deductable): To: Nepal
                                                          c/o Sunset Covenant Church
                                                           18555 NW Rock Creek Blvd, Portland, OR. 97229
                                                           "Nepal" in memo!