.:.I Never Knew.:.

I don’t ever recall this feeling.

This sick to my stomach kind of feeling. 

I never knew. 

How did I never know? 

This evening, our team sat down together to watch movies. We made breakfast for dinner and started out with the lighthearted children’s movie Tangled. We finished watching it, and seeing as the night was still young, we turned on another one. The film Taken. 

(If you have not seen it, I strongly recommend you watch it. It has to do with the very real issue of human trafficking and it brings to light many things people don’t realize about it.)

Now, I know a lot people have seen this movie, I had seen it once before myself, and it is just as heartbreaking each time. 

But this time was very different.

I sat and watched, knowing how it ends and letting that be some kind of comfort to me as I watched the horrific scenes before me. There where things I remembered, and things that I didn’t. One of them being that the men in the film, the ones who did the kidnapping, the selling, the “bad guys” of the story were Albanian. 

That’s right. Albanian.

As I heard them speaking Albanian on the screen, I was brought back to month 4, when I lived in Albania, getting to know the people, laughing with them, praying for them, loving them. 

I don’t know if you know much about Albania (I didn’t even know where it was before I went there), but it is located right above Greece and right across the Adriatic Sea to Italy. A predominately Muslim country. It is also predominately male. At the university of Vlore, the male-female ratio was probably 10-1. 

The book Not For Sale talks about the trafficking routes in Eastern Europe. The very first one it mentions in the chapter that has to do with Europe is the San Foca, Italy – Vlore, Albania route. One of the most popular in Europe for sex trafficking. 

 

The city I lived in. Laughed in. Walked the streets of. 

While we were there, we even took a boat to Bari, Italy which is very close to San Foca. 

And I never knew. 

I lived there for a month, fought for the nation in prayer and I never knew until now. 

I watched as these men purchased women, some American, some other races. I watched as they drugged them. I watched as they sold them again, making them less traceable. 

And all I could do was picture the men that I had grown to care for. The men that I had cried for, that I had prayed for. 

I wondered how, the first time I had watched this film, I could have been so desensitized, so oblivious to this evil that is very, very real in our world today. I had this strange, misconceived notion that this stuff only happens in thailand, or that I would only feel this way once it was shoved in my face as part of our ministry there in a few months. 

I want you to know that this stuff is everywhere. It’s in the US, it’s in Canada, it’s in every nation I’ve set foot in on this race so far. It’s in Albania, a country that almost no one has heard of. Did you know that Atlanta, Georgia is one of the major gateway cities into the US for human trafficking? 

Even as I sit here, tears streaming down my face, I know that some of you won’t get it. I didn’t even get it until I had been there, and it became personal. But I get it now. 

I get it now, but there is still nothing I can do. I can’t go barging into brothels like Liam Neeson. I can’t fix this. I can’t make it better. 

All I can do is pray, and trust that God sees my tears. 

And I can inform. 

So, here I am telling you. 

This is real. 

This is your brother. Your sister.

Your daughter. Your son. 

And they are being taken and locked away where no one can hear their desperate cries for someone to save them. 

The only way human trafficking is going to be abolished is through knowledge, and prayer. 

Don’t turn your eyes. 

Please don’t turn away and pretend it doesn’t exist. 

That is the very thing that will condemn these men and women to death. 

And pray. 

Please. please pray. 

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