Every Step of the Way:

I sat with some friends at church that I had met at Janet’s party. They were very kind and I felt welcomed to be with them. The thing that mattered most on this day pulls all my past stories together. It was not the pastor’s sermon that I thought about or the people around me that I may have known from years before. What mattered was the man that spoke at the end of the service. He drew my attention back to the 300,000 trafficked people in America each year. This man was Paul Yates. He got up in front of everyone and mentioned that he works for a nonprofit called Tiny Hands International. A nonprofit whose mission is to prevent women from being trafficked in Nepal, China, and Bangladesh. Paul spoke passionately, “We rescue an average of 130 women and children every month from the ‘promised jobs’ they’ve been told they would have by agencies in their home countries to go afar and work for better income.” He held up a prayer bracelet and told the crowd that he prays for a specific girl. He told us her name and her age and that she was one of more than 11,000 people that THI had rescued from a life of slavery. He also said she heard the Gospel of Jesus through one of THI’s pastors. I knew immediately. I had just found my purpose. I couldn’t wait to go and meet Paul. When the service was over, I found him in the church lobby with a lot of people asking him questions. I went up to him and said, “My name is Chance. I’m ex-military and I would love to help you rescue women. I’d love to bust down doors and run in dodging bullets, toss a girl on my shoulders and run out into safety.” Paul laughed a bit. I noticed there was also another guy standing next to me that looked just as excited as I was to talk to him. He wanted to know if he could carry a piece. Paul didn’t understand, so I gave him some southern lingo and told him the old guy meant his shooting gun, like “pow-pow”, “bang-bang”drop dead gun. “Let me ask you something. What if Christians had killed Saul, then where would the Gospel be today? Even traffickers need Jesus,” Paul said with great conviction. Without getting technical and going on about how God would have used someone else, Paul was right. A gun wouldn’t solve the trafficking problems of the world, but the love of Jesus could. Bravo Paul, bravo. After waiting around for a few more people to talk to Paul, I was finally able to communicate my interest to him about helping the fight against sexual slavery. Paul’s next words weren’t exactly what I wanted to hear. “You can’t just bust down doors looking to save people, you need training. Plus, THI doesn’t even do that. Other people get to, but we rescue the girls through other operations at the border control stations of Nepal.” “Why don’t you become an advocate?” he asked me. I didn’t know what an advocate was and had to look up the word. Paul continued, “An advocate with THI is someone that sets up an event from wherever they are and they hold some kind of gathering to bring awareness to others about the cause. You could hold a bake sale and donate your profits. Some people run in marathons, or done this and that.” “Well, I’m not really into baking, the kitchen really isn’t my thing.” “Where are you from and what are you doing in Utah?” he asked. “I’m from Oklahoma City and thought I’d fly up here for a vacation.” He laughed then told me to think about what I can do and give him a call, whenever that would be. If there was ever a time when the creative wheel was turning in my head, it was then. Wednesday came around and I flew back home. I couldn’t wait to talk to Wojo about my idea for his NYC funding. I don’t think we were even out of the airport terminal before I told him about the idea to walk across America for his funding. I told him the very same story about the mountains over the horizon and camping in crazy places. Then he looks at me and says, “Chance, that is the worst idea I have ever heard. Walking across America for my NYC pastoral fund doesn’t sound intriguing enough. Walking across America is something you could do, we just need to figure out something else you could walk for.” We sat in silence for a few minutes, and then it hit me. That’s when I told him about the nonprofit that rescues women from sexual slavery. He looked at me and his eyes got as large as Utah Girl’s once were. “Are they Christian? That’s perfect!” Wojo exclaimed. From that moment on it was game on. I lived pretty close to the airport and a drive that should have only taken thirty minutes took over two hours. We drove up and down the back roads of Oklahoma trying to figure out if this was actually possible. “You are the craziest person I know, which makes you perfect for this,” Wojo so kindly said. I love him for saying that because I knew I was crazy. The only push I needed to make this actually happen was the support of his friendship during that time. Everything he had to say was something I needed to hear. With so much excitement in my heart, I told Wojo we should call Paul Yates and tell him our plans. “Wait wait wait, don’t call him just yet. We need to meet up a few times and discuss how you are going to pull this off. Then we call him.”