friends and family,
I just wanted to start off thanking you guys for taking the time to
follow my journey in what looks to be quite an amazing summer ahead of me. I started this blog a few weeks ago and have yet to post, so here it goes. You
might be wondering what this ‘wild goose chase’ is. Some of you may remember
this theme from Real Life Student Ministry’s very first Mystery Road Trip back
in 2009, but most of you probably have no clue. This wild goose chase is my
personal journey chasing after our wild Messiah. Following Jesus is no walk in
the park; it is an experience that will take you for a few spins. And I want to
invite you to join me in my journey.
So what takes off two days from now? Two years of planning, stress, and
shear excitement will be taking off. On Sunday, May 6, I will be setting off
with Andrew Moore, Luke Hassevoort, and Kimberly Somerville to film for three
weeks throughout the east coast for a documentary we will be creating. I’ll get
to the documentary in a bit. Andrew has been a best friend of mine since the 7th
grade. Luke and I shared a house
together with five other guys this past school year in his senior year and my
sophomore year at the University of Michigan. Kimberly… well I haven’t actually
met Kimberly yet. I will be meeting her today at our preparation planning
retreat for the film, so that’s super exciting! She’s a brave girl preparing
herself to handle the three of us boys for an entire three weeks traveling
together in a 12-passenger van.
As I just mentioned, we are heading up to a little cabin/cottage
(whatever you want to call it) in Newaygo, MI courtesy of the lovely Whitmyer
family to get away for a solid 24 hours of final team preparation to head out
and film this thing. We are hoping to finalize our expenditures list, finish
reading our interviewee bios and writing interview questions for each of them, set
down a solid travel plan with our maps, talk about what the rest of the team
will be doing while we are out on the road, and you know… those sorts of things
that people do when they film documentaries. Tonight will probably be a late
night of planning before a couple of the girls head home tonight for plans
tomorrow, and then we will have the morning tomorrow to finish up any last bit
of details with breakfast and lunch provided by our wonderful ‘steering’ team
member, Brian Norton. We will hopefully arrive home tomorrow prepared and
feeling good about leaving on Sunday (SUNDAY! Wow, that’s close..). Hopefully
being the key word. I am confident that
God has led us up to this point step-by-step holding us up by the collar of our
shirts, so I am confident that He will lead up to use this time to prepare as
best as we possibly can.
Maybe I can actually fill you in on this whole documentary thing now,
eh… In a mere two days, this four man (well, three man and one woman) team will
be setting out under our organization, Hope for the Voiceless, to begin
gathering footage for our documentary exploring the demand of domestic
sex-trafficking. That is people (very often young girls) being forced,
deceived, or coerced into sexual slavery right here in America. Yes, trafficking
happens in America. Yes, trafficking happens right in your own town. Maybe it’s not happening right now in your
town, but it does happen. So we want to go out and understand how and why it is
a man (generally speaking) can go from being a ‘productive member of society’
as we describe it with a good job, a wife, and even children to actually going
out and seeking to purchase sex. What drives a man to do that? We have our
views and opinions, but we will reveal those as time goes on as we are setting
out to explore what is happening, not to prove that our ideas are necessarily
correct. To do this, we have two main categories of people we are planning to
interview. These are the johns and the specialists. John is a general term we
use for men who purchase sex while the specialists will be people specialize in
law, demand reduction, sex/pornography addiction, neuropsychology, and so
forth. We want to hear the personal stories of Johns and how they got to where
they were or even are, given men being willing to talk to us, while
demonstrating the love Jesus has lavished on us by not dehumanizing or tearing
them apart. We want to show these men a path of love where they can turn away
from the desires of the flesh and seeking to purchase sex and to be able to
turn to the relationships they already have and find the true love they are
seeking out. Our hope is that by showing America what our sexually saturated
culture is doing to the world around us, including our own nation, we can begin
to change the hearts of our men to no longer desire purchasing sex, and
therefore wiping away the very demand that drives traffickers to bring in these
girls as sexual slaves. We believe the only way to get rid of human trafficking
is to get rid of the demand or there will always be more girls brought in to
meet the demand. The only way to fight the demand is by changing the desires of
the heart.
I hope I was able to make sense for you. If you have any questions or
want to talk more about this journey, please feel free to ask away. I would
love to talk more about this with you. These three weeks are definitely going
to be a wild adventure chasing after Jesus and wherever he leads us. I’m so
excited that he has chosen me and prepared my heart to fight the battle as I
know it’s not something meant for everyone. I absolutely love how God uses each
of us for his plan in our own unique ways. I can’t wait to hit the road and
share more with you guys as I keep you updated on the road and as I move into
other adventures God has in store for this amazing summer!
peace and love,
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