Human Trafficking and the Sex Trade..................................

In School and our research for Outreach, it has become obvious to us that we will come into contact with those who are selling sex and of many of those adults and children will have been involved in being trafficked at some point or will be in danger of being trafficked.

As you know that we work in our red light district in Zona Norte Tijuana, this is a place where there is much trafficking in and out of the states and the rest of south America. This is trafficking people for selling Sex, Slave labour, and organ trafficking. In one club in Tijuana that we walk past we have been told that a couple sold their baby for $5,000 for organs! This is something that we cannot get our heads round and seem so far away from anything like this but actually its happening around us all.

I have been looking into the history of the Favelas in Rio De Janiro in Brazil, last year 3,000 people were trafficked for Sex. This is a huge number and this is only that recorded number there would have been many more that have gone under the raider!! Looking at where Brazilians are trafficked to is many countries in Europe including the United Kingdom!!

The Favelas came about in the early 1920's and it is where Military would live when they were home from the war, then later when the cities got larger, the government wanted the economy to grow therefore they pushed the poor people in each city out to the suburbs and there for the Favelas arose. This is like a cardboard city built up on the hills. There is a strong spirit of oppression and worthlessness, as they have been cast out of the city.

Many children from the age of 6 years old will come down from the Favelas and enter the tourist areas each night to work a 10 hour shift, looking for clients, many clients are tourists. They will be doing this to get whatever money they can and they will sell their bodies for £3.00 a time, this is what we would pay for a Starbucks coffee!!

God has been speaking to myself, Pepe and our Students about "Brazil looks a beautiful country on the outside and it is, but also God made the inside beautiful too, but there has been so much corruption that it has been so damaged and twisted,  it is in these times that He wants to restore and build up His beauty in this country from the inside out again!"

This is what we feel that we will be a part of, whilst we are there in Rio De Janiro, that we will go and speak truth, value and beauty into the people that we meet, that we will show them the love God has for them is pure and not the "love" that is shown to them by Man. God has been showing us this so much and we are all excited that we get to be a part of this too!!