Mission Connexion NW 2011 Highlights
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September 30 – October 3, 2010 Chisinau, Moldova In one of the greatest displays of unity ever seen in Moldova, 170 anti-trafficking practitioners from 26 countries came together at the end of September to address the epidemic of human trafficking and how Christians must deal with it.  Between plenary sessions, workshops, and networking, it quickly became clear that the only way to effectively combat trafficking is an unprecedented convergence of efforts by like-minded ministries, churches, and organizations.  With up to 27 million people currently enslaved and exploited, the traffickers’ networks are both devious and global, and so must be those organizations coming against this horrific crime. Kingdom Business is one of the critical components only beginning to take shape in the fight against trafficking.  Although there are numeous sociological, cultural, and geographical reasons for people to sell themselves or others, the root cause is fundamentally economic.  With no hope of finding reasonable work, and the resulting desperation that ensues, many people from otherwise healthy environments end up getting trafficked.  Men are typically sent into forced labor while women are forced to be prostitutes.  There are also rising numbers of cases involving children and trafficking for organ harvesting.  From any angle,
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Many believe that a lot of money is needed to start a church-related economic development program, but the case of the Iglesia El Encuentro, in Bogota, Colombia, proves that this is not true. They have a successful, financially sustainable program that was started with less than $10,000. An outgrowth of the church’s outreach to poor communities in Southern Bogota, this program began in response to the pressing need to create jobs for poor people in places where the church had previously initiated programs for malnourished children in the mid-1990s. The success of supplemental lunch and day-care programs caught even the attention of the government, and the El Encuentro church was granted the supervision of statefunded projects in seven areas, with no restrictions on the church plants that grew within each of the lunch program locations. Over the years it became obvious that the reason that the children were malnourished was because their parents did not have work. The director of the program, Alfonso Rey, sought ways to address this, and came across the ADIN program in Sincelejo, Colombia. On his own initiative, he traveled with 2 of his board members to learn about that program for himself, and then began
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Jacob and Catherine Grady have soft hearts for the orphans of Bogota. While living in the Colombian capital after college, they joined a Free Methodist pastor with a vision to start a home for orphaned girls from shockingly hard family circumstances and frightening futures. It meant developing a budget, building the bunk beds, filing legal forms, recruiting staff, and raising money. But Jacob also had a vision for setting up a business that could support the orphanage. Devoting 2 years himself to launching the business before returning to the States, Jacob established a small company that repairs stone and tile surfaces in high-end restaurants, hotels, and shopping malls. Now profitable, it is ready to expand to Cartagena, and possibly other cities in Latin America. This business and others he may startcan become places of employment for the girls as they come of age. But for now, they’re a happy and safe bunch of girls, going to school and learning about the love of God first hand.
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