Weekly Wishes

Hello and welcome to my Weekly Wishes where I talk about my goals and wishes for the week ahead. Popping them here on the blog will hopefully help me to stay on track with the things I want to do or get done. These posts are part of a link up by The Nectar Collective where Melissa has a wonderful community of women who link up their weekly wishes and are there to support and encourage one another. It's also a great way to make new friends and find new blogs to follow, why don't you join me?

It's Monday, and the perfect day to share my wishes for the upcoming week. If you'd like to join in simply click here (and then click on the comments section of the top post) and link up your blog post. 

For the most part, I was able to fulfil my wishes from last week. I made a most delicious cheesecake (recipe to follow soon...and no oven is needed if you use store bought cookies for the base, I made my own cookies to use as the base). I completed my English Camp plan for the summer vacation and I am about to finish the 30 day yoga challenge, yipee! I haven't been so good about keeping my phone in the other room while I sleep, mainly (here comes all the excuses!) I have the charger next to my bed and so plug it in as soon as I go to bed. I'm going to move that charger when I get home today. I also did manage to make a donation to Precious Women Ministry in Cambodia for the work they do in helping women who are and have been involved in human trafficking. Putting this last wish here on the blog really did help me get this done, as I felt accountable putting it in writing. 

This Week's Wishes

1. Raise awareness for The Exodus Road, an organisation that is fighting to end child slavery. You might be wondering why all of a sudden I have been posting more about human trafficking, click here to read why. One of the things the Exodus Road does is to do fund search and rescue as well as investigative operations in the heart of the red light districts in cities all around South East Asia. It costs $35 a night to fund an investigation team (this money goes towards paying the girls for their 'time' literally, in the form of a drink while the team is able to ask questions and get valuable information needed to help these girls). If you would like to donate, click here to read more about the teams and what they do. You can donate via paypal or credit card. You may not be able to physically go and rescue children trapped in brothels, but you can send investigators to break down doors on your behalf. You can hire a mercenary of hope to look for victims of sexual slavery, to gather tips for police partners, and to begin collecting key evidence for rescue. As a thank you for your donation you will get a welcome packet in the mail from The Exodus Road with information about your team, a bumper sticker with “Rescue is Coming,” and some other small gifts and information. You’ll also receive regular updates from your field team about their efforts and will be given specific ways to connect with them via letters or special projects. The Exodus Road

2. Start my lesson planning for the Photography English Camp I am teaching in July

3. Book a cooking course for our trip to Bali in August (my mom is coming out from South Africa to join us in Bali! I can't wait to see her!).

4. Remove my phone from the bedroom, charger and all.

5. Join another yoga challenge for July.

Do you have anything you really need to get done this week? Drop me a comment below, I'd love to hear from you.

Have a wonderful week everyone <3

Sex Trafficking

This blog of mine is for the most part, a place for me to share beauty, to inspire and give people a break from the not so nice things out there that we are constantly bombarded with. I never wanted it to be a live journal, where I pour out my deepest woes and you feel sorry for me and write me comments of encouragement (although, that's always nice!). I want my blog to be a happy place where you can come to see pretty things, learn a recipe or two; a place to visit and feel good.

Then I went to a screening of the documentary Nefarious Merchant of Souls and I realized that the pretty-ness that my blog has to offer can do nothing for the millions of women and children caught in the horror of human trafficking.

My world has been rocked, my heart has been shaken and my eyes have seen things that my mind will never be able to forget. And I don't want to forget. We are so unaware of the evil that is happening in this world, we don't see it on our drive to work, we don't really hear it on the news and most of us simply don't know anyone who has been affected by it. But that doesn't mean it isn't happening.

Infographic from Compassion.org

Right now I feel so passionate about the injustice of it all, and I feel so helpless at the same time. What can one privileged girl do in South Korea that could possibly make any difference? Right now I'm not sure. I am Christian, so I will be praying, but often I feel that "well, you should pray" is just not cutting it for me right now. I want to get my perfectly manicured hands dirty, I want to physically go out there and do something that might pale in comparison to what missionaries are doing in Thailand, but at least I will be doing something. I've been reading Eddie Byun's book Justice Awakening - How you and your church can help end Human Trafficking and this is something that called out to me: "Time and time again, the biggest frustration I would see in others was not knowing what they could do to enter this fight for freedom and justice around the world. Beyond just giving money to other organizations - as good as that was - the questions that kept coming up was, 'What could an individual or a church do to end human trafficking in our day?'...Whatever your gifting is, use it to send a message to your sphere of influence. Whatever your passion is, use it to spread this message of justice for all. So write, paint, draw, speak, publish, compose, act, campaign and do anything else to the glory of God and for the freedom of all people".

I know that a lot of people get a bit iffy with the God word, but I want to point out that Eddie Byun doesn't say that only if you are Christian, and if you can draw, paint, write etc should you be allowed to do your part in this fight. Human trafficking is a worldwide problem, it isn't a Christian problem, or a Jewish or a Buddhist problem, it is a human issue, and we are all able to do something, in our own way.

And so I want to use my gifting; this blog and my camera, to help in some way. I am not sure how yet, but I do hope you will join me in this journey.

I hope I haven't made you feel uncomfortable, actually, in a way I do hope I have. Because it's not when we are in our comfort zones that we can make a difference. It's when we are pushed beyond our bubble, to the point where we are so angry and hurt and frustrated that we can evoke the power within ourselves to make a difference.

And after all of that, I have to also say something else. The fight to end human trafficking may not be your battle to fight. Everyone is wired differently, and different causes may appeal to you more than others. I really don't want to be here on a soap box trying to covert people to join this fight. I just want to raise awareness for something that has made me feel so angry, as a woman, and more so as a human being. I will be posting more information here on the blog, with what I hope will be useful posts about what is happening locally here in South Korea, and more globally. If you're interested that is. If you're not, I will still be posting recipes and pretty pictures for you enjoy.

I want to leave you with these: