February 25th was a day we dreamed about, prayed over and anticipated for over three years.

Before the pandemic, my friend and Certified Nutrional Counselor Stephanie Wilkins and I had planned to start working with women’s shelters, bringing the Good News of the gospel and sharing free Bible studies with women in transition homes in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Then the pandemic hit and stopped the program before it even began.

Fast forward three years, and we now realize that the “pause” only served to improve the original plan. Only God can turn a disappointment into something much better than we originally planned (Genesis 20:20).

Only God can turn a disappointment into something much better than we originally planned.
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City of Refuge

Our first Love Day partner was House of Cherith, the “safe house” inside City of Refuge, providing safety and guidance for women who are victims of abuse or sexual exploitation. This incredible ministry provides Safe housing and supportive services where women can recover from the trauma of sexual exploitation.

The day started with worship led by Soaring with Him’s worship leader and my dear friend Chasity Dedman. The Holy Spirit’s presence was powerful as these women raised their voices to worship their Redeemer.

Next, I brought a message of hope and encouragement from Jeremiah 17 – The Tree and the Bush, after which we had an altar call with several ladies coming for prayer.

We then broke for lunch and group prayer time, where each volunteer prayed with a small group.

Bible Distribution and Course

In the afternoon, we gave the ladies a personal copy of the Bible, together with a small gift from our new partner, The Encouragement Project. We also delivered four copies of Tyndale’s Life Application Bible to be placed in the four main rooms of the shelter.

It was then that I taught my brand-new course, Equipped to Listen to God, which is still not available to the public (it’ll be available at our new website soon!). The course teaches people how to listen to God through the Bible.

The ladies were thrilled to attend the course and receive their own personal copy of the course book. At the end, there were several testimonies of how the bibles and the course blessed them.

We finished the day with a hand pampering section from our new ministry partners and dear friends, Mary Kay’s representatives Vicki Morton Hartin and Judy Womack. Judy is also our Agape Shelter Ministry coordinator.

Much More to Come

We are so grateful to God for our new partners, volunteers and financial supporters. Soaring with Him’s Bible Distribution and Bible study programs are just beginning! Our objective is to give away many more Bibles and courses in the future. But we cannot do it without your prayers and financial support. Please consider becoming a financial partner. For as little as $30 a month, you can bring Bible literacy to a woman who is starting a new life in Christ.

Click HERE to give Bibles and Bible Studies. Find out more about our Agape Shelter Ministry HERE.

In His Great Love,

Patricia

The post Our First LOVE DAY at House of Cherith appeared first on Soaring With Him Ministries.

Robia Scott is an actress, Christian speaker, coach, and author. She has helped countless Christian women around the world conquer their counterfeit comfort of food and experience the peace, purpose, and passion for which they were created.

Listen to Patricia’s interview with Robia, where they discussed her ministry as well as the revival of her acting career after fifteen years away from Hollywood. She recently returned to acting in a starring role in Unplanned-a major motion picture with a pro-life message. God strategically used Robia’s acting talent for a Kingdom message of hope and redemption.

Patricia and Robia talked about her new movie, Pursuit of Freedom, based on a true story of a Ukrainian woman who was separated from her three children and sold into trafficking by Russian gangsters.

To find out more about Pursuit of Freedom and where to watch it, click on this link: Pursuit of Freedom Movie

To connect with Robia, visit her website: https://www.robiascott.com/

Listen to the podcast interview below. The interview is also available on Patricia’s YouTube Channel. Click HERE to watch it.

The post Interview with Actress Robia Scott appeared first on Soaring With Him Ministries.

In 2007, the U.S. Senate designated Jan. 11 as National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Since then, awareness and advocacy campaigns have expanded to the entire month of January throughout the country, as both secular and religious organizations expose the horrors of modern-day human trafficking and slavery in America and beyond.

It is hard to wrap our minds around slavery as a modern-day issue, especially in the world’s most prosperous country. According to the Global Slavery Index, an estimated 403,000 people lived in conditions of modern slavery in the United States in 2016.

As alarming as the potential number of victims in the United States may seem, the numbers pale compared to the regions where the issue is most prevalent. In countries in the African and Asian continents, sex slavery and labor exploitation take various forms and are often initiated by the victims’ own families.

According to a report from the International Labor Organization (ILO) and Walk Free Foundation published in 2017, an estimated 24.9 million people were victims of modern-day slavery in the world at that time. More recent reports indicate that the victim pool has increased to approximately 40 million people.

A more recent infographic released by the same foundation exposes the gender discrepancy surrounding the issue: 98% of all victims of human trafficking and slavery in the world are women and girls. According to this report, 1 in 130 women and girls live in modern-day slavery in the world. They constitute 99% of forced sexual exploitation victims, 84% of all forced marriages and 58% of all forced labor victims.

As a mother of girls, I cannot fathom that families would sell their precious young daughters to be sexually exploited in brothels or marry a man decades her senior. But this is the reality of a growing number of girls in impoverished countries — a fact that has become even more prevalent during the global pandemic.

According to Michele Rickett, award-winning author and president of She Is Safe, “Human trafficking is at an all-time high as people are more desperate for help. Families that would not otherwise sell their daughters are doing so in order to feed their other family members.”

Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Roswell, She Is Safe has been engaged in the fight against human slavery in seven countries in high-risk areas of the world — places that often treat the trade and exploitation of women and girls as an inevitable part of their culture.

These patriarch communities see a girl’s birth as a liability, a generational issue deeply ingrained in these societies. Naturally, these girls grow up with incredibly low self-esteem and a sense of helplessness, a paradigm that only exacerbates the problem.

Rather than focusing solely on rescuing the victims, the She Is Safe process focuses on life beyond slavery. The programs are implemented in a collaboration between the U.S. staff and local partners — women, churches and non-profits.

One of their initiatives is called “Transformation Groups.” The program offers women and girls opportunities to join in groups of 10-20 that meet weekly to learn, save and lend. They learn income-generating and small business success skills. They also create a saving and lending pool within the group and become officers of the lending group, helping women not fall prey to money lender’s usury — an issue that has become even greater due to the dire economic conditions in these communities during the pandemic.

Rickett talks about the program during the pandemic with contagious enthusiasm and zeal: “By the grace of God, we have been able to pivot and provide food, and encourage women in our groups to make soap, masks, disinfectant, food … to become essential service providers! The increase of a sense of self-worth has been remarkable.”

As I finished my interview for this column, I could not help but wonder what life would be like if I had been born under different circumstances.

I flipped through the images in front of me, stopping to look at a close-up picture of a beautiful young woman in India. Her bright, multi-colored sari is a stark contrast to the pain in her eyes. She is a slave, a sex worker in a brothel. But because her image was captured by a volunteer investing her time and resources to fly across the globe and bring awareness to her story, she can now have hope. And because thousands of men and women in America invest in organizations like She Is Safe, thousands of women and girls can now smile again.

Hopelessness is slavery to the soul. May the awareness of the blessings of freedom catapult us into investing, praying and helping modern-day slaves be set free.

To learn more about She Is Safe and how you can help, visit sheissafe.org.

This article was originally published in Patricia’s column for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Saturday, January 16, 2021. To find it on the AJC’s website, click HERE.

The post Engage in the Fight Against Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery {The Atlanta Journal Constitution} appeared first on Soaring With Him Ministries.

“I have walked the brothel hallways with our partners in West Bengal and seen little children living under the beds of their young mothers, who are sex slaves. Without intervention, children of sex slaves are put to work in the brothel at an even younger age than their mothers.”

I sat across from Michele Rickett, founder and president of She is Safe – an international organization with a mission to “prevent, rescue and restore women and girls from abuse and slavery in high-risk places around the world.”

I could barely finish my lunch. A mix of indignation, perplexity and excitement filled my heart, as Michele shared the heartbreaking stories of lives that are being saved, rescued and changed around the world through her organization.

In the beginning of this year, as I started to pray about the staff for my ministry’s upcoming annual women’s conference in October, I felt compelled to invite a local organization involved in the fight against human trafficking to share a testimony about their work during the conference.

A couple of months later, I met Michele at a mission’s conference. As she shared her organization’s work around the world, I immediately knew that She Is Safe was the answer to my prayers.

What started with a spark of interest turned into a passion to bring awareness about a problem that is sweeping the globe: the murder and slavery of girls in impoverished countries, simply because of their gender.

According to a 2010 article of the Economist magazine, “Gendercide” has killed over 100 million girls around the world. Newer research indicates that the number may now be closer to 200 million.

Michele elaborates on the heart-wrenching facts: “The debasing view of girls leads many families to rid themselves of these children, seeing girls as a worthless drain on family resources. The root cause of the murder of girls (gendercide), whether through feticide or infanticide, is the hideously distorted view of a girl’s value. And, of course, there is a powerful vacuum, on many levels, when girls are missing from communities. One of the most sinister is the trade in human beings, or human trafficking, which supplies a massive demand for girls.”

Indeed, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 80 percent of human trafficking victims are girls and women, and 98 percent of sex slaves are female.

Sex slavery and child prostitution are on top of the list of other horrendous issues that plague these countries. Child marriage, physical abuse, female genital mutilation, rape, honor killings, malnutrition, oppression. The list is too large and too distressing.

My flesh screams, threatening to close the book, click out of the article, and forget what I just read. The fact that there are girls, as young as mine and even younger, living such cruel existences is too much to bear. It’s hard not to maintain a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” attitude.

But I know better. We should all know better.

For while we lie down under comfortable, fully furnished air-conditioned homes, pondering if we should spend hundreds of dollars to give our teenage girl the latest smartphone, there are thousands of babies being aborted every year — simply because they are girls. And even those who survive are viewed as a hindrance to their families and society.

As I finish this column, a heartwarming picture flashes on my computer screen. It shows three beautiful young girls, eyes filled with hope, and smiles that show they are not forgotten. They sit on the front porch of one of the many safe houses that She Is Safe sponsors in India, Indonesia, Mali, Nepal, among other impoverished countries.

Their broad smiles speak volumes from the corner of the webpage: “Someone loves me. I’ve been redeemed and I have a future.”

Join the fight to save a girl’s life and future. Learn how you can help at SheIsSafe.org

This article was originally published on Patricia’s column for the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Saturday – May 27, 2017.

Millions of girls are killed or sold every day as slaves. Want to help save their lives? Read this.
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Click below to go to SheIsSafe.org.

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