City Alive

Almost three weeks ago, on Sunday, February 7, one of the most anticipated sporting events of the year took place in my hometown, Miami, FL. Yes, that’s right, the great American Super Bowl XLIV graced us with the privilege of hosting the beautiful game and all its glorious fans.

As a resident of this lively city I have become accustomed to the many festivals, season games, and large events that attract an influx of tourism and wild parties on the outskirts of town. Such events are well advertised, in the notorious South Beach area, to bring in the business for hotels, restaurants, retailers and nightclubs.

Beyond this social upper class party scene there is a filthy untold secret that is both revolting and unjustifiably well kept. As prepared as I was for the traffic jams and out-of-towners to invade my city, I was not prepared to discover that sex traffickers would be traveling from out of state with a substantial amount of girls to meet the increased demand of transient men looking for sex.

The day before the big game, I participated in an outreach with local and out of state organizations that executed awareness and rescue missions. The volunteers worked 24/7 in the areas predominantly known for soliciting sex. They talked to hotel and business employees hoping to find possible leads on traffickers.

As I walked the streets of my city, weaving in and out of hotels and gas stations, I held a flyer with the word “missing” bannered above a picture of a girl two years younger than myself. Next to her digitally aged face read a brief description of her body type and the date when she was last seen. My eyes teared up as I realized this girl could be held as a sex slave in my neighborhood and I would have never known. All of a sudden, those staggering numbers of brothels and traffickers in foreign countries, blended with the place that I call home and my city came alive.

The fact of the matter is prostitution is viewed as voluntary not alarming. It’s easy to call her a prostitute; it’s easy to believe human trafficking occurs ‘somewhere over there’; it’s easy to be aware and talk about the statistics and facts- but if we don’t value her as made in the image of God, if we don’t open our eyes and look for injustice on our street corners, if we don’t apply prayer, faith, hope, love and action to all of our worked up emotions, then we are worse off than before we knew she was out there.

This is not a social justice project; this is the call of the body of Christ! We are the hands and feet God chooses to move through. You are valuable and you are needed!

During the weekend of our Super Bowl outreach, six girls were rescued off the streets, five were saved from near recruitment of pimps and nine leads on incriminating traffickers were provided to the FBI for further investigation. Let us be encouraged by this victory and continue to keep fighting for the enslaved both far off and here at home.

-Esther