Praying For Our Enemies
This is my first Reflection Paper for Ministry Track.
(I. Description of Incident/Experience)
I watched a PBS special on the trafficking of human beings. Some men were trafficked from Mexico to be used as pickers in the tomato fields. They were told they were being smuggled as illegal aliens into the U.S., then told that the fee was accruing and that they owed thousands and thousands of dollars. After this they were kept locked up in trailers on the site of the tomato field and made to work for just a few dollars a day because their boss took so much money out of their checks for room and board.
Worse, women were spirited away from all different places in the world to be used as prostitutes in other countries. One of the cases followed was of a woman from Columbia who had a friend that called her from Japan and said there was good money to be made cleaning rooms over there. She said she would set up the other girl with transportation and a job. The woman who had been called left her unemployed husband and young daughter to do this work in hopes that she would be able to send for them down the line. Instead she ended up bought and sold and threatened and forced into prostitution. They told her that to even keep up with what she cost them in food in lodging, shed better get five clients each day. Another woman was sold several times over. She too had left a family behind.
(II. Emotions and Feelings of Others Involved)
These victims were so well, victimized and the perpetrators were so terrible. There was no mercy. Human beings were treating other human beings as animals or worse. The victims felt overwhelmed and scared, horrified and filled with despair. The men, too, were overwhelmed and frightened but somewhat more bold than the women. Nevertheless, these men forced into cropping were no less exploited and abused by the women just in a different way.
(continued in next entry—>)