October 9, 2017 Show with Michele Rickett AND Kay Marshall Strom on “Women and Girls Globally Used by God Amid Deep Pain and Suffering”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this ninth day of October 2017.

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We are going to be talking about a very important issue today. It's an issue that I've never discussed on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to do so.

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We have two guests today. We have both Michelle Rickett, who is president and founder of She is

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Safe, and we also have Kay Marshall Strom, author, scriptwriter for TV and films, journalist for various magazines and newspaper op -eds, conference speaker and co -author with Michelle Rickett of Forgotten Girls, Stories of Hope and Courage.

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Today we are going to be discussing women and girls globally used by God amid deep pain and suffering.

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We're also going to be announcing the She Soars Women Conference at the

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Mount Zion Baptist Church of Jonesboro, Georgia, but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you both for the first time ever,

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Michelle Rickett and Kay Marshall Strom. Thank you so much.

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It's great to have you both on, and introducing to you also is my co -host, the

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Reverend Buzz Taylor. And it's good to be on the air with you. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Michelle Rickett and Kay Marshall Strom, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter over which you are asking.

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And first of all, Michelle, you are president and founder, as I already mentioned, of She is

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Safe. If you could please explain to our listeners exactly what She is Safe is. Yes, thank you.

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She is Safe is a Christ -centered organization that works to prevent, rescue, and restore women and girls from abuse and slavery, and then equip them to build whole new lives of freedom and faith for a stronger future for the next generation of girls.

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And what specifically, when you say from slavery and so on, what specifically are some of the details involving that and also some of the geographic areas where you're doing this?

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Well, the abuse and slavery issue, I became aware of.

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My husband and I were in missionary service. We lived in East Africa, and I learned about girl selling.

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It was mid-'80s, and so there wasn't much information around the cause of modern -day slavery or global human trafficking or injustices against women and girls.

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And the more I began to look into it, the more I realized this was pervasive throughout the least -reached world.

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Those places that do not have a strong gospel presence are much more likely, through their social norms, to abuse and sell women and girls.

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So if you had a map in front of you that showed all the places least reached with the gospel, you could overlay that map with the map of trafficking in person.

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So human trafficking, of course, happens everywhere in the world to a greater or lesser degree, but those busiest human trafficking corridors in the world are mostly throughout

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Asia. We're talking about North India, Nepal, Bangladesh, up into China. So of the 30 to 45 million slaves in the world today, about 80 % are female, unless you're talking about sex slavery, and that's 98 % female.

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So wherever in the world my husband and I went in our service, we saw this terrible evil perpetrated against women and girls and thought, you know,

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Christ has a much better plan for these girls. Let's see what we can do to work with the indigenous church and local

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Christian women who have transcended these abuses so that we could actually do the smart work of preventing as many girls as possible from falling prey to these traffickers and those that we could to rescue them out of red light districts, brothel communities, garbage dumps, refugee camps, and get them into some kind of vocational training and introduce them to Christ so that they could build a whole and beautiful life that God would love for them to have.

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And Kay Marshall Strom, I hope I'm pronouncing your last name correctly, by the way. Strom, that's correct.

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Okay, how did you come to get to know Michelle Rickett, and how did you both begin to work together on this book that we are discussing today,

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Forgotten Girls, Stories of Hope and Courage? Well, actually, I first started working with her husband on doing some editing on a book that he was writing.

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Then I went to a conference with Michelle, and we saw that in so many ways our hearts were bent the same way.

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I had been wanting to write a book about the women and the girls in the least reached areas, but the publishers

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I went with and the editors I had been working with said, oh, no one will read it. Nobody wants to hear that.

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Nobody in America cares about people outside our own borders. And Michelle and I both knew that wasn't true.

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We both knew that people did care. They just didn't know what was happening, and they didn't know what they could do to help.

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So Forgotten Girls is actually the second book that we did together. The first one was

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Daughters of Hope, and we've done a lot of traveling together. We've done a lot of speaking together, and we have just had a great time learning and sharing with others.

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Now, you have quite an interesting background being a script writer for TV and films and a journalist.

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Did this begin before your life as a Christian, or when did you develop these skills and also this career?

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No, I actually started writing. I have been in a

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Christian family. I was raised in a Christian family, and I have been a Christian for most of my life.

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The interesting thing about working in TV and movies,

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I have discovered, I discovered quite a while ago, is that you can say things and sneak things in about faith and about what it means to be a true believer, and it's accepted surprisingly, a surprising amount of time.

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And so that's what I enjoy doing. There are a lot of believers who are working in the film industry, and we miss that because of what the themes are in so many movies.

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But it is just a wonderful thing to see how people can be touched with the

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Gospel through popular movies and TV shows. Yeah, great.

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Well, the actual book that you both cooperated on, Forgotten Girls, Stories of Hope and Courage, Michelle, perhaps you could tell us what the catalyst was for writing this book to begin with, and tell us some of the stories about the women and girls in this book.

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Well, yes, the catalyst for me was, you know, I thought

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I prepared very well to work internationally, and I was shocked at the information

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I was gaining about the depth of abuse of women and girls. You know, human trafficking is kind of the cause du jour out there in the world, but to the millions upon millions of girls who are enslaved, this is really just the last stop on a long series of abuses.

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And I felt that that story really needed to be told, and I was telling it as a speaker.

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And when I was blessed to meet Kay and sharing some of the stories with her, and she said, well, this really should be in a book, and she counseled me.

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A book can go places that you cannot go. It will do so much and be an ambassador for what's on your heart.

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And then, of course, the wonderful process of researching and writing a book, you learn so much.

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You have a lot of focus when you have two people who are focusing on the same issue.

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We learned some pretty staggering things. One is, um, there are 200 million girls missing on the face of the earth today.

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They should be walking the earth. They have been murdered simply for being girls through sex -selective abortion, mostly in India and China.

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And then for poor families who can't afford to find out the sex of the baby before it's born, they'll just wait until she is born and then strangle, starve, bury this child alive.

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This is the largest genocide in all of human history, and it has become a driver of many social evils, including the trafficking of girls, because when there's a shortage of girls like this, people will pay money to get a girl in their family.

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Um, right now, 52 million girls have been forced to marry as children.

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14 million girls give birth every year, and the number one killer of girls is suicide.

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So we could roll out statistics all day long, but sometimes it's better just to tell about one girl.

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It's a very common story that we hear again and again. And in Forgotten Girls is this story of a girl named

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Nima. She was five years old when she knew her life would be snuffed out if she stayed where she was.

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Her father was very poor. Her mother had run away, and she said, we didn't even have a chicken, which meant no protein for anyone.

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And in his frustration, he beat her and her little sister, who was three years old. And so one night, they quietly waited for him to fall asleep, and Nima grabbed her sister, put her hand over her mouth, and said, you need to run with me so we can be safe.

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They ran into a forest where they found a large tree that was hollowed out, and they dug it out, and that became their little home.

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And Nima would go into a nearby city and beg for food for her little sister and a little milk or steel if she had to.

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And she wanted, her plan as a five -year -old was to live that way, but in the rainy season, bugs came out and began to eat her sister's legs, and they swelled up.

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So Nima carried her sister back into town and found a woman on the street and asked her to take them in.

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She would be a housekeeper, anything that the woman wanted. That woman took her little sister, and Nima said, that's the last she ever thought of her sister was this woman carrying her away and just shouting over her shoulder, you would be a burden to me.

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And so Nima stole, she worked all kinds of little jobs, she went to work in a hotel, and eventually the owners rented her out to men who came in, and she became a prostitute.

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By the time we met her, she was one broken -down woman, and yet in the process of healing, had come to Christ and said, you know, what

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I want to do for the rest of my life is go to girls who are in this situation like I am, and help them get free and have a different kind of life, the kinds of opportunities that I've had.

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So we could tell story after story after story that sounds exactly like that, but thankfully we were able to visit about a dozen countries and interview scores of girls to get those few stories that really tell it well, so that we,

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Christians especially, we can think our roots down deeply and understand how these things happen for girls, and in that process learn some of the best and most strategic interventions and gain some great long -term partnerships along the way.

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And why is it, now I'm assuming that that young lady that you were talking about, she fled with her sister because she was certain her father would murder them?

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Is that what you meant by that? Yes, that's right. They were being beaten, and she was very afraid that he was going to go too far one day, and neither of them would survive.

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Right. Now why is it that parents in these countries view their daughters as more expendable than their sons?

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Well, there is a godless view of women and girls in the developing world.

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It's only where Christ goes that women and girls are listed and seen as image bearers, as our little boys are, little girls as well.

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So that's why the United States, though terrible things do happen in our country to a much lesser degree, we are a very low -risk country.

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We work in some villages in Nepal where every single girl who turns 13 is sold into the massive brothels of India.

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So this low opinion, this godless view of women and girls persists everywhere where Christ is not named.

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And so what it requires, you know, is an intervention from God to begin to infuse into the lives of women, girls, and families, men and boys as well, and that's the hard work of She Is Faith, is to help change a godless mindset into a

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God's -eye view. And it's happening. The exciting thing is we can go to families and let them know that God gave them their children, every boy, every girl, as a gift to their family to help build up their family and their community and their posterity.

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That was God's intention. So we kind of connect the dots for them. One reason that you're poor is that you have been selling away your future.

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These girls would have had great contributions. So if you'll cooperate with us now and just pledge to not sell your daughters, we're going to have a local team here of Christians who are going to help you generate income in a different way.

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So I would say the majority of families who succumb to the lure of traffickers, it's because, first of all, they already have this low opinion of girls that she's going to be a worthless burden on family resources.

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She's not going to bring others into the clan. She'll go on to somebody else's clan. And that she will be sickly, and that's because they underfeed her.

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They generally feed boys instead of girls. They'll give them the protein. So all of these marks against her mean that she's just not a good investment.

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So she's kept out of school to work, marry, or be sold. So it's self -perpetuating.

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If you have that low opinion and then you don't feed someone, they're more sickly and less valuable of a contributor.

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So in the places that we work, it's where 90 % of the world's poor reside.

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So they're on the bare edges of survival. And the majority of the time, traffickers come as friends, as job recruiters.

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So they convince families, hey, we'll give you more than you can make in a month. They'll, you know, put down $50 for a girl and then promise that $50 will come every month as long as she survives and works.

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And of course, the family never sees her again. They're hoping the best. They really hope she'll meet someone and have a good marriage and be able to send money home, all of those things.

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So that's why it does require an intervention into these communities.

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So seeking out those highest risk communities, making sure that we have teams placed there, and then support and train more local women that can carry on the work.

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And Kay, I'll let you answer the next question. Of course, Michelle, you can chime in afterwards.

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And you can both feel free to interject whenever you'd like to. It might be helpful if you announce who you are when you do because it may be hard for our listeners to distinguish between the two of you.

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But Kay, isn't it interesting hearing what Michelle just said that wherever Christ is absent in the world, we see women and girls being treated with such barbaric behavior.

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And whereas the stereotype for leftists and feminists here in the

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United States and North America is that it's the Christian America, the stereotype of your average conservative

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Christian is that of perpetuating this kind of bigotry against women and having a low view of women.

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And yet we hear the facts about the situation globally where it is in a

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Christless area where these women and girls are being more likely to wind up as victims, very possibly being sold into sex slavery and other kinds of chattel slavery and perhaps wind up dead.

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This is quite a contradiction to what the leftists and feminists would tend to want to promote in this country, at least.

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Yes. Yes, that's true. And there are so many things that feed into this.

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The principles of life, the belief of our value come from Christ, come from Scripture.

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And the details and the facts and the numbers are all important, but what really moves the heart is the story.

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And let me just tell you a little bit more on Neema's story after what

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Michelle has told you. Neema, when the girls finished going through a recovery time in Nepal with the organization who had rescued them, they were placed back in a village with some sort of a trade that they can do.

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And one of the things that Neema did is she was knitting hats, those Nepalese hats that were so popular and are popular now.

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So what Neema wanted to do was go back to her village and they said, no, no, no, no, no.

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Don't go back to where your family is. They'll sell you again. Don't go back.

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But Neema was absolutely insistent and she did go back. She went back and her father said, don't you expect us to start paying for you for food and for a home?

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And she said, no, no, you don't have to do anything for me. She built her own little lean -to.

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She sat in front of that lean -to and knitted her hat. And then she took them to the market and she earned more money selling those hats than her ever did.

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But when she came back, she said, I'm going to split the money with you, father, for all of the care you gave me when

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I was little. And every day, every day she sat in front of her little lean -to and she knitted those hats and the women gathered around to see what she was doing because she was earning money.

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She was worth something. And so she told them stories from the Bible as she knitted the hat.

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And the women learned these stories. They learned to knit and she... And it actually changed that whole village and it was what

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Neema did that made the difference. One of the other girls who had been in the recovery program with her was high caste and she came to visit

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Neema and everybody there said, no, no, no, you can't have a high caste person in here mixing with us.

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That's not right. And the friend came, she stayed in Neema's lean -to with her, even ate food off of her plate and people, the others just were in disbelief.

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But the girl said, in Christ, there is no caste. We are the same in the view of God.

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Men are not better than us. High castes are not better than us. We are all the same.

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And again, it changed the whole attitude of that area. We know that Christ's view of women in the

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Bible days was different from what people believed at the time. And we see that same thing now.

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But what we need to do is let the world see it in action.

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See what really happens to individuals when they change their thinking and follow

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Christ. Well, praise God. This is Michelle. I wanted to just piggyback off of that.

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I think myself included, lots of Christian women, we know the truth.

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We know that Christ does lift women and opens up so many wonderful opportunities and, of course, renews our minds about what is possible with the help of heaven.

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But often we hold back in the public square from really participating.

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I was at the Luzon Congress, the last one, and I met a woman who works with the

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United Nations, and she's a believer. And she said, why don't you and your organization and others show up more often at the

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United Nations? You know, it's as though Christian women are silent, except for maybe things that they're against.

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Couldn't we show up as a positive force? So, She is

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Safe has joined in. The International Day of the Girl is in October this month, and She is

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Safe was founded in October 15 years ago. We joined with 193 nations to urge

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Christians to get out this month and start sharing the information with our young girls and with other women and men as well, and having a very visible, vocal opportunity to say, well, this is what

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Christ thinks of women and girls. And we are doing, this last year,

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She is Safe was involved in prevention, rescue, restoration of over 80 ,000 individuals.

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So that's a tremendous force of light that, of course, doesn't usually get recognition.

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I think we need to, as Kay said, continue doing the great work, but then let's show up in the public square and do prayer vigils at our city halls and go to the

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United Nations and to Washington, D .C. in force and be a force of light and good.

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I really, really agree with that. This is Kay speaking. I really agree with that, because so often,

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Chris, as you were saying, there's a bad image portrayed of Christian women.

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But the thing is, so often the ones who speak out are ones who are not speaking out with the love that we should have from Christ.

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And so we need to be brave. We need to be willing to step out and share.

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And we need to share these stories so people can see them. That's so important.

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Thank you, Michelle. And before I go to a break, Michelle, I understand that you are a part of the

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She Soars, that's S -O -A -R -S, women's conference, which is going to be held

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Saturday, October 14th, this Saturday, at the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Jonesboro, Georgia.

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Can you tell us anything about this conference? Well, yes, I'm very excited to be involved, invited.

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I will be on platform and then also do a workshop. Patricia Holbrook, who is

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Atlanta Journal -Constitution journalist and a committed Christ follower, initiated this conference and started looking and seeking

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God for the right women to have on platform and do the workshops. And the more we got acquainted, she wrote an article in the

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AJC about She Is Faith and me. She said, well, I know that you're supposed to be there.

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So we're talking about the fact that we are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, to show forth the praises of this wonderful one who has called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light and help the average

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Christian woman look at ways that we can both capture the highs and lows of our journey with Christ and make those a sacrament, if you will, to his glory and also to reach out to women and girls who are in tough circumstances so that their light can shine, too, and they can transcend through Christ.

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It's going to be a very exciting one -day women's conference here just south of Atlanta, and I believe there's still some room for registration.

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Great. Well, I know that for a in Georgia, and I would like to let you know, folks, especially the ladies, of course, that if you'd like to attend this

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Soaring, or She Soars, I should say, women's conference, the website you can go to is

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SoaringWithHim .com forward slash conference.

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That's S -O -A -R -I -N -G WithHim .com forward slash conference.

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And for more details specifically on the location of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Jonesboro, Georgia, you can go to M -Z -B -C .org.

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M -Z -B -C for standing for Mount Zion Baptist Church. M -Z -B -C .org,

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and you can find out more details about exactly where they're located and other issues. Well, we're going to our first break right now.

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If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for both of our guests, Michelle Rickett and Kay Marshall Strom, our email address is

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ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. And please only remain anonymous if you have a personal and private matter that you want to discuss.

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So that's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away.

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We're going to be right back, God willing, with Michelle Rickett and Kay Marshall Strom right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Well, we are now back to our discussion with Michelle Rickett of She Is Safe and author

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Kay Marshall Strom. We are discussing the book Forgotten Girls, Stories of Hope and Courage, and also the general theme of women and girls globally being used by God amid deep pain and suffering.

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If you'd like to join us with a question for Michelle and Kay, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We have a listener from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Latane.

38:36

In fact, I'll give you her full name because she is a Christian author. She's also a guest that has been frequently interviewed on my program, and she is a convert from Mormonism into Biblical Christianity and author of the highly acclaimed book, a classic book called

38:56

The Mormon Mirage. But Latane C. Scott asks, is their ministry, meaning your ministry,

39:04

Kay and Michelle, is your ministry mainly outside of the

39:10

United States? When you speak of border towns, are any of those contiguous to the

39:17

United States, Mexico, for instance? We actually, from the founding of She Is Safe, knew that we wanted to focus on those busiest human trafficking corridors, and so that puts us from Muslim West Africa throughout the

39:36

Middle East and down into Sudan and then across Asia. Those are the places that are underserved and least reached with the gospel.

39:45

We still have that Great Commission focused for She Is Safe to get the gospel to those who don't have the opportunity to hear it day by day and hopefully transform those communities.

40:00

And Kay, you said it like you were going to say something. I was just going to say that although what

40:09

Michelle says is absolutely correct, we do have the opportunity to step outside those boundaries and go to other countries,

40:21

North Africa, Egypt, a lot of places like that.

40:27

And we see so many of the same problems and difficulties. But I can't say that any of the ones that are connected to the

40:36

United States, such as Mexico, have not been in my realm at all.

40:45

Well, thank you, Latane. I do a lot of writing on the global family of God, and so I go to a lot of places that are outside of the specific environments of She Is Safe, because we work with people on other areas too.

41:15

But the same types of issues come up again and again and again.

41:21

The validity of women, why they are of value, how they work, who raise their families to become followers of Christ when they are first reached.

41:37

And so it all fits together well. And the

41:42

Reverend Buzz Taylor, my co -host, has a question. Yes. You've mentioned about the various cultures in which you work.

41:50

Do you do a lot of work in the realm of organized crime as well?

41:59

In other words, I understand the culture where they have a very low opinion of women, but there's also organized crime that uses women.

42:07

So are you speaking about, or is she working with the local police forces, or what do you mean by that? Well, I wanted to follow up the question with a question about your personal safety as well, because you're going to these areas.

42:19

I mean, let's face it, you're invading Satan's territory. Yes. So the criminal element is one of the things that has really grown human trafficking.

42:33

Many of the cartels that used to focus on drugs are now focusing on the sale of girls, because you can sell a girl again and again where drugs are just sold once.

42:45

So they're very organized, very violent, and sinister. And there is international interplay.

42:52

And that's one reason that the United Nations, really spearheaded by the U .S., the

42:58

Trafficking in Persons Report, which is a report card that comes out every year when these nations have decided to rate themselves on how well they are doing at combating the criminal element, as well as preventing abuse and slavery, and restoring victims' lives and gaining justice for them.

43:24

So it's all across the spectrum. It's like a massive puzzle, and every part has to do its part.

43:30

But yes, the village that I mentioned to you in Nepal, where every girl has been sold over the age of 12, as soon as she turns 13, she goes into one of the massive brothels of India.

43:47

In that brothel area, prostitution is legal, but only if one is 18 years or older.

43:55

And yet the average age when a girl begins is 11 years old to be a sex slave there, and she will only survive seven years.

44:03

But the brothels themselves have 30 ,000 sex slaves. I mean, massive.

44:09

We have nothing that compares to that in the United States. That's the backdrop.

44:16

And of course, it's an economy. Criminals are involved in running all of that.

44:23

So we love to show up, as Christ would, as lovers of the people.

44:29

So we work with local Indian women who live in the brothel communities there.

44:35

They have their churches there. They have great reputation, and they offer loving kindness to these girls in the red light district areas.

44:46

And often girls become sick very early. They have STDs. They are beaten.

44:52

Some are burned. Some become pregnant. They become drug addicted and malnourished and just worthless to the brothel owner at a certain juncture.

45:02

And that's the opportunity for local Christian women there to show love, to help navigate these who are sick and wounded and their children, their children being born to these sex slaves in these brothels.

45:18

And we are known in the brothel community as that organization that has that safe place for little girls.

45:26

We last year brought four girls out from ages four to eight, and these girls lived in the same room where their mother was servicing men.

45:36

So they sexualized the very early, and many of the madams like to keep them.

45:42

But if something happens to their mom, it's our opportunity to lobby on behalf of these children and get them out.

45:49

So that's our particular way of showing up, as Christ would, in grace and in love with a helpful hand, rather than trying to cowboy in.

46:01

It's because prostitution is legal there, and we would be the lawbreakers if we tried to bust up a brothel of 30 ,000 people, which we couldn't anyway.

46:12

But we can be there as lovers of God and lovers of people.

46:18

And that's our way in these refugee camps and garbage dump communities and red light districts for the local lovers of Christ to do that wonderful work of helping people navigate to freedom and wholeness and new life.

46:35

Let me just add a quick word here, too. Even though we talk about the enlightenment of a country where our eyes are more focused on God, we need to be and identify ourselves as Christ -followers, not

46:52

Americans, because American alone is not always a good thing to brag about.

47:01

I see that on the news every day. Exactly right. We surely do.

47:07

And I was once in a brothel in New Delhi interviewing women there, and the brothel owner just stood there listening with his arms folded, listening to everything we said.

47:22

And finally, he said, don't think you're any better than us, he said, you and your country, because if it were not for pornography in the

47:31

United States and European men looking for young girls, we would be out of business tomorrow.

47:39

He said, you keep us in business. I think that's jarring and convicting.

47:48

Yeah, definitely. By the way, Latane C. Scott, you have won, I think

47:53

I forgot to mention to you that you have won a free copy of the book we are discussing, Forgotten Girls, Stories of Hope and Courage, by our guests

48:02

Kay Marshall -Strom and Michelle Rickett. And please make sure that we have your full mailing address there in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and we'll have that shipped out to you as soon as possible.

48:12

We have another listener in Shillington, Pennsylvania, Mary with an

48:18

I. Mary says, I'd like to know if your guests knew about the

48:26

Backpages scandal with the Village Voice. It was a way that the sex traffickers could pimp out these girls, and the paper was going even as far as covering up the soliciting, showing pimps how to word ads to cover up the trafficking.

48:42

Could they give any insight into the whole case? Because it was a little confusing for me how these guys finally were taken down.

48:51

And if the parents of the girls or if the parents of the girls were ever compensated for the wrongs done to them.

49:00

Do you have anything? Do you have any knowledge about? I am. This is Michelle. I am aware of the

49:07

Backpage scandal. And thankfully, there was a sting and more and more pressure, of course, needs to be put on the internet community because they really have opened

49:24

Pandora's box to girls who are, of course, young and naïve.

49:31

I remember hearing recently the head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations on trafficking, and she said, you know, you would not believe how easy it is to get a 14 -year -old child to fall in love with you on the internet.

49:47

They're just at an age where they love romance, and they don't know one person from another.

49:53

They're very naïve. So vigilance definitely is in order for our children and the children of our friends and extended family members, because criminals, this is their full -time job.

50:09

And unfortunately, there are enough perverted people who would take pleasure and gain money off of the suffering of girls and boys as well, and men and women, though it's mostly, most often, girls.

50:27

So the Backpage story, I don't know, as far as following through on if there was any compensation.

50:34

I know just this last year in the state of Georgia, where I am, we passed a safe harbor amendment to the

50:43

Georgia Constitution, meaning that an amount of money would be levied against anyone who's prosecuted in trafficking a child or abusing a child.

50:57

The money would be extracted from them and put into a dedicated fund for aftercare for those child victims.

51:06

And that's among the first in the nation, if you can believe it. But it's a step in the right direction.

51:13

So I'm very excited with the good pressure that's being put on closing up these gaps for the criminals.

51:23

If we make it more and more difficult for them with the prosecutions and stings, and then protecting our children to kind of dry up the supply side of things, we really could see the numbers reverse.

51:37

Every year it's gone up, as far as I could tell, when I'm tracking the number of victims and traffic victims.

51:45

But we want to see it start going the other direction. We need to put pressure on our lawmakers to see that laws are passed that allow true punishment and conviction of those who take advantage of young girls.

52:05

In countries like Sweden, for instance, if someone is arrested who has taken advantage of a girl, their picture is on the front page of the paper, they're given a huge fine, all kinds of things.

52:17

And their trafficking and abuse of young girls is just a small portion of what ours is.

52:26

So we need to put pressure on our lawmakers to get serious about this. Well, thank you,

52:33

Mary, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. Please make sure that you give us your full mailing address because you have also won a free copy of the book we are discussing,

52:43

Forgotten Girls, Stories of Hope and Courage, by Kay Marshall Strom and Michelle Prickett, Rickett, I'm sorry.

52:51

Thank you, or many thanks, I should say, to InterVarsity Press for providing these free books that we have been giving away to listeners writing in with questions.

53:02

And if you'd like to join us as well on the air when we come back from our break, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

53:09

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. And as always, please give us your first name, city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

53:18

USA. And you may remain anonymous only if your question regards a personal and private matter.

53:25

And that email address, once again, is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

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Don't go away, God willing, we'll be back after these messages with Kay Marshall Strom and Michelle Rickett, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my advertisers. I know you all use batteries every day, so I'm urging you all from now on to exclusively use batterydepot .com

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Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this

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Saturday at 12 noon eastern time for a visit to the pastor's study, because everyone needs a pastor.

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And don't forget, Pastor Bill Shishko is the keynote speaker at the next Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastor's Luncheon, Thursday, October 26th, 11 a .m.

01:02:08

to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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It's absolutely free of charge. Free food, free hearing of Pastor Bill Shishko's remarkable ministerial gifts, and free books, brand new books donated by nearly every single major Christian publisher in the

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But we have had pastors come from as far as West Virginia and other places very far away to come to the

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastor's Luncheons, New York, Illinois, and other places.

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So we hope that many of you will join us no matter where you are. Spend the night in a local hotel here if you'd like, and we would love to see you

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And register by emailing me at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:03:21

and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line. Before I return to our break, or should

01:03:27

I say before I return to our guests, Kay Marshall -Strom and Michelle Rickett, who are discussing with us,

01:03:35

Forgotten Girls, Stories of Hope and Courage. I have some, just a few other important announcements to make about special events that are coming up in the very near future.

01:03:48

The first one is one I mentioned earlier before. The She Soars Women's Conference is coming up this

01:03:54

Saturday, October 14th, and that is being held at the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Jonesboro, Georgia.

01:04:04

If you'd like more information about registering for the She Soars Women's Conference, which features one of our guests,

01:04:11

Michelle Rickett, on the roster of speakers, go to soaringwithhim .com

01:04:18

forward slash conference. That's s -o -a -r -i -n -g withhim .com

01:04:24

forward slash conference. And you can get more details on the location by going to the

01:04:29

Mount Zion Baptist Church website, that is mzbc .org,

01:04:36

mz for Mount Zion, bc for baptistchurch .org, and Mount Zion Baptist Church, as I said, is located in Jonesboro, Georgia.

01:04:44

Coming up in November, from the 17th through the 18th, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their

01:04:51

Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology at Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

01:04:57

The theme is For Still Our Ancient Foe, a reference to Satan from that classic

01:05:03

Reformation hymn by Martin Luther, A Mighty Fortress, and speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant.

01:05:12

If you'd like to register for that event, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org, click on events, and then click on Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology.

01:05:23

And then, coming up in January, from the 17th through the 20th, the

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Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship Conference, which is actually titled the

01:05:36

G3 Conference, which stands for Grace, Gospel, and Glory, and the theme is

01:05:41

Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship this time around. Well, there's a really long roster of speakers there, and they include

01:05:50

Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .B. Charles Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Mathenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, and Justin Peters.

01:06:06

Go to g3conference .com to register. That's g3conference .com. And if you register for any of these events, please make sure you tell the organizations running those events that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:06:20

And now I have to do that most uncomfortable task of all that I have to do every day.

01:06:26

I have to rattle my tin cup and ask you for donations. The advertisers that have kept

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Iron Sharpens Iron running on the air all this time have finally broken me down and gotten me to make public appeals for donations and new advertisers.

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They're spending their hard -earned money keeping Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air, so I feel compelled to grant their wishes and make these public requests for donations.

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Now, I want you to always remember, as I try to remember to tell you every day, never, ever, ever siphon money out of the giving to your local church.

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I finally broke down and granted the wishes of my advertisers by making these public appeals, which

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Send me an email to chrisarnson at ironsharpensironradio .com chrisarnson at ironsharpens,

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and put advertising in the subject line and we will try to work with you on whatever ad campaign that you'd like to develop, whether it's your church, your parachurch organization, your business, your professional practice, whether you're a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, a chiropractor, or it's just a special event that you're having, as long as what you're doing does not militate against the theology of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I would love to speak with you about your ad campaign.

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It doesn't have to be, you don't have to be a believer exactly in the same theology as I do, it doesn't have to be lockstep with everything

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So send that email to chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line.

01:09:13

We are now back with our discussion with Michelle Rickett of who is president and founder of She Is Safe and by the way the website for She Is Safe is sheissafe .org

01:09:27

sheissafe .org and we also have with us today Kay Marshall Strom, author, script writer for tv and film, journalist for various magazines and newspaper op -eds, conference speaker and co -author with Michelle Rickett of Forgotten Girls Stories of Hope and Courage.

01:09:45

Today we are talking about women and girls globally used by God amid pain and suffering. If you'd like to join us in the air with a question for Michelle and Kay our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:09:56

chrisarnson at gmail .com and before I go to any of the other listener questions

01:10:05

I wanted to have you clarify a few things. The crime that is predominantly going on here it seems is being fueled by pedophiles.

01:10:16

Am I right that these are predominantly very evil men involved in pedophilia that are purchasing these young children, predominantly girls, for sex slavery?

01:10:28

Am I right on this? Well actually there is a yes an underbelly if you will to sex trafficking.

01:10:39

Of course there's trafficking into all kinds of industries whether it's agricultural or brick kilns or gravel making but one of the most heinous of course forms of trafficking is the trafficking of persons for sex and that's 98 percent female and each year that I've been involved we see the trend toward younger and younger girls so that's definitely a perversion but I would say there are certain cultural and religious beliefs concerning women and girls that allow for the sexual abuse and slavery of women and girls.

01:11:23

I mentioned the massive brothels of northern India and west

01:11:29

Bengal and Senegal, those two massive brothel communities.

01:11:36

It is in a Muslim area of India and these are mostly

01:11:41

Muslim Indian men who are going to these girls. There is a latitude in Islam about the use of prostitutes and we tell the story in Forgotten Girls of a girl named

01:11:56

Halima in Timbuktu in Mali and about a third of the population of Timbuktu was these cast off, used and cast off girls and their children who lived in the desert in little huts with no running water, no electricity.

01:12:13

Their children were not recognized by the local government because they had no family but that is called a temporary marriage.

01:12:24

So Halima was married to a visiting businessman. There was a religious ceremony.

01:12:32

Her parents were there. Garments and animals and money were exchanged for six days with this girl but it's all endorsed so it's legitimized and so that's just a social norm.

01:12:51

It's a social practice that is endorsed throughout the community. Of course the family hopes that she will be such a wonderful wife that she will beat the odds and they'll have a financial windfall for their family through this alliance and I have never heard of that actually working out.

01:13:11

These are temporary prostitution arrangements. There are other places in the world where for centuries girls have been given as sort of tribute to kings or warriors visiting other camps would just kind of scoop up girls and take them along.

01:13:32

So there's something besides the pedophilia angle to this that there is so much sexual abuse of girls and women.

01:13:44

I know that pedophilia is probably the most perverse of all although there are also those who really also love to just harm a child so it kind of goes even over the edge there but we have a bigger issue and my sense is this is the

01:14:07

Goliath of our day. Every generation has its Goliath but this wholesale abuse and exploitation whether it's sexual or otherwise of girls and women it's in our laps and we are going to answer before God whether we heard and responded to these cries he's allowed us to overhear or if we're just going to look away and go on with our lives and pretending that everything is all right.

01:14:36

Now would you say that this turning a blind eye if you will or accepting of prostitution and pedophilia and things like that by Muslims in these countries it is something that is openly endorsed as a part of their religion or is it something that that everybody just knows that you get away with it and they just don't say anything about it?

01:15:07

Where does this really fit in in the whole situation with these Muslims? Well it is in their sacred writings that these are serious needs for men so in exchange for clothing a man can take a temporary a person for comfort so it's not just anecdotal it really is very much an endorsed part of the world view and in some terms men may think well you know this poor girl she has no other way to live and so I'm actually helping her so you can just see the fingerprints of the enemy all over this right and justify any bad behavior and think that you're actually being benevolent and then of course if you're a woman caught in adultery they'll stone you to death so it's quite a hypocritical story yeah

01:16:04

I don't know if either of you have seen the movie 2007 movie

01:16:10

The Kite Runner but this was a movie that had as a part of its story the horrific pedophilia primarily with young boys in Afghanistan by even fundamentalist

01:16:23

Muslims involved in the Taliban and quite quite a horrific thing that goes on there that's readily accepted as just being a normal part of their culture and of course

01:16:33

I use that term normal a tongue -in -cheek yes

01:16:38

I didn't read the movie yeah I yeah I mean also

01:16:44

I read the book but didn't see the movie the thing is that that I'm sure is the case but the big problem is the perceived worthlessness of girls and women it doesn't matter because they're not of any value anyway and that's the thing that we have seen in so many ways it's not really considered abuse if you're if you're talking about somebody or some thing that is worthless and and that I think is the main one of the main issues here is to teach and demonstrate that women and girls are just as valuable in God's sight as men are we're all valuable young girls and women are precious jewels in God's sight they are not to be used and abused and thrown away and actually we have seen situations where this has been demonstrated how different we see as believers in Christ we see the value of women and girls that we've seen entire areas changed because of them being able to see the value of women and girls and one illustration is a little girl we call

01:18:13

Pramila in India and she when she was born her father dug a hole and buried her alive because he already had a couple of girls he didn't want another one the grandfather saw what happened and he went out and dug the little baby up not because he cared about a girl but because he was afraid that her spirit would haunt him and he would never have a good night's sleep so he took her and dropped her at this at the steps of a clinic and the person who was in charge of the clinic said oh another girl and called the workers

01:18:53

Christian workers at a boy's orphanage and said we have a little girl here her mouth and nose are full of dirt if you want her come and get her or she'll be dead and they hurried over and got her this little girl lived the first few years of her life at this boy's orphanage and she was so so adored and treated so well the neighbors watched over the fence and they said why are you doing this she's just a girl why are you taking care of her and they said because she is a precious jewel in God's crown and they saw how this little girl changed the spirit of that community and in that area there has not been another recorded instance of burying a child alive of a little girl alive because of the witness of these

01:19:51

Christians who took in the little girl and I think that's what we need to do is show through our a witness through our actions through ourselves how precious the life of a little girl is amen we do have some more listeners we have

01:20:14

Susan in Scottsville Kentucky she asks how do we help in preventing and ultimately ending this abuse well this is

01:20:29

Michelle my of course my preference is that we would focus the majority of our efforts on prevention and law enforcement especially in the

01:20:43

United States I mean they really don't want us doing their job of trying to step in with perpetrators but they would like our help they would love it if churches would come forward with families who are prepared to take kids who are caught up in a prostitution sweep the number one problem for law enforcement in the

01:21:07

Atlanta area is there are not enough places to place girls who are rescued and get them the therapeutic care that they need so the prevention side of things and for she is safe our best investment we feel is in equipping girls and women and vulnerable families to have some kind of income since the major driver besides the low opinion of women and girls is poverty so let's step in and make women and girls far less financially vulnerable and then what we're actually doing is winning by demonstration as Kay said you want to show that girls are valuable so when we go into a village that's used to selling girls we bring all the families together we offer this help to generate income a different way maybe out of 300 families only 50 families will agree but all the rest of the families are watching on and so as they start thinking oh wow they didn't have the heartache of missing their daughter they actually all the kids are being sent to school now and they seem to be doing well in their marriage so when it cycles back around the next year when we say have the goat program or agricultural program whatever it is more families are eager to line up and join in and then we start getting involved in through the women getting the message out to all the families number one that god knows you're suffering without your girls he gave them to you as a gift and you need them that's most important but secondly that girls and women according to the world bank study will reinvest 90 percent of what they earn back into their families and communities unlike men it's in these countries it's about 34 percent so it's not only good to do it's very smart it's very strategic and the girls themselves will be there when you're ready to have someone marry into your family but another extremely important asset that we bring along is the fact that it is illegal now in virtually every country of the world to sell another human being so those these communities may have sold people in the past we let them know hey this is a new day and everyone can have a hotline number so you need to inform your neighbors that this is now illegal and there are people in jail for participating you should consider other alternatives rather than getting involved with these criminals so it puts everybody on notice this last year we had the privilege of getting into all of the schools in one district in indonesia into every school elementary school with 68 000 children learning 10 tips to safety practicing that with their teachers and taking that information home to their children or to their parents along with a hotline number oh one thing i wanted to clarify go ahead go ahead kay oh i was just going to say um i really agree with what michelle is saying one of the main important absolutely important things is raising awareness so that people know a lot of people are just not aware of what a problem this is and the other thing in this country emphasizing being willing to open christian homes to children who have been abused in many different ways i was raised uh my parents kept teenage and young foster children who had been abused and i was raised with that and uh the difference that the modeling of a functional family can make is just all the difference in the world especially a functioning family that is that bases their family structure on christ one of the things i wanted to have you clarify was the uh the fact that you were you were talking earlier about a pimp who was saying that without americans he would be out of business i'm assuming that americans but although i'm not so sure about those in other parts of the world who are involved in uh purchasing young girls or young children in general for sex slavery i'm assuming that americans are doing this as tourists and not bringing these children back home where i'm not so certain about other countries though if you could tell us about that um yes um the americans there is sex tourism that in revolves around young girls and so forth other countries have much more of that sex tourism but what what this this specific mountain was talking to me about was the young girls who are in the brothel and then are used to make pornographic films it's the pornography that is so gripping our country and but the girls are abused in order to make these this pornography wow so that's one of the things that keeps them enslaved wow this is so horrible uh we're going to our final break right now and we do have several people still waiting to have their questions asked and answered if anybody else wants to get in line now is the time to do it because we are rapidly running out of time our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com

01:27:10

chris arnzen at gmail .com and please as always give us your first name your city and state in your country of residence if you live outside of the good old usa that's uh chris arnzen at gmail .com

01:27:23

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01:28:46

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solid -ground -books .com after the program is over and please order as many books as you can afford so we can help solid solid ground christian books out of their financial slump i really would appreciate that very very much we are back now with our final 25 minutes or so with michelle rickett of she is safe and k marshall strom her co -author of the book forgotten girls stories of hope and courage she'd like to join us on the air before we run out of time our email address is chris arnson at gmail .com

01:36:27

chris arnson at gmail .com and we have kim in slovenia who has a question and kim says thank you for having these ladies on your program today and raising our awareness of this issue recognizing that the majority of the women and girls who are trafficked uh are from economically depressed and poor areas what is the prevalence of this problem throughout more prosperous countries including europe are we as westerners simply unwilling to admit that this problem is closer to home than we think thank you for helping us to be aware of the plight of these women and girls around the world if you could answer each of you kim in slovenia's well thank you kim for uh asking that important question uh yes of course we have a huge problem in our own society and western society as our nation drifts farther and farther away from judeo -christian values and our own children are growing up uh hearing that their their only value is their physical appearance or their sexuality however um if we look at that uh trafficking in persons map it documents where these abuses are most prevalent and without a question it is in those places that are deeply impoverished and least reached with the gospel so and i i can see god's hand in this you know we we become fired up on the issues and we want to just run out like crazy and start rescuing people and he reminds us i want to show you where these people are and combine that with the good news of jesus christ for all the people who are living there the men and the boys as well are suffering under not only the abuse and sale of women and girls but all kinds of unnecessary pains because they are not living according to the gospel truth and of course in our own countries to the degree that we walk away from that we suffer also in our society but it is as i said early on a question of degrees you can google and look up the trafficking in persons report and it will show you on a map which countries have more slaves than any other the country of india has about 14 million 14 to 20 million of the 30 to 45 million slaves in the world so it's the country that has more slaves than any other close closely followed by china and indonesia places in the middle east and africa where this is widely practiced and by the way i have another so this is go ahead okay go ahead no no you go ahead oh i was just going to okay uh this is k i was just going to add to that that um the reasons for trafficking in this country uh tend to be different too it's not because in in some countries people will say if i don't sell one girl the rest of the family will never be able to eat because we don't have anything that's not the situation here more often the situation of trafficking comes about because of runaway girls who have run away from home who are living on the streets there are certain areas like the highway five corridor up through california and oregon that is a hotbed of this type of thing and so we do have that here and we do have trafficking coming in from mexico but as michelle said it's not nearly the same scope and it's not the same issues it needs a different uh hand but certainly the value of women in god's eyes and uh the teachings of christ are the center of the answer here amen uh by the way i wanted to uh recommend another movie that that you both may have seen maybe you haven't but it's called lion l -i -o -n have you seen that yes i have not yeah lion is about it's a true story uh about a uh little boy who was uh somehow separated from his brother and got onto a train this is in india uh i believe it took place in the 1980s could have been the 1970s but he uh got on a train and wound up in a place far far from his home and it shows how he was escaping it seems continually people trying to uh kidnap or seduce the boy into uh some kind of uh sexual slavery and of course the when i say seduce by by just showing love to him as if they were going to treat him like loving parents or something but he finally was reunited with his mother as an adult but it was quite a moving quite a moving movie yeah it does remind me you know the those who are vulnerable i would say um whether it's in the united states or overseas there are all kinds of reasons for vulnerability and in the us the most vulnerable person kate alluded to is the runaway teen kids are generally fleeing some kind of abuse at home or in a bad situation and they're naive and they think well i'll live under a bridge for a night i'll get myself a job and an apartment but they they don't really know how long it takes to get oneself situated in adult life and within two days they will be contacted by a recruiter or a trafficker that's from all the research of trafficked kids in the united states the second most vulnerable person in the u .s

01:43:07

is a foreign national someone who's come here thinking they're going to be a nanny and when they arrive their identity papers are taken from them and they're told that they're now criminal and that they owe their keeper for their transportation and housing and food and it's thousands and thousands of dollars and so in those kind of cases those people may be in plain sight they may work at a nail salon and they're just very quiet and so looking for those indicators that someone is not free to speak for themselves or to go outside or if they're they talk about being kept against their will i mean that's what our the average citizen in the united states can do is to begin to keep our eyes wide open and to be willing to be a little uncomfortable and reach out to authorities on anything that looks suspicious there is a trafficking and persons hotline number that i'm trying to look it up right now as we speak while you're looking that up i'll just announce our email address again it's chris arnzen at gmail .com

01:44:32

chris arnzen at gmail .com if you have a question before we run out of time and while um i believe it was kay who was looking up the hotline number i'm not 100 sure but i think i'm getting pretty good at identifying their voices was i right was that kay looking that up yeah this is michelle i i have that hotline oh i was wrong this time okay um 888 -373 -7888 and you can give an anonymous tip just say something doesn't look right here i wish someone would look into it that's also a great number to slip to someone if you think um you know they they might need some help there are so many things that we can do small and great that can help keep people safer and also make a difference for those who are already enslaved so this is this hotline again this number is 888 -373 -7888 888 -373 -7888 and do you know the specific name of this hotline yes it's the polaris project hotline and that's p -o -l -a -r -i -s that's right and what can you tell us about the polaris project well polaris was started to first of all do the research on understanding the scope of human trafficking and what makes people vulnerable to trafficking both in the united states mostly in the united states though they also have branched out to look at some other information so they they have a map online where they can show you the trafficking cases that are in your state so they have a you know a red hot dot on the map to show so we can look at our own country and communities and see where are there more cases than any other place and that of course is helpful to mostly to law enforcement so polaris has done a great service of bringing the data the information and then this hotline number great and that's 888 -373 -7888 i'm sorry go ahead hello i was just okay this is k it's just going to add that it's never a mistake to call this number if you're suspicious because it doesn't come back on you you are not in trouble you're not getting any innocent person in trouble but you could be saving a life amen and we have christina in asante minnesota who says as someone with a heart longing for broken women to discover their beautiful identity in their maker i have found occasionally my own insecurities will rise up and hinder my ability to properly selflessly and lovingly mentor and encourage in your years of experience have you dealt with having to fight your own battle while walking alongside these women if so how did you go about releasing your own self issues or have you found yourself healing and realizing your father's heart for you right along with them thank you for your ministries i'll let michelle answer this question but let me just say first of all that for me it's always a battle it's always a battle it's never never easy and to have an organization that you can look to and ask questions and to get help from it just makes all the difference in the world michelle you go ahead well i i would say i i am one of those um broken girls i was rescued from the home of the pedophile when i was a teen and so i i carried a lot of that baggage into my new faith and even after god um really shook me by the shoulders by seeing these girls um where we lived in in africa um i was reluctant to step out uh it took a lot of encouragement not only from the lord but from other people people like k who said michelle you need to launch out on this vision and i'll help you and uh k and others not only traveled with me and encouraged me but joined the board of directors and and made it happen so it's the kindness of god you know as we're um shaking off um issues that we have carried with us from our own brokenness and in a way that never we are always um dropping weight and um i have been so blessed to learn not only from co -laborers like k but from the girls and women that we deal with overseas as i see their courage and they overcome so much more than i have overcome it um that's part of the joy actually and and i i would say it was not until i began to really trust god and say okay god i guess if you want me to do this you will provide for me you'll provide the people i need the resources you'll open the doors for this and i just need to um ignore my uh feelings of fear and count on you to do what you have promised to do not for me but for these other girls and women and once i was able to do that it becomes tremendously empowering because the enemy can't hurt me anymore i'm not trying to hide the bad news about my past and this is part of my message at the she soars conference is the very things that the enemy meant to destroy you with is what god may want to use as a platform for ministry not uh and he will glorify himself in these other people that he has you to minister to but he will also do a wonderful transforming work in your own life that you couldn't experience in any other way than kind of stepping out in faith well michelle i already know that i want you back to give that testimony of how you were rescued from the home of a teenager that sounds like a pretty powerful story if you could summarize right now uh exactly what happened well um i had been suffering from my very earliest memory and when i was about 12 years old i i told my mother i begged her to protect me and she fled she took my older sister and disappeared from my life for about 15 years and then things got really bad in my home and i had a friend at school and she was worried about me because i didn't have a mom and who was actually the adult who was the adult that your mother left you with or did she leave you an adult at the time it was yes it was it was my dad um and so uh my my friend at school um flied me with questions and when i told her just a little of something that was going on she said you know that's illegal he can't do that to you and we got to get you out of there and she was a child i didn't think she could do anything uh but she told her mother her mom called the school department of family and children's services uh took me but that the amazing thing from there is that i was placed with a christian family and that gave me as k said a glimpse of normalcy from the inside of what a christ -centered family could be like and hope that um you know i i didn't have to live the way that my parents live i could have a whole new life heaven was on my side i praise god for that well i'd like uh each of you to have about two minutes to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners before we run out of time here and if we could start with k this time give us two minutes and then of course michelle after she's finished give us two minutes of a summary of what you most want our listeners to remember today i'm i most want our listeners to remember that this is not a problem that has no solution we have a mighty god and we have a god who wants to change this type of a situation and he's going to do it through us what i want people to know and remember is that every one of us has a part to play in fighting this plague it may be um opening your home to a person like michelle or like my parents did it may be um writing it may be speaking it may just be being aware and watching but there is a place for each of us to play a part in um mending this horrible wound that is afflicting our world uh prayer is an important part of it in the book um forgotten girls we give ideas of what people can actually do because so often if we are told this is the problem all we do is feel more guilty than ever because there's nothing we can do about it but there are things to do and so um i would encourage people to look at that list see prayer uh ideas see actual things to be done to help to bring this plight to an end great and now michelle well uh of course i'm i'm really big on mobilization yes god is able and he does his great work by mobilizing his people to pray and take action so we have action steps that people can take on our website go to she is safe .org

01:55:29

and click on the engage page and there you can sign up and say yes i want to become a she is safe champion for these girls you sign up and then we will start sending you information um that you can take action on everything from something very small you can push out uh information on how people can follow our 11 points to prayer on october 11th for international day of the girl or you can organize a prayer vigil or a walk or come in toward the she is safe offices where we kind of look under the hood of prevention rescue and restoration so sign up share and then support it does take support if we rescue a girl who's four years old we're committed to her until she's 18 and that means her daily care a place to live medical supplies school be everything that a child needs so these things are not impossible they are very affordable and we have courageous co -workers here and overseas in these very difficult places day by day but it does require our support in prayer and financially well that website again is she is safe .org

01:56:46

she is safe .org and of course the conference that we were mentioning where michelle rickett is going to be of a number of sponsors that's the she soars women's conference this saturday october 14th and that's going to be held at the mount zion baptist church in jonesborough georgia the website for the conference is soaringwithhim .com

01:57:15

s -o -a -r -i -n -g withhim .com forward slash conference the website for the church where it is being held is mzbc .org

01:57:27

that's mz for mount zion bc for baptist church .org and again that's mount zion baptist church in jonesborough georgia the hotline number that we mentioned earlier for polaris project if you happen to be a witness to something that you suspect may be something underhanded in regard to children perhaps the sexual abuse of a child or some kind of thing going on that might be connected to sex trafficking or whatever that might be that may bring harm to a child the polaris project hotline number is 888 -373 -7888 888 -373 -7888 and by the way krista and asante or christina i should say in asante minnesota you have also won forgotten girls stories of hope and courage thanks to our friends at intervarsity press and please make sure we have your full mailing address so cumberland valley bible book service can ship that out to you that's cv or cumberland valley bbs for biblebookservice .com

01:58:34

and uh you can also purchase this book from cvbbs .com if you haven't won one or if you've won one and you just want to give some more away go to cvbbs .com

01:58:45

okay uh marshall strong do you have any contact information that you share that you care to give um my my contact is my is hey at kstrom .com

01:58:58

that's my email address and my uh blog and website is kstrom .com