27 million most terrifying secrets

Just an hour ago, I finished watching a documentary entitled "Call + Response." I was thrilled to hear about the screening on ACU's campus since I'm passionate about its cause and have been wanting to see this film for over the past year.

In case you've never heard of Call + Response, you should definitely check out the website or a trailer for the film, but to summarize it far too quickly, it's a film and a movement to end modern-day slavery.

That's right, slavery. You thought that ended 150 years ago, right? When the North won the Civil War? Not so much. That's actually only one very limited (though of course lamentable!) expression of slavery.

Believe it or not, there are actually more slaves today than at any other time in human history. Forced labor, forced prostitution (often of CHILDREN!), debt bondage, child soldiers... The twisted schemes of slave traders are overwhelming. Over 27 million people are enslaved worldwide at this very moment. And 80% of them are women and children. And in 2009, slave traders made more than eight times the UN's entire budget -- yes, 8 times what the United Nations spends!

Find it hard to believe? Check out the US State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report. You'll be astounded. And disgusted. And grieved.

Or at least I hope you will be.

Because that astonishment, that disgust, that grief... that is the beginning of a change.

(More to come soon...)