Ep. 36 - The Chain Breaker Ft. Rusty Havens - Find the Good News with Oran Parker

For a long time, I thought of sex trafficking as something that happened somewhere else, or maybe as a plot device for action films. If I'm honest, I feel pretty ignorant even admitting that. Like, many of the things that plague our world, it was an out-of-sight, out-of-mind problem. It wasn’t happening in my life, and there was not information stream putting it in my view to make me aware. That’s where Rusty Havens comes into the picture, and it’s the reason I asked him to visit me on Find the Good News. Rusty is the founder of the Southwest Louisiana Abolitionists, a local group of volunteers with the mission of creating more awareness on human trafficking in our region, as well providing resources, services, and compassion to victims. That’s the part that seems to be the hardest in this world today—the compassion—but it isn’t for Rusty and the volunteers that work with him. Sitting across from Rusty, looking in his eyes as he spoke, I could see that he looks on the children of creation with eyes of love and mercy. He allows the suffering of others to enter his heart, to wound him with their wounds, turning that energy into loving service. When I get to visit with someone like Rusty Havens it’s hard to leave without a change taking place. I think it’s because the love he’s sharing, the compassion and care that he’s promoting are made of spirit. It breaks chains, enters through locked doors, seeps through the pores in prison walls, it enters where there is no space. Listen to Rusty Havens in this visit and you’ll be made aware of things that pierce through the comfy thin cushion that keeps the worlds suffering at bay, just outside the safe spaces we’ve built for ourselves. There are terrible things out there, tragedies and horrors, even if they are not our own,… but they are happening to our brethren,… they are happening right here at home. Does another’s pain and despair absolve us of right speech or right action, release from the duty of engagement, just because we were the lucky ones? I don’t know the answer to those questions, but I’ve believed for a long time that on some level we should each be asking some version of it. When Rusty Havens sat down at my table, I met a man who is asking that question. When he asked it his heart quivered, and it led him to do something good.

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FOR MORE INFO ABOUT RUSTY HAVENS>> www.instagram.com/rusty_havens or www.facebook.com/swlaAbolitionists 

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THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY PARKER BRAND CREATIVE SERVICES >> www.ParkerBrandUp.com

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