Campus Crusade for Christ hosts Empathy Week
The group held a vigil to honor and benefit trafficking victims.
Published Oct. 2, 2009
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Campus Crusade for Christ staff members sit in a vigil bed waiting for students to make a donation of $5 to $15, the price for which the average child prostitute is sold, to free them from the bed Monday at Lowry Mall. Campus Crusade for Christ and iEmpathize sponsored the outdoor vigil, along with other events during Empathy Week, to raise awareness about sex trafficking.
Campus Crusade for Christ partnered with the anti-slavery non-profit iEmpathize to host Mizzou Empathy Week.
This week aims to raise awareness about human trafficking — the practice of selling people into slavery — in order to inspire students to action, iEmpathize Executive Administrator Christy Pennick said.
CRU staff member Alan Toigo said iEmpathize's artistic approach to human trafficking made the issue more real for students.
"You're able to connect with an individual, and whenever that happens, you think, that could have been me," Toigo said. "I could have been born in Thailand and sold into a brothel. It's just so bad and disgusting and shocking."
Larry Martin, International Justice Mission Education vice president, a non-profit that fights human trafficking, spoke about God's presence amid modern-day slavery at the CRU weekly meeting Thursday in Jesse Wrench Auditorium.
Martin said people have a hard time believing God is good because all the pain they see in the world.
He told the story of Jyoti, a teenage girl from southeastern India who was trapped in a brothel until the International Justice Mission rescued her.
"She saw the body of Christ — that's what we're called — show up in her darkness and get her out," Martin said.
Such actions make it possible for the world to believe God is good, Martin said.
"It makes sense," sophomore Laura Kebede said. "God uses people as his instruments, showing his love through people, and there's nothing more powerful than that. Because he has such a heart for the oppressed, it's only natural that those who follow him have a heart for the oppressed."
When CRU set up the iEmpathize art exhibit preview at Lowry Mall on Monday, CRU members took turns holding a vigil by sitting on a bed on which children had been raped.
"Just thinking about a child lying on this bed and all the terrible things happening to them, I just want to scoop them up and hold them," Henderson said.
A sign read, "The average child prostitute is sold for $5 to $15. Make a matching donation to free a slave from the vigil bed."
Art items on display included a child's sandals found outside a brothel in Cambodia, number badges pinned to child sex slaves in Thailand, and photographs of a former brothel and a child safe home.
"That's what God wants to do, too. When we're hurting, he wants to scoop us up and hold us," Henderson said. "As representatives of God, we need to be his hands and feet, a tangible expression of his love."
The response to the Lowry Mall art exhibit preview was mixed, Toigo said. When volunteers told one group about human trafficking and the vigil bed, the students laughed. Another student asked if he could keep the child if he made a donation. Toigo said it disturbed him that students could joke about kids being sold into sex slavery.
"I try to believe the best about Mizzou students, so it really grieves me," Toigo said. "It's like partnering with the people who are hurting these kids, because it desensitizes other people from the reality and horror of the situation."
