not a conference like this

Freedom Summit 2011 my 10...10...10 

This past Friday & Saturday, my friend and I attended Freedom Summit 2011:Building the Bay Area Response To Human Trafficking, held at Harbor Light Church in Fremont. I was grateful that we both received a 50% discounted registration fee just by clicking on a link to inquire about the limited scholarships they had available. This shows the heart of the conference's organizers; they wanted everyone to be able to attend. I know that putting on a conference like this is expensive, so I very much appreciated the discount which very much helped. Looking back at the sentence before this one, I see the words a conference like this. In my experience, I have never attended a conference like this. I have been to many well executed training events, rallies, motivational talks, classes, etc. that all could come under the heading conference, but for me, Freedom Summit 2011 was a very different experience. I was challenged to action. Not that I haven't been challenged at other venues by other people, but this time was quite unique. The question posed to me: What will I do in the next 10 minutes...in the next 10 days...in the next 10 months to help fight human trafficking and slavery? will be on my mind and heart. I am still pondering it all, so some of my thoughts may come out garbled...

Something that keeps coming to my mind as I reflect on the two days is the truth that everyone at the Summit was in it together; that we all had an important role to play in this fight against modern day slavery and we chose to be there to learn how to fight smart. The speakers and presenters, some of whom were very well known, and others not well known helped me to see that we are all needed. Nobody was more important than another. The folks on stage and the folks off were the same. We all had the freedom to attend and are choosing to to use our own freedom to help rescue individuals who are not free; the estimated 27,000,000 girls,boys, women, and men in bondage by people abusing their own freedom and power. 27 million... globally...in countries far...in countries near...in the USA, the country in which I live...in my state...in the bay area...in my city...in yours...

In the coming days, I will be prayerfully processing the information that was passed on to me by passionate people who have been in this fight a whole lot longer than myself. I will use this blog to share this with whomever chooses to read, in hopes that more free people will come to understand that they (you) too are needed in this fight...