A Great Need, a Great God

Previously on Lantern Rescue. Welcome to Lantern Rescue, a ministry program dedicated to bringing light into the darkness of human trafficking. It's time to light the way to freedom.

Instead, I was silent when they needed me. This is Lantern Rescue. We've been a lot of places and a lot going on in the world. We look forward to talking about that today. Some of the things that have been happening in our world, first of all, in the Caribbean area, in Haiti. The assassination of the president, one of our operators, was significant in helping with the investigation of that. You can't help a country when it's bleeding out and the president's been assassinated. We've been actually involved in helping our unit there and part of that investigation, of course, then that was overtaken by an earthquake. And then at that moment, we are regrouping as an organization as well as our people on the ground to say, what can we do? And we were able to deploy not only supplies and good things, but really critical, we deployed our Haitian unit to take supplies to kind of hard to reach areas.

Hard to reach in two ways. One, there was some road closures from mudslides and the earthquake. And then two, gangs were doing interceptions. So twice we funded and deployed our police force to go deliver that and, of course, their arms so they could safely make that transportation. And then they stayed and provided security. So that was kind of something we can do that's different than the normal humanitarian effort.

We collaborated and worked with SOCOM to open up some airstrips in the west side of Haiti. And that's just still going on. As well, unfortunately, during that time, we had two close assets kidnapped.

One is a personal friend of the whole team and one of our key people there for intelligence. He was kidnapped. And then another was a fellow whose house I've stayed in quite regularly and his niece was kidnapped. And so, you know, we collaborated with Haitian authorities to handle that. Both people kidnapped, were thankful, were released. And we're grateful for that. We were able to, one of them specifically negotiated it down from, get this, I think they wanted originally $400,000.

We negotiated down to like $4,000. Wow. And these are the gangs that are essentially rampant in Haiti?

Yep. And kidnapping is primary funding. And it's crazy what they ask in Haiti. I mean, when a gang kidnapped somebody, they'll ask for like, you know, $2 million. And it's just absurd where sometimes that will show up, but not from us, of course. But, you know, if we can't physically get there, we can do some serious tracking of the issue and the location of phone numbers and things like that, and then try to pinpoint down where that is and then even get involved.

And here's what the negotiating process needs to look like. We've been back and forth to some other countries organizing operation with an attorney general's office. Actually had two teammates in that location just in the past week. We're looking at doing some training for about 230 policemen for the UN Office of Drug and Crime in another country. In West Africa, you know, we've expanded our border operation to other locations. We required some necessary vehicles to run down some smugglers. One of the problems we had is that now in West Africa, our primary operation, people are trying to avoid it by sneaking through the bush and going through the African bush. So my task force director there was like, hey, we don't have the vehicle that takes to run these people down.

So we're able to, you know, pull that together and get a vehicle for that and expand that operation. And, you know, and that's just in West Africa, we're so proud of our team. I mean, we've been there since I think the last show. But I know TC would say, too, we're just so proud of that team because every day they are rescuing girls and arresting people. You know, and we cannot not talk about the big fly on the wall, and that is Afghanistan. Now, I've said a lot off air with you that we're not going to say here. And we have purposely as an organization avoided getting on Facebook and social media and saying all kinds of things because honestly, my personal opinion is all of those people that have done that have caused great damage and harm.

If you knew exactly what was going on on the ground and the negotiations and everything that has to be done and said, I know those people want to raise money, but man, it is a that is a fine line to travel on. So I would just say we've been a major role player and some task force and advice, movement. Well, you guys could use our prayers. Yeah. Because there is just a whole lot going on.

That's right. And it's going to keep going on. And it takes resources.

Yeah. And it's going to become a it's a humanitarian crisis, you know, as well. And it takes resources. It takes a great deal of time.

And and maybe in the show we can talk. I mean, I just got back from Asia and the Far East. So working hard there. And then for our team and I'll start with Alan has been in the west part of the U.S. training police in Colorado. And he's really active, you know, training police here.

Wren just finished recently. I know she was part of arguing for the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on some restrictions that basically have providing the digital means to follow child pornography. So that's a pretty big ruling she's been part of. And then T.C. has been in South America and he has been training police and SWAT and commandos. So T.C. and having seen each other, we've we've just been around the globe talking.

So, T.C., it's awesome to have you on here. And you want to catch us all up? Yeah. So I just got back yesterday from Ecuador and had, I would say, two to maybe three prongs of a mission going on there. As Mark said, as we trained what Ecuador calls their their commandos, which is GOE, G-O-E, government operation especial. We were teaching them vehicle assault tactics and MACTAC, which is active shooter stuff, and TAC medicine. So we did that at the same time.

A very, very active part of the training was to teach them the scriptures and actually 12 GOE got saved out of 37 on that trip. Oh, wow. That's awesome. So that was awesome.

And to see change lives we know is like huge. But another part of that mission then was while I was there, as I talked to a major of their countertrafficking unit and the countertrafficking unit there is not GOE. So they don't have the tactical capabilities. They're just national police. And there's 70 of them that have authority in the entire country. And basically, without going right out and getting on his knees, they were begging for operational training and training in intelligence gathering other than digital.

He basically said that he was coming straight from his general with this request. So here's another country that is, again, it's everywhere, right? We know this.

Yeah. But they were begging for help in these areas. So I talked to one of the GOE officers who was on the Colombian Ecuadorian border and I was asking him about trafficking there. And so the trafficking on that border, which is their northern border, is, interestingly enough, Chinese. Some of this is more smuggling, Robin.

You'd have to kind of discern which is which. But it cost a Chinese person between $50,000 and $80,000 to get into the U.S. via this route. And then the other people groups, the other nationalities coming through there on a consistent basis are Venezuelans and Haitians. And so there's this massive movement through Ecuador and on this border then, you know, the cartels are up there running dope and people running them through there. Some of their tactics are to pull two box trucks up beside a GOE vehicle and just rain rounds in the vehicle or to T-bone or end or front end a vehicle and flip them over and then attack them.

So it's very violent. They need training. They want training. And there's just so much work to do. And a follow on to that is I'll have a meeting probably within a couple of three weeks in Costa Rica.

Same conversation. What do they need? You know, how can we help?

What lane can we fill? So the need is immense. And as we've said in the past, I know there are probably other groups out there doing boots on the groundwork. I know there are. They're not a lot. And it's kind of like it's kind of like scripture says, the fields are white under harvest, so to speak.

You know, and there's just not a lot of laborers trying to multiply ourselves by training these other indigenous folks. And I would follow all of that with sometimes it's a bit frustrating at times. I would love to get my hands on either the bad guys to personally make them go where they need to go or my hands on the victims to get them to where they need to go.

Sometimes it doesn't look like that. And so there's a bit of tension for me personally. You know, we're trying to set up sustainable work, but sometimes you'd like to be I'd like to be more intimately involved in an actual rescue. So, yeah, we're rescue operators, aren't we? I mean, like nothing gets us drooling and excited is loading up, putting the gear on and knowing that, hey, we're going to go do the operation right now.

But like what TC is saying is people don't know the length of time and training and sometimes the year it may take prior to that moment. Right. But as I was listening, I was just thinking about, you know, we did those episodes, you know, a few months ago saying we need operators. We need right.

We certainly need prayer like like we never have, because all these theaters are opening up across the world. Then, wow, we we need people to come into this situation. And so I think it's a great time to remind them right before we go to this break. Mark, what what are the places you want them to go if if they have this kind of training and they feel like they can help?

Sure. And I mean, we're we believe it or not, we know a lot of stones, but we have to turn them all over to find the right one. And to do that, we send them to www dot counter human trafficking joint task force dot com. I know it's a lot, but give us the effort.

If you're serious about this, you have a heart for it as well as a skill set. Www dot counter human trafficking joint task force dot com. Wow. I mean, and obviously we need to all be praying that God will send more people because it just sounds like there's all these opportunities that are right here. And right now is things are just every country, every country. Oh, my goodness.

Every country we go in. You can tell we got a whole lot coming on the other side of this break. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for your prayers.

We'll be right back. Lantern Rescue is a USA based organization that conducts international rescue operations for people suffering from human trafficking. Lantern specializes in sending former U.S. special operation law enforcement and intelligence personnel to partner with host nations and assist them in creating specialized units to combat ongoing security problems such as genocide, terrorism and human trafficking.

As a nonprofit charity, they offer services free of charge to their host nations. Human trafficking has grown into the second largest criminal activity in the world, reaching an estimated one hundred and fifty billion dollars in annual activity. Lantern Rescue has developed rapidly to combat trafficking. Lantern operates through a trained international network in order to rescue women and children from sex and labor slavery and facilitates holistic aftercare services. They're gearing up for operations right now, and you can go to lanternrescue.org to see how you can support them financially. Welcome back to Lantern Rescue. And wow, what an episode we have this week for you as God has been doing so much around the world from Haiti to Asia and down in South America.

And Mark, wow. Sure, all over. God's got us moving hard. And I'm so interested in what TC was just talking about, the intelligence of coming out of Ecuador, probably because we just deployed a, we're trying to, excuse me, deploy part of our transition team from Haiti to go help with ICE, the issue of the Haitians at our border.

And we've been offering that now for two weeks. I mean, we've got a great team member who speaks Creole, who's a go getter, missionary for many years in that region. And anyway, we have a teammate that we've tried to move to the border to help out either at our border or from the Haiti side. But a lot of the Haitians that are representing our border, actually, TC has nailed the intelligence right there coming from that region. They aren't, they've been living there. They've gotten a cheap flight over in the past that was provided to them. So a lot of people are wondering how they came from Haiti, how, you know, 80,000 Haitians. Well, literally most of them already been in South America. Now it is peculiar that they were pushed up to our border. So anyway, who knows, but we want to help them out and we want to do all that we can for them. The Lord really has been laying on our heart as a team to help out again in the Asia region. We've, TC's worked there.

I've worked there. We've got some other teammates that have worked in that region and rescued several hundred children and victims from labor slavery, sex slavery. And so the timing just never was right.

We could never get things right, especially with COVID. There was a lot of restrictions in that area and that region of the world. But last minute was able to recently, I had an asset there. He said, please come now.

Come, you know, if you can come now, I can arrange all the meetings that you need to have with the governments. And then some other things that we talked offline about were coming into play. So God opened the door like he always does when he wants it done. It's never easy. Sometimes you feel like you're pushing it open, but I'm always a believer if you don't want it open, it's not going to open. Right.

So I definitely had to push some, but it opened up and made the travel there. And we have a fantastic operation in West Africa and we've got now a fantastic operation in that region of the world. And so we run border interventions as well as intelligence in the largest cities in that region. And we have some task force members that are on our payroll per se.

I mean, they're supported by us and you as a listener. They work 24-7 to combat and counter trafficking. And just like TC gave the description, every general, director general, IGP, anybody I sit down with, when they find out who we are and what we do, they're like, come, please help us. And it's not just a request for money. It's a request for partnership, hope, the feeling of, we don't know what we're doing over here, but we're trying to do it. We have this enormous problem. Our children are being daily taken into other countries or they're foolishly doing illegal immigration and it's leading to trafficking. So help us.

What do we do? We're a small team and we can't help the whole world, but we're doing our best to help what God puts in front of us. While I was there, we rescued 21 victims. You know, last week for Landon Rescue, we had 21 rescues and three arrests in the Asia region. We had seven rescues and five investigations in the West Africa.

That's just in one week. And so our numbers every week are bumping up because we're expanding our capabilities. We're doing that in faith.

It's a step of faith to look at a team you just trained and go, okay, this has to be together all the time. Well, that's got to take funding. God, you're going to have to provide it.

I just know God did not take me halfway around the world, put me in front of all these people, both political and law enforcement, and then that it would not fall in the right direction and that it shouldn't fall through. So, you know, you just take that leap of faith and you go forward. Yeah.

Yeah. And TC, you've had some really interesting training. I personally, and I bet my listeners would love to hear, you know, you said you'd led some of these guys to Christ.

Was there one of those stories that was just like mind blowing to you? Yeah, actually got real close with one of the goey guys who's on the Colombian border. His first name is Vilmer.

I won't give his last name, but he's down there. He accepted Christ on about day three. And it's not easy for these guys, Robbie. I mean, I think you understand that the way they've lived life has created a lot for them to overcome. So it's not like, you know, it's not simple, but they, you know, when the spirit calls and the word can fix, you know, it's going to happen. But I've been in contact with this young goey guy and he's just talking about the work and the stuff that they go through.

It's very dangerous. But, you know, he's committed to the task and now I'm trying to be like, you know, like that mentor, telling him to go out there as a lion and do the work and not to be afraid and, you know, and to actually create other disciples, you know, or to be a part of the discipleship process within the goey. So he's pretty stoked, you know, to keep his fire burning is a big deal. A very important thing. That's a part of that process.

It blows my mind, actually, that in three days, right? Like, what are you sharing with them that in three days, what has God given you to share scripturally with these guys? Well, here's the thing, and this is what, as a group, we hammer that consistently. Number one, that God's word is His word and therefore is authoritative. It has authority. What it says goes, whether we like it or not. And then number two is faith alone and Christ alone. There are no additives, there are no extra things in there, and that there is only one way.

There's only one path. And we hammer that in different ways, over different, you know, we talked about the armor of God and different things like that, but over and over and over again. We come back to those principles because they've not heard it like that. In the end, when they actually understand that God's word means what it says and that there are no other options, then, you know, the Holy Spirit's starting to bang away at these guys. So, you know, really a third of the guys there receive Christ.

It's incredible. Which, you know, to me, Mark, as I think about that, you know, God has chosen these guys, right? To have the heart to go out and truly be His warriors. And so, you know, I think it's really neat that He rewards them with this understanding of what real life is about.

Right. Yeah, and it's such an honor to be in those moments at that time with those people and to work with people like TC and Alan and Wren who, in those moments, we realize that, okay, we're not just helping them perform justice. Although that is a calling on them.

They're righting wrongs in their country. But at that moment, we have the opportunity to give them the gospel to tell them about Jesus. I mean, I can't tell you, our task force director, especially in Africa, man, how much the Word of God means to him. Like, he'll ask me for certain verses all the time. You know, he's threatened by voodoo.

He's threatened by people who want to kill him now. And that happens with a lot of people that we work with. And so the Word of God is our comfort and we get to share that with them.

And, you know, they're so excited by that. So, yeah, that's not, in our job, that's not the burden. That's the blessing part of it. There is plenty of burden in our work, okay?

That's like, man. But then the blessing part is what TC was able to do with those commandos and that particular commando is to be able to share Jesus with him and know that, at the end of the day, that young man is going to be in heaven with us. By in generations. I mean, the Gospels are going forward in very beautiful ways.

And clearly, you know, people see his good works and, you know, worship his father, you know, made him that way. So that's just really, really, really amazing. We can finish off. I know I'd love to just finish off with a rescue operation.

I can talk on one and TC can share one, particularly in the Far East here region. We were at a border operation and intercepted a man who appeared to be in his 20s, mid to late 20s, but had a young girl with him. As we find out, he had drugged and raped the girl. She was 14 years old and he was taking her to another country, the next country over in order to force her to be his bride. You know, a 14 year old girl who entered a butcher shop and was taken by, you know, a Muslim man like that is the reason we do what we do.

And I mean, this is I'll show you, you know, this is this is the perpetrator, you know, arrested here. And to realize that had God not had us in that place at that time, at that moment. That little girl who I've got a daughter the same age would be living a hell life right now. But God cared enough for that. Right.

He lined a lot of things up. That we might be there at that moment, you know, and I'm thankful that her life is going to be different and changed. He is going to get last.

The prosecutor said they're going for 30 years, you know, for this guy. So, yes, it's important. It's important that that happens. Praise God. Amen. I mean, absolutely. And TC, you've got one.

I do. And I, you know, I thank Mark for that work, for being there. We really do count on God's sovereignty, right? Like you said, the fields are white and we're massively limited as humans. So we do count on God in this work.

The one I'm thinking about is our partner in Western Africa doing the work. And, again, because of their consistency, because of their being known in the region, the community, or a part of the community came to our guy there. I call him Frank. They came to Frank and said, hey, we know where this little girl is being beaten by her father when you come and do something. So, again, there are people avoiding Frank and his crew and there are people who are counting on him to do the right thing, to do what he does. So they went and they got a hold of the girl. The father fled. They got a hold of the police there. The police, as far as I know, are still looking, but the girl actually had to be taken to the hospital and physically, you know, made well enough to go and be a part of the process to get her well and to get her dad caught.

So I just think it's so important for the consistency of the ongoing consistency and availability of their ministry to rescue those who need help. Again, as Mark has said, the little 14-year-old girl had no chance. She had no chance to rescue herself. And then this guy that Frank and his team rescued, no chance.

She's not going to be able to get away from her father. And we had photos of the beatings and things like that, or the evidence of the beatings. And so I think that's really what drives the whole team and anybody in this work is there are some people in life who are getting hit in the face with a frying pan and they can do nothing about it. And so we're the, I don't know, I guess the anti-frying pan crew.

That's just, that's what drives the bus. As you were showing me that, TC, Mark was actually showing me those pictures in Oh My Soul. Like, if you're listening, let me just tell you what an opportunity God has given you, right? It's now on you.

You know about this. To pray for this team and just ask yourself, Lord, what do you want me to do in response to what I'm hearing? That you're doing this work around the world and I have the opportunity to hear about it.

And now how would you have me respond? And what an honor it is really to have you guys. And once again, to get an update, because I know there's so much going on, it's hard to get shows done. So thank you guys. God bless. Thank you.

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