Fear and Protection

Nakita Kolov, the Russian nightmare.

No, the devil's nightmare here. From its time to man up. Challenging men to step into their true manhood. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it.

Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Previously on Lantern Rescue. We wanted to give everyone an update on where we're at for rescue so far this year and kind of start with some good news because obviously there's been some negative stuff that's happened in the world lately so we wanted to start off on a good note.

So our total for 2021, so far only halfway through the year we have 176 people rescued and 119 investigations started on traffickers. 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. This is Lantern Rescue. We tell the stories, we talk about rescues, and we empower you to do something about it.

William Wilberforce once said, let it not be said I was silent when they needed me. This is Lantern Rescue. And so I don't know about you, but I feel like you're the only one who's going to be part of Lantern Rescue that we get an opportunity to see what God is doing around the world and get updates like you're going to get today.

I think you're going to be so glad you tuned in. There is a lot of stuff going on around the world, really scary stuff. And it's really good that we get to be on the front lines and pray as things are changing rapidly around the world, aren't they, Mark?

Sure. And you know, anytime today's show we're going to talk a little bit about fear and protection, I think, and anytime you're disrupting criminal activity, you can expect that the criminals don't like it, you know, and we try to mitigate that. And at times it rises up. But we've had, you know, particularly our, you know, our listeners, I'm sure they know in the country of Africa, we have a fairly very large operation. And so we're going to have to a fairly very large operation. And it's multi country. And we're blessed with a great director there of our task force.

And he's doing a great job. I mean, even even in the the previous week, some of the cases that we're being able to now get involved in some not only through referral, but through our operations at the borders and things, you know, are, if you follow our social media are really almost critical steps, you know, I know that sometimes we do interceptions, and it's, at that moment, the child is has not been trafficked yet. Like we were getting in them before they're trafficked. And then there's moments where they're clearly being trafficked, you know, one in the past week was a spiritist who took a child for voodoo activity, you know, Oh, my goodness. And, you know, the interception of that child was a rare case.

And we're super excited another one in the past, just in the past five days, an interception of a 1714 year old, another 14 year old, a 10 year old, a 15 year old and a 12 year old. And this was a vehicle that was smuggling the miners across three boys, three girls, they were from literally a country completely over and they're on the far border of the next country. This is how far they have traveled, been smuggled at this point. And they were going into under a complete, you know, a complete trafficking situation.

And and just know that those children this week were all returned every single one of them was returned to their parents. And gratefully, so means that we're doing a not just a good job, but we're disrupting criminal activity. And that kind of goes into our show now. And I'm going to let TC just take it from there. Because we did get an urgent call from Frank and is what we call him and TC you can kind of share about that. Yeah, so as Mark has referenced, we got a call from Frank about was kind of an urgent call. And it was a little bit cryptic on the front end, just saying that the way that he represented it that things were heating up where he was, because of the kind of work that he's doing. And we weren't sure exactly how serious that was, what that meant. So we kind of rallied immediately and started peppering him with questions as to what it meant. And he actually started laying out what he feels is a long term resistance to what he's doing, to the point where he believes that he even lost the teammate early on in the process of setting up his organization. Because he thinks that they're actually trying to kill him.

And we haven't fleshed that all out yet. But the stakes are actually deadly serious, no, no pun intended there. And so, as Mark has said, his work is now had such traction and such influence that people don't like that evil does not like to be stopped.

It costs people money. And so as he shines the light on what's going on, people have threatened to now either take his life or threatened to, so that he'll stop. He's getting calls from people that he does not know, asking them why he continues to arrest their countrymen and their families. And that's actually kind of new to Frank. He's not used to that sort of rhetoric or that kind of threat or, and so he called us up and said, What can we do?

And we got together and started giving him ideas and, you know, from hiring people to all kinds of other options. And I just think a couple things. One, at times we think because we're doing the right thing, everything's going to be easy.

And that's not the case. In fact, I believe that because Frank is doing the right thing and his team is doing the right thing there, great resistance will come and the resistance actually proves that he's on the right track. Also, we as Christians can experience real fear. We're not robots. We don't pretend like we don't have fear, but we go to God. He asked us to pray for him. And he wanted other options that we can help him with. So we didn't just pretend like it wasn't going on. We prayed and we come up with ways to attack that fear. And so I think, I just think, you know, we talked that we want to listen to pray.

This is something that they can pray about. And that this is real. The work is real. The threat is real.

But the kids lives who are being changed and rescued is also real and worth it. Some of the things he shared on that TC and I can run we'll kind of give you a little bit of a review of that. One is that he is getting those calls, as TC mentioned. Two is he lost a teammate early on.

And then three, well, I keep listening. When you say he lost a teammate? He was, his teammate was killed. And, and he, he, he loaned, what's happened is he loaned his motorcycle out to someone.

And they attacked that motorcycle and killed that person. So he, you know, feels that probably that was intended for him, and probably so. And then the calls. One of the, here's one of the things as Americans, we may not completely grasp, but as Christians, we should. That is, in talking to him one on one, one of his greatest fears is the voodoo attack. And I didn't pick, we didn't, I didn't pick that up in the phone call in the call that we were having until later, and that he is truly scared of those who practice voodoo in the West African region, which is, you know, it's everywhere, that they are, you know, doing rituals against him.

Like that was, that was one of the things he tried to make clear to me, I finally got it through what he was saying through his English. That's real curses. Yes. And so things are real.

Right, right. So that was one of the things he was really wanting God to protect him from. So I actually sent him a couple of verses, and one particular was, you know, about protection, but also sent him Psalm 109, which is not like a G-rated Psalm.

Like, it's like that R-rated Psalm, if anybody knows what Psalm 109 says, you know, it's, My God, whom I praise, do not remain silent. For people who are wicked and deceitful have opened their mouths against Me. They have spoken against Me with lying tongues, with words of hatred. They surround Me. They attack Me without cause.

In return to My friendship, they accuse Me. You know, that Psalm gets into, you know, great detail. But the part toward the end, he is able to, you know, David is responding, asking God to do certain things in that prerogatory Psalm. And he's saying, you know, may they have no pleasure, and may they not be blessed. And may it be like a cloak wrapped about him, like a belt tied forever round him. May this be the Lord's payment to My accusers, to those who speak evil of Me. And, you know, I sent him that Psalm, and he read it.

I sent it to him in his language, and we read it, and we talked about it. And I think that he feels better, even that, you know. So, we have a brave man who understands that he is doing something that affects not only the physical world, but the spiritual world, and people are going to attack him.

Right, which gives, like TC talked about, our listeners an opportunity. Here's something to pray about right here, because these curses could not be more real. Those of us who went to Calvary Church know that Pastor Quartz was cursed, and it got his heart. And, you know, it was, it was a horrible thing. And in an operation standpoint, in the past of my life, I've seen assets who, when they get scared, even if you try to convince them, look, you're fine, you're safe, everything. Once they get scared, they don't operate in the same way. You know, they, fear can kick in. I mean, look at the world we're living in. I mean, fear can kick in, and people will do, you know, things that do not make sense, or, you know, they don't take the stand they should, or, you know, things of that nature. And so, it's important that we do everything we can to protect him and encourage him. So, TC, when you mentioned that hire someone, are we talking about like a bodyguard, that kind of thing? No, not necessarily. I know it sounded like that.

That's a great question. When Frank hires for his work in his area, he's, there are oftentimes females and smaller people that are, that are doing great work to understand the language and understand what they're looking for. But if it came to a fist fight or a wrestling match, they might not be necessarily matched for that particular aspect of the work, which is growing.

So, one of the suggestions was, can you hire somebody, can you bring somebody to the, to the job who has the other skills, but maybe who weighs 225 pounds instead of 125 pounds? We told him he needed an Allen on his team when we're not there, when Allen's not there. Yeah, I can understand that.

If I was where he was, I would want more than one Allen. I would, you know, like, yeah, that's, it's, it's serious. So, Ren, from your point of view, how do you see this? So, I know we had an episode back in, I believe it was in March, that we talked about another team in a different country that a bunch of their members had been killed by an attack, and how much more difficult that makes it to operate in a country when you're not only trying to do the work to help rescue victims of human trafficking, but then you're also trying to combat this immense violence and these threats, and you're, you have so much other stuff to be concerned about. So, it really, it adds another layer to that, and why, when people ask us, you know, why does it take so long to conduct these raids?

How long it takes us to prepare and get the teams ready and to set everything in place? This is another reason that it takes so long, because we have to take this stuff into account, and we have to be mindful of these threats that our local assets are getting and be protecting them as well, because we can't just pretend it's not happening and, and let them be at a risk as well. Right, but the thought that also occurs to me is, how about those same people trying to put voodoo on you guys?

I mean, I would think that they would be, you know, heading not just for, for him, but for wherever they can find the people that they feel like are responsible for what's going on, and I would think not just in that country, but you've got a lot of voodoo in Haiti as well. Sure, that's not really, personally not a big concern of mine. It's just not a side of that that I'm really concerned about.

Sorry, I'm probably the last person to ask about that. I really am not worried about it. Yeah, we haven't seen any white voodoo dolls running around.

But there might be, I don't know. It's just something to think about, certainly for our listeners to pray about, because, you know, to me, I unfortunately have seen what curses can do to really good people. Actually, yeah, you actually, and I'm glad we remembered that episode and brought that up, because if you even go back to the gang member who was paid off money, whose region we went into and rescued girls, I actually saw a video of him last week doing a video, doing a voodoo ritual. He was in the streets and they were doing the voodoo ritual of, you know, zombie, you know, to get into all that, but he was actually doing that ritual.

So clearly, you know, Robbie, you're probably right. We probably don't know, and we just trust in God that he's going to protect us, but, you know, they're probably, there probably are, you know, voodoo dolls of us somewhere, or rituals been done against us, I'm sure. Well, hey, we got to go to a break right now, but when we come back, as you can see, things are heating up and it really gives us all an opportunity. And I myself am pleased to know about the 109th Solomon and what that has to do.

So 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 US 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 $150 billion 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. Well, over the break, we really learned how T.C. protected himself. A little side note, T.C., you know, you took this a little differently than the rest of the team, apparently. So when we were there, the very first time, we were looking for like some cool souvenirs just to show you how serious this area takes it. And I would be a bit more of the wren in my thinking of it. But in going through some of these shops, I saw a doll that is made to ward off any voodoo curses. And basically, it's a little stick man with nails running all throughout it so that no matter how you touch it, you get stabbed. So I thought that was interesting.

And I wanted to buy it, but I didn't think I could get it through customs. But on a serious note, I also want to say that we've talked about training almost like probably in almost every podcast. But I know at one point in time, prior to this particular alert by Frank, they had had an arrest that was super physical.

Again, a lot of wrestling and the police being called and things like that. And he said very specifically, in a message to us that had he not had our training, he would have been disgraced in this particular arrest. So as Wren has said, the training and the planning and all this stuff that we do matters.

And it matters in a very tangible way to the team on the ground there. Yeah. So Wren, I mean, this is really, it's a matter of life and death.

Yeah. And I think something that we have to be mindful of is that we have to be mindful of is we've been in, you know, Frank, he's a newer guy to this world. He's newer at having threats and being in this environment where it's a little dangerous. And we sometimes have to be mindful of that because we've been operating in these worlds for a lot longer than him and a lot longer than most of our country managers. So stuff that he perceives as a threat is stuff that we get or have gotten on a daily basis. So we have to be mindful of that and always remember who we're who we're working with and not always just try to take things from our perspective, but really look at it how they're, they're the ones living in that environment every day.

They're, that's their reality, whether it might be different for us or not. And we work in countries of varying level of security threats and of danger. So we always have to be mindful of where they're at and what's normal for them and what's a threat to them.

Right. And, and, you know, we are formulating, like I want our listeners to know that we take that serious for him and, and we respond well. And the response is involve more training, resources, understanding of movements and time and when to leave the office and, you know, and those types of things. And then even making sure who can he truly trust, you know, who are his closest confidants. And we know who that was, you know, a month ago, but we want to make sure that's who are those people and how can we help him continue to vet those individuals. So when we're there, some of that heavy, some of that lifting that we'll do at that moment is, you know, not short of anything I'm, you know, considering, you know, lie detector test is simple to do, you know, there's things that we can do to keep the people around him vetted and safe for him, you know, because he's critical. He's his tenacity and how I've spoken of him in the past. He's vital to our operation. It would be, it would be, you know, detrimental to, to lose him either physically or emotionally. He check out, you know.

All right. Well, I can't help but think, you know, the fear thing that you mentioned earlier, that Elijah himself, I mean, you know, he ran big time. Chris Yeah, for three years. Darrell Bock Yeah, he disappeared.

Darrell Bock You know, but he'd made serious progress, right? And then the next thing you know, it came and it came in a fury. But God was very gracious to him and he fed him by the birds and he, you know, and he got him some rest and, and got him back up on his feet, you know. And it seems like God's provided you guys to kind of provide spiritual food for him as well as things to help him protect himself. And, you know, clearly you've had a lot of really cool support here from the United States in the last couple of weeks, right?

You just came back from Florida. Chris Yeah, very much so. Yeah. And yeah, we can talk about that. We had a great, great time. Wren, you want to start off? I mean, kind of tell you were showing up to a party, probably knowing even less than I did. And I know you were just as impressed as I was.

Wren Oh, absolutely. So, man, this trip was super cool. So every time someone wants to do a fundraising event for us, or any type of awareness event, whatever it is, even if we're just, you know, they want to focus to speak at their church, we're always amazed by how much people do for us. We don't expect, truly, we don't expect anything. I think we've told a story about the banquet we had last year, or earlier this year, rather, that we truly thought it was just gonna be like hot dogs and chips. And we were cool with that.

And it ended up being this beautiful thing. So last weekend was super similar. We had this event in Florida, and it was only planned about a month and a half, two months out. And as we're seeing the people planning it, more sponsors are rolling in and vendors are rolling in. And we're seeing like, it'll be a really, really big event, really intense event. So we get down there and it was just the most amazing training compound and so many people involved, so many people asking questions, so many people supporting us. It was just, it always just makes you emotional to see that outreach from people and how much they're willing to do to support a mission for countries they've never been in, for kids that they're never gonna meet, for just wanting to help and out of the goodness of their hearts.

And it really is just, it's amazing. Yeah. Particularly, you know, we had them on the show. Ballistic Advantage was, you know, the lead in that, along with American Keystone Tactics, and then the community of people, but then all the vendors. Man, I mean, you had, you had an enormous amount of vendors who showed up. I think they gave, I want to ask, they gave away about $30,000 in weaponry that day, you know, to the winning stages, to the shooters who won each stage. And our team had a blast. We were the range officers for the day. So we each ran one of the competitions. We split up and ran those competitions from the sniper shoot to the dueling match to, you know, everything and just had a blast doing it. I mean, you know, we didn't even get to shoot a gun that day, but that's okay. We just love doing all that stuff, you know. Some people would hate it, but we absolutely, absolutely had a blast. But also, you know, clearly they must have raised quite a bit of money for the ministry.

They did. I mean, and in my eyes, you know, it's God providing like for Elijah out in the desert. Things are looking tough.

Right. But then his provision steps up to kind of meet, because as I'm thinking through, wow, look at what's going on in Haiti in the last two months. Now look what's going on in West Africa. And I'm just thinking, wow, that, you know, the temperature is rising, just like Frank said. However, God's provision, you know, is rising. It's a beautiful thing.

It is. And the encouragement of that day to look out at all these different vendors who came from long distances, who, you know, have a much bigger business with the US government than, you know, and they could be set up doing something somewhere else. And here they were with us and just, you know, wholeheartedly saying, look, whatever you guys need, you know, we're here. This is what we do.

And this is the part we can play. And I think that was, that was really, really cool. It was also cool because it opened up to the community of the Panhandle of Florida. So I know everybody had great contacts and fun getting there, especially Ren.

Yeah. So me and Alan live pretty close to each other in Pennsylvania. So we had the great idea to go down together to this event. And we fly from our first airport down to Philadelphia, and then we're supposed to be catching a flight from there to Charlotte and then to actually where it was at in Pensacola. And as we're at Philly, our flight gets delayed. And the first delay of one hour made it so we were going to miss our connection to the next airport.

So no big deal. We rebook. We're still going to make it.

It's going to be tight, but we're going to make it. We're going to get their sleep. And then the delays just keep piling on and piling on and piling on. And finally around midnight, the night before the event, they cancel our flight. So they want to rebook us the next day for a flight that leaves after the event is supposed to be over.

So what, what do we do? We're in Philly. And I get the bright idea to book us out of DC and go rent a rental vehicle from the Philly airport to DC, drive ourselves at midnight. Well, by the time I got the rental car, it was about 1 AM. 1 AM to DC is about a three hour trip. We get there about 4 AM, sleep in the car for a couple hours, go check in for our flight, fly straight to Florida, pick up our rental car and drive straight to the event. We were about, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes late to the event.

And when we come sliding in, I had to change in the parking lot. Like we were just in truly rare form. But as soon as we got there, it was just an adventure getting there, you know, everything that could go wrong did.

Yeah. But we still did it. You know, we were really blessed. We were able to get through.

As soon as we got there, just go ahead. You guys weren't the only one. Like, I mean, every team member was having trouble.

TC couldn't make it. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. There was a lot of stuff trying to get in our way. But when we got there, the environment was just so invigorating and everyone was just so excited to be there. We didn't even, you know, we were tired. We were sore from being in cars and planes and everything, but it was just, it was so exciting.

Like all that just faded away because that event was just so amazing. That is. And then so as you guys look into your near future, you know, where are we headed? So we've got, you know, in the Caribbean, we've got to drop down and sooner, real soon. And then, you know, we're in conversation in Asia right now, trying to make a determination there and then looking at sending a presence force to West Africa. So we're going to be in a lot of places at once and probably dividing and conquering some of that, you know. So some of that presence forces at the new people that you guys have been searching for. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, God has been adding some people to us who have expertise in different things that we'll be putting into play in the future.

That's absolutely wonderful. So how would you tell our listeners, you know, obviously if God puts it on hard to support financially, but also how could they be praying real specifically? Right. I think, as TC said earlier, Ren, now we do have to pray for our foreigners, you know, that work with us and do this every day. Continue to lift them up. Pray for the scheduling of our lives and the travel to countries and in and out and all that it's going to take in the next three months, I think are going to be pretty intense. So do lift us up in your prayers every day.

Wow. What an honor it is to just feel like we're part of what God's doing, this amazing rescue mission across the world and something that I know, you know, breaks His heart. So thank you guys. Thank you, Ren. Thank you, TC. Thank you, Robbie. Thanks, Robbie. You're welcome. This is the Truth Network.