Lantern Rescue - Overcoming the Friction

This is Robbie Dilmore from The Christian Car Guy and Kingdom Pursuit, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build a kingdom. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds.

Enjoy it and share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. 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. Oh, do we have an episode today on Lantern Rescue? As we hear, you know, so much in life, if it's not opposed, you wonder if it's of great value.

Well, the team at Lantern Rescue certainly faces opposition from all sorts of places, sometimes where they don't really expect it, and such is the story of today. As we get into it, Mark, share what happened. Hey, good morning, Robbie, and thank you for this time.

We're always glad to be able to be back in the States and take a break and collect ourselves. And that's kind of what we're doing right now. We just returned, as you know, from doing 22 raids, and this is a time when now we're planning the next thing. And so we have some exciting things coming and some invitations and requests that we want to try to meet. Today's show, you mentioned the friction and the team was talking about what we could share with folks today. And you're right, a lot of people have a vision that rescue operations are like a storybook ferry process, you know, that everything goes well, and everything is so easily, that our only problem is the perpetrator, the trafficker, but that's not true.

We run into all types of issues and want to start a show off by today by sharing a point of friction that some people would may not even understand or would never have thought of. When a trafficker begins to target a minor, they always do that with somebody who lacks supervision. And in certain countries, there's a great deal of inventory for that. There are a lot of minors, a lot of girls who lack that type of supervision or accountability or anybody who even cares if they're showing up in the evening or where they're going in the morning.

And so it's very easy for a trafficker to get a girl like that. And then they begin that process of intimidation. And even one of the things that we've learned in the intimidation process when we were doing a training for women's empowerment is that the girls were used to being choked. But more than anything, they were used to guns being pointed at them. I still remember them asking Allen specifically saying, Okay, yeah, we get that. But what do we do when they point the gun at our head?

Literally, that was the question. And it was just shocking to realize that these victims, these past victims, who are now trying to get control of their life, they're still afraid of that manipulator who's going to point a gun directly at them. So they're manipulated, they're intimidated, they're told things like, I will kill you. And so they're also in the control process taught that law enforcement is evil. If you see a policeman or law enforcement, an investigator, anything, you are to run, they are your enemy, and they're not to be trusted. And, you know, that shows in particularly one of the countries we work in, it's almost every other week, if not every week, we get a text from our team there that says so and so was shot. Literally just yesterday, an investigator was parked at a stoplight, someone came up to the window and shot him in the head. And that was in an area that we're actually talking about where this rescue happened. And so I lay all that groundwork to tell you about that these are these are minors who do not have any supervision, they're manipulated, they're threatened, they're told they're going to be killed if they don't comply.

And then they are taught to fear law enforcement. So a particular rescue just a few weeks ago, we're at a bad part of town where law enforcement is not welcome, where it's a threatening environment. Again, it's the middle of the night. It's dark in this area from the Alpha and Bravo team enters the building. I'm on the street clearing team.

And so we're checking the street because Corona has a lot of the party on the street as well. And then we're trying to secure that street and the doorway. Well, you correct me if I'm wrong, TC, but I know that the Alpha team, you get a girl who is exactly what I just described. She's been intimidated, she has been controlled, she clearly has no supervision. Even the description of her clothing is that, you know, she's hardly clothed because of the abuse and activity inside of that establishment. So when she begins to exit the building with the Alpha team, and they're extracting her out, she realizes that a lot of men are bunched up on the street, and they are, and those are customers.

And those are, I believe, I believe 100%, those were many of her customers. And it's clear that those males, not just the owner, but it was very clear that those males even have control of her. And they're bunched up, and they're literally encouraging her to resist the fight, right?

And so, you know, we're trying to contain the situation by containing those men on the street, and any violence that could come from them, as well as protect the girl and the victim. And she encounters that and realizes, probably, one, she has to resist law enforcement, two, these are her customers, you know, for the night. And so she actually tries to make a run for it. And she becomes even violent so that we have to control her. Now, that's not a scene that many people see in the storybook idea of a rescue, but that is part of the friction that we have to overcome. And we're, I'm so thankful, man, we got her to the vehicle, and one of the agents from that country, a female, to this day, I don't know what she said to her. She got her and she said something to her, and instantly, the girl's attitude completely and everything changed.

And I think the agent just did a good job describing to her who you are and why we were there, that we're there for her, you know, but still, those are the people who are there for her. You know, but still, those moments where you're trying to protect your team and be safe and protect the victim, and then to have that occur, you know, it's just part of the friction, it's just part of the story. And so I know that's what we're talking about today. And that's just an illustration of one of the things that we have to overcome. Wow. And Ren, that's just often the case that there's friction where you don't really expect it.

Yeah. You know, when we talk about the rescues and the raids, I think most people have an image that the only people resisting us and the only people fighting back and during the entire time that we're in the country, that the only people that we're really combating are the traffickers. And that's just not really the case. You know, sometimes the victims are so drugged and manipulated and brainwashed that they fight back until they are brought to a safe place and they start to understand what's going on. You know, we have other things that go wrong. We have different branches of the government that, you know, sometimes don't want to work together.

They're getting in conflict. There's issues with vehicles. There's just so many little points in these missions over the time that we're in country that things can just really, there's a lot of friction, you know, there's a lot of obstacles to overcome. Yeah. And Alan, there were training obstacles, right?

Yeah, there's always those issues. When you're training teams, you expect those teams to be eager to learn, take in the information. And sometimes they think they know better in certain situations, and they may in certain situations. However, in these particular type of operations, the training that we've done over the years, the actual operations we've done, give us a good understanding of what needs to be applied for each situation. So some of the friction comes from teammates thinking they know better sometimes and leaders of those teams, you know, thinking that, you know, you're coming in and you're taking for their team.

And we're really not. We're just trying to get them at a level that makes them more efficient and more safe, whether it's in the operation or even in the training environment. So there's always obstacles in training in the operations and all those things kind of create friction. But, you know, that's what makes us better, I think. Yeah, Mark, I can't help but think of the church in general.

You know, it would be so easy if it weren't for all these people. And part of what you're working with really are the judges and those kinds of things as well, which apparently sometimes is disappointing. Yeah, we've all had that experience in countries where the friction with a judge is often, is he a man of character?

Is he in position just because of the things he looks a different direction or because of the money he takes? And so, you know, we've worked with judges that were not so good. And we wouldn't trust them for anything. And then we've worked with judges who are really good and are trying to do a good job in their region or district or whatever their assignment is. You know, but finding those people sometimes is only by experience. We can't communicate to an office and say, Oh, yeah, this guy trustworthy, you know, or is he what's the how long has he been in office?

No, we can't even get that information. You know, we we have to light on scene, figure out what kind of guy this is, or what kind of female this is. And, you know, how are we going to work together? And, you know, I know we shared in a past episode about, you know, we had a judge who was coming to meet us who got in a gunfight, literally a street over, you know, with police with police mind you. So, you know, that is definitely a point of friction as well. You know, Alan commented on on the training, I wonder to TC could share a little bit about because training is such a big part of what we do.

And in the preparation of rescue. All right, before we get to, I'm sorry, right before we get to that, Mark, I know, I'm a little confused. So I'm guessing the listeners might be as well. You know, I just don't picture judges the way that you guys picture judges. You know, I, so can you kind of maybe Ren take that and explain to our listeners what these judges in other countries, it's a little different situation than in America, isn't it?

Kind of. So it's still a judge in a sense, but they provide over cases in a courthouse, but in other countries, specifically the one we're talking about tonight, they are basically a walking warrant. So when we go do these raids, instead of having a paper warrant, the judge comes with and they are, there's a warrant. So, but they are often you know, these countries are very, still developing. So the judges aren't the ones that you would picture here, you know, an older white man with gray hair sitting on the bench. They're often very young, still trying to prove themselves. And the, you know, these countries are very volatile, and there's a lot of corruption. So it's really hard to tell if the judge is there because he's actually qualified, or did he buy the position?

Or is he a gang member? Like there's really, until you meet them and get to know them and go on an operation with them, there's really no way to tell. And that might be a really hard concept for someone in America. To picture a judge as a gang member, but it's a reality in other countries. Yeah, I can see that.

And TC, back to the question about training for you. Yeah, I would just, one thing that I have seen, it really is good versus evil, and not just in the country that we're talking about, but in the country we're talking about, there's a weight of evil born of expediency. It seems like almost everybody we come in contact with, from judges, to the police, to the victims, to the johns, you know, to the violators, you know, they're trying, it's almost like survival mode. So anything goes and when almost everybody is living that way, there's, the evil has a good downhill run. So in effect, you know, when lantern goes out, we're kind of like, we're friction, we cause them friction.

So there's going to be a constant rub, as you said earlier in the show, between good and evil. In this case, you know, I watch Alan training these guys, Alan's trained, I'm sure probably thousands of people. So one of the things that lends itself to the friction and training is language and concepts, American, American idioms and concepts. And when we say certain things, you know, for somebody who's done it their whole life, it immediately brings up images on you know what you're supposed to do, things like that.

When you get to the next place, it doesn't translate even with a translator sometimes. So everything takes two to three times as long. Plus, the folks that we're training don't have the concept.

So a four hour training back here in the States might get you, you know, a whole list of things done. Our last four training there between being pretty smoky hot. I think we probably did. Maybe now we can jump in on this, but maybe a quarter of what we had planned on covering.

So that's a certain friction there. I hate that we're got to go to a break. We're going to get back to actually more of this story. I think you're gonna be fascinated what happened with this particular young lady, as we continue with so much more lantern rescue. 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.

Welcome back to lantern rescue today. We're again going over some of these rescues of the 22 victims that were recovered over the last month and getting some insight today into some of the you know, good things come often with a battle, and they're resisted heavily by the evil one. And so that doesn't always necessarily happen.

necessarily does come from, you know, the actual perpetrators. And so as we, you know, even to get to all this obviously takes the training. And Mark, you had a little bit more to talk to on that. Yeah, TC was mentioning the struggle of the language overcoming that area, because all the countries we work in, we can't be proficient in their language, and that it does take increased time to, to give the training. And in the middle of the raid, I often am just marveling at the goodness of God that we're able to function with a group of people, we don't speak their language. But you know, on a serious note, and then I'll give a little bit of humorous on a serious note, many of the countries who work in their language, for the words for like friend or foe, or particularly in one country, the word for gun and friend, almost are at least in the English, English version for us to say it is very, very close. And on more than one occasion, you know, I've seen a gun and I use the word for friend and then call myself to get that right, you know, in those volatile moments. And so those are moments of friction where we constantly do while we're bumping around the road before raid, we're kind of covering a couple of words, we're saying, Hey, this is how you say, you know, this is how you say that, is how you, you know, clear up this word or that word. And, you know, those are serious moments that we have to make sure, you know, everybody understands what each other's saying, particularly on particular words and particular phrases.

So, you know, it's a constant work in progress that we're doing. A humorous story is honestly, a couple of weeks ago, I thought I would never see this, but I was in a country with TC Allen, here we are doing the briefing that night and we always pray. So it doesn't matter, you know, who's corrupt or not in those environments, if they're along with us, we are praying before and after things. And so at the briefing we gave, Allen gave the briefing at the end of it, TC prayed in English while a Arab from Yemen translated into French. And I remember just standing there in the dark thinking only God would have this occur, that I have an American praying in English while an Arab from Yemen is translating that into French. You know, it's just quite unique to see God pull those many people together from different areas of the world.

Yeah, that is absolutely beautiful. And speaking of beautiful, you know, Allen, you see a spiritual reflection in what happened with this young lady. Can you kind of share that with our listeners?

Sure. The spiritual side, I mean, sometimes you don't see it until afterwards and you look back, but, you know, all that preaching that was initiated, bringing her out of the establishment and then getting her out on the street and that's when she became more volatile, you know, she was engulfed in darkness, really couldn't see the light. And up to the point where, you know, she realizes we're law enforcement and we're trying to extract her out of a bad situation, but she was still fighting us and then a teammate from the home team there, the home country, a female came up to her and I'm not sure what she said to her, like Mark had mentioned earlier, or whatever it was. That was the spark that led the path to her understanding and she went from completely resistant and volatile to calm and smiling and more than willing to get into the vehicle to be taken from that environment. But up to that point, you know, she was engulfed in darkness and then when finally that light was cast out of the darkness, it just changed everything and that's not us, that could only be the Lord in that situation, you know. Yeah, that's amazing. And TC, you had a take on that as well?

I do. Sometimes when good and evil clash is violent and, you know, whoever has the most violence wins. And, you know, that happens, it happens a lot in the world, but in this particular case, this young lady was really kind of overcome with love instead of creating an enemy. In the end, this young lady was brought back to the police department where we were working out of and she was standing there, she was still, you know, maybe profiling a little bit of showing off, attention getting, but by and large, you know, she had subdued herself, but she still was, we'll just say scantily clad. And Mark Turner, has anybody got a shirt? Well, I had brought a shirt because you never know, you never know what's going to happen in one of our raids.

So we went and got her a long sleeve, I'm not sure it fit her well, but it definitely did the job. But in the end, you know, she had received gifts and love from all involved. It was funny, she had me laughing.

I tried to give her a fist bump, she wouldn't do it, she kind of, you know, she kind of gave me that look. I said, you know, you owe me, because that's my shirt, of course, she didn't understand any of that, per the language, but we actually had a laugh together, the two of us. So, you know, those kinds of things are great to watch. And I think it's also important for listeners to understand, when we go, and people want to hear how we did, I'm often asked, and I'm sure we all are, you know, how many, how many, how many? I know that the listeners here are smart and they care. I want them to understand that when the team goes to any one of these countries, part of the job is overcoming this friction, whether it's logistics, language, interpreters, meetings, all of those things have to happen in order to hear the numbers at the end. And I just, I think it's critical for folks to know the amount of work that Mark and Ren and Alan go through to make these things happen successfully. Yeah, wow.

And Mark, what would you add to sort of the end of that story? You know, standing, there's always a difference in the appearance of those girls and they are true victims because these clubs don't exist without males and wanting young girls. And it's sad and it's frightening to think about my own children or a girl being caught up in that and being used in that way. And they're dressed up sometimes to look older.

They're given wigs, all this type of things. But then the beautiful picture is what TC was referring to there and Alan to go back and to be in a safe environment later that night and then to start to realize and understand that law enforcement is good. It doesn't mean them harm. They're simply trying to help. We're trying to give them other options and will they take those options?

How far will they take them, all of that. You know, we're happy to have in our countries to have those transition teams or people who collect information from them but then give them counseling. But to see them in those environments where they're smiling and happy, I've actually looked back at a picture a few times in the last week where Alan, you're standing there holding a light. There's three, you know, precious girls sitting in chairs.

TC, you're back in the image and I just took the picture and all the girls are smiling and you guys are standing there and you realize that those children, they are children, were in an environment that would kill them, would literally take their life if need be for pleasure of a man versus now where they were placed in that night and in a safe environment. And I'm thankful for it. I wish we could do more. I wish we had more people.

I wish there was more effort being put around the world against trafficking and against the protection of minors and the future that they deserve and should have. You know, the thing that jumps out at me, Mark, is that, you know, God had placed this woman, right? I mean, you know, he has people all over the world and it's really, really cool to me that this show is able to highlight how God has, you know, agents out there that are working and she was able to bring the light, Wren, in that situation and so many times it's these connections that Land and Rescue makes with these other agents of God out there that make all the difference. And so, as we, you know, kind of wrap up this particular episode, can you kind of share with us, Mark or Wren, either one, where we're kind of gearing up to go to next or? Yeah, we have, right now we have, we received just two days ago, an invitation for a letter to train in a country, their SWAT force, logistically, I don't know if we can do it until the beginning of next year, but we're glad that that communication is happening and in place, but we're actually headed out. We've got to do some meetings in a Spanish speaking country here in the next few weeks with a new justice department lead and some new generals of police and this is a particular country that's really excited about our team coming and working there and we'll be formulating agreements there and a plan of action. Yeah, so we can all kind of join with you guys in prayer, really, that, you know, for the team, but also, you know, that God would raise up these other agents that are hungry enough, really, and thirsty enough to ask for help, because it's those kind of communications, right, that come in, Mark, that open up the doors that, to provide this kind of training so that, you know, those agents that are out there all over the place will be able to continue when you guys aren't there. Yeah, absolutely, it's vital that we train and help identify. We bet individuals and that they have the courage to do the job, you know, even while we're there, you know. I'm going to talk about another point of friction, you know, just finding the team that will actually do the job with you and not try to thwart or, you know, overturn an operation. You know, that happens a lot, so when you find one, when you find those, we pour into them. Yeah, that's so beautiful. TC, have you got a perspective on prayer for our listeners that you think we should be praying?

I do. For the team, but for even just Christians in general, sometimes we desire, as Christians, as humans, we desire safety and comfort and prosperity. We assume that when we do the right things, all those things are coming, and so we kind of get into an outcome-based manipulation of God, and our idol, again, then, is us. The way we want things to be is the way they should be, based on how we've lived. But God is much bigger than that, clearly. God knows beginning from the ends, and he will bring every single event into our life, every single person, down to the very minutia, to kind of the very detail for his glory and for our good. So I just want folks to know that they need to worship the Creator, not to create that, even if it's self, and that we just need to do what is scripturally sound and right. That's beautiful. And what a way to end today. We look forward to the next episode of Land and Rescue. This is the Truth Network.