Helen Martin’s Blog

In anticipation of the second annual [International Justice Mission](htts://www.ijm.org) benefit in Minneapolis (May 27–Hyatt Regency, Mpls.) I was looking over some articles, etc., and this came up on a Google search! It’s our [church](http://redeemerbaptist.org) newsletter for the women’s ministry. The newsletter is called “Inspire Uplift Renew”, and I wrote this article after last year’s benefit:

Relief

The dining room held nearly 500 people, making the IJM benefit dinner on May 15 the largest first-time event that International Justice Mission has held in any city. It was amazing; full of wonderful speeches by heroic yet stunningly ordinary souls who with simplicity and eloquence brought clarity and connection to the work of justice taking place half a world away. I can’t say that I learned a lot of new things that night, but that’s only because my crash course on IJM has familiarized me with most of the facts. But there was still an assumption or two that needed blasting away, and Gary Haugen, great man that he is, gently accommodated.

As table hosts, Ken and I brought a home thank you gift of six beautiful silk and cotton coasters which were designed and made by girls in an aftercare facility in Thailand. These were former victims of trafficking rescued by IJM. One of our coasters is already tear-stained, but with my tears of joy at being part of something so important.

Every delicious cake deserves icing, but the truth is that the benefit itself was the icing. Here’s the cake: A mere six days after the event, 25 sex-traffickers were arrested in Minneapolis and other Minnesota cities. They’re being charged with doing the very things in our state that are done routinely in the developing world hundreds of thousands of times each year: luring impoverished young women immigrants (some legal, some not) into another country on false pretenses and forcing them into prostitution. I believe that the local IJM event was so bathed in prayer against oppression and sex-trafficking that there was an overflow into the streets and across the cities. I will believe it until I am in Heaven’s video store and can watch it for myself!

Think of it: how blessed are we that far and away the majority of our law enforcement officials do their jobs so faithfully and with such excellence! They uncover heinous crimes being committed, go find the bad guys, arrest them, and hand them over into our fine judicial system where they’re charged, prosecuted and, if found guilty, imprisoned. We enjoy not only the unspeakable luxury of such a system of justice, but the added ability to take it for granted. The mission of IJM is simply to bring a fragment of what we experience into places where it has not yet been granted.

Some of the people on the other side of the world lack food, and we give it for the sake of the Lord. Often they have no quality medical care, so we roll bandages and send medicines and doctors for the love of our Saviour. And some of these same people suffer gross injustice and are without anyone to stand up with them.

Ecclesiastes 4:1 says, “Behold, I saw the tears of the oppressed and they had no one to comfort them.” I want to send someone, in Jesus’ name. It’s so simple. It’s so clear. I cannot believe I spent nearly 20 years as a Christian with such a gaping hole in my religion. What a relief to know that God cares about injustice. What a relief to do something about it.