Breaking Chains: Becky Murray's Fight Against Human Trafficking

this episode of GPS contains accounts of events that some may find disturbing or inappropriate for children listener discretion is advised human trafficking exploitation slavery eky Murray has seen it with her own two eyes as a western white woman I was allowed to walk around these brick factories and meet with families trapped in slavery that factory is in Pakistan where children as young as four must make a certain number of bricks just to be allowed to eat that day just to be allowed to eat and so I walked around this brick Factory and I remember just saying God where are you in this this is so unjust where are you in this and the response that I felt back in my heart is daughter where are you in this what are you going to do about this you'll hear how Becky answered that challenge and what compelled her to begin ministering to people who are bought and sold like property it's coming up on this episode of GPS God people stories an Outreach Of The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association I'm Jim Kirkland that challenge Becky felt in her heart is one that Billy Graham says comes straight from the pages of the Bible now the gospel of Christ has no meaning unless it is applied to our fellow man who hurts and is in need when is the last time that you shared your life with another person or someone of another race or your material Goods with the poor or your knowledge with those who crave knowledge we'll hear more from Billy Graham about living out God's love for others a little later in the episode but if you'd like to know more about it right now or at any time during the program we're here go to fine peacewithgod.net that's fine peacewithgod.net GPS God people stories Becky Murray grew up in a Christian family in Northern in England in the town of Rotherham my mom and dad were always in church we pretty much lived in church every day of the week but my dad was a real great inspiration to me growing up he just had a love for the word of God even as a four-year-old Becky's heart was being shaped by God's compassion when she was four she saw on television an ad about fighting poverty and starvation immediately she wanted to help the malnourished girl on the screen and I put down my half eaten chocolate bar and said to Mom no send that to them they need it more than me and blessa she tried to explain really why they probably wouldn't want my half eaten chocolate bar but I think there was something in there even as a tiny child that God had placed there as Becky was growing up God continued to develop in her heart a love for others and for himself and when she was 9 years old Becky gave her life to Jesus at the conclusion of a church service later as a teenager her faith would begin a new phase of growth I was about 18 where I really started to take it far more serious and that's when I went out on a missions trip with my local church and felt God speak to me for the first time in my life that happened in Romania after her missions team had been working in the country for about a week they'd gotten a day off and Becky went by herself to sit beside a lake it was in the quiet Stillness there that she sent God speaking to her and changing the plans she had for her life I knew it had to be God because my aspirations at the time was to go and study law I'd always been really passionate about Justice little did I know how that would unfold in my life but back then as a teenager I thought I would go and do law and fight for justice through the legal arm but it was at that moment that God spoke to me about working with vulnerable children around the world when she got back home to England Becky wanted to go on every short-term mission trip she could to help those in need in May 2005 she headed to Africa to attend a Bible School in mosam Beek for three months during that time Becky grew closer to God but something else happened there too I had a day off in mosan Beek and I'd already been told the cultural norms there and so I was fully aware that if you are revealing your knees you're seen as a prostitute however on this particular day it was a day off and I went into a western mindset and so I was thinking well you know I'm from England we don't get much sunshine and so I rolled up my skirt up to the knee and was just walking along the beach looking at starfish and was distracted by just the beauty of the different colors of starfish that's when a man approached Becky and assaulted her she managed to run away to a beachfront restaurant when the man saw that Becky was with other people he left her alone but the experience stayed with her for a while I struggled thinking that that was my fault that I had caused that and I really struggled with that for a long time and then it wasn't until years later when an initiative called the dignity project where we help girls at risk of human trafficking but within that we target areas to do with abuse and shame and as I suddenly started counseling these girls who had been raped or had been abused in some ways so many of them began to share how felt like it was partly their fault they were in the wrong place at the wrong time or they were wearing the wrong type of clothing and as I began to counsel them that it's never their fault all of a sudden I began to realize I've been carrying that exact same shame in my own life too Becky would use her own awful experience to help others she left mosm Beek more certain than ever of God's calling on her life to help the vulnerable she decided the best way to do that was studying pediatric nursing back in England at Sheffield University she was convinced she was going to be a full-time long-term missionary by this point I knew that I would be doing more and more work in rural parts of either Africa or Asia and so I knew having a nursing background would really help equip me on a practical level to be able to be useful and helpful on the mission field the next year Becky was invited to go on a short-term mission trip to Sierra Leon a country in West AF Africa this would be the most pivotal moment in her life and whilst I was there I met a little girl who was begging on the streets she was called Felicity and she was just 9 years old Becky noticed that Felicity was walking barefoot kids being barefoot in rural Africa is not unusual but nevertheless it touched Becky's heart I had the grand total of 50 p with me and so with my very feeble offer of 50 P I bought her a pair of pink flip-flops to match the pink T-shirt she was wearing well I then turned her her and said okay come back this evening and hear all about this Jesus I've been telling you about that evening Felicity ran toward Becky with a huge smile on her face for the first time in her life she was wearing shoes but Felicity didn't believe the flip-flops were simply a gift she assumed they were payment for sexual favors and she turned to me and she said should I wait in the hotel so I said no we're literally just about to go now there's space in the vehicles you can travel with us no problem and she said yes but shouldn't I wait in your bedroom I think if this 9-year-old had looked at one of the men on the team and asked that question I could have processed what she was asking but as a young 20s something year old girl looking at a 9-year-old girl I literally couldn't process what this little girl was asking I asked her a third time and sure enough she thought I'd spent 50 p on her so I could have her body and in that moment I was so broken I remember looking her in their eyes but having a conversation with god and I made a promise to God right there in that moment say I'll give my whole life to this because no human should ever be bought or sold that night Felicity got in the van with Becky and her team and went to the Outreach to learn more about Jesus Jus Christ Felicity responded to the invitation to give her life to Jesus another highlight of that missions trip to Sierra Leon for Becky was her getting to know her future husband his name is Matthew and he was on the same missions trip as Becky Matthew became a Christian in the church that I was already attending so I still remember the night that he came out to the front and gave his heart to Christ but initially Matthew and I didn't get on very well Matthew was a journalist by background and so he comes across very confident but I misinterpreted that as arrogant meanwhile I came off very standoffish to him because I thought he was arrogant so then I was kind of projecting this whole don't come and talk to me Vibe but the two had to break through their differences when they became prayer Partners on the trip I remember thinking oh my goodness I don't even like this guy and I've got to spend hours praying with him are you joking and so the second night of the Gospel campaign myself and Matthew were prayer Partners praying for the sick and my first positive thought about Matthew was when he was praying for someone and I remember thinking well I guess it can't be all that bad then if God's just used him and that was my first positive thought about this guy but God definitely has a sense of humor because through that because we started off as prayer Partners we very quickly developed a very strong friendship and then lo and behold turned out we wasn't just friends at all turn out the feelings ran far deeper than that while they were dating Becky's commitment to help other people like Felicity continued to deepen she went on a return trip to Sierra Leon in 2007 to help with a mass feeding program it started out very small and so in si Leon there's no welfare or benefit system if you don't work you don't eat but for victims of being amputed from the war many of them struggled to get jobs and so all these families were now living in this derel bush shelter well when I arrived I was told there'd be about 50 people there and so I'm very much aware if you go promising hungry people that you're going to feed them if you then run out of food you're in trouble Becky took out a little blue box of rice that was just big enough to feed 50 people but there was a problem there was already well more than 50 people at the site and so the whole time we're sharing the gospel more and more people are joining but by the end of it we did the Prayer of Salvation many of them responded which was incredible but it came time to the food distribution and there was over a hundred people gathered so I'm freaking out anyway we just start serving the food and in the business of the afternoon we're just serving serving serving dishing out the rice and I'd seen the rice starting to go down but little did I realize everyone was starting to eat and it was until the very end when I realized got had done something because over a hundred people ate out of my little blue box of food to feed 50 and then a lady approached me and she said there's a family in the in the bus shelter back here that weren't able to come out they've got TB with any leftovers can we give it for this family after already feeding 100 people Becky was able to tip the leftovers of the rice into a huge washing Bowl she stared at a mound of rice that was larger than what she had even started with and at this moment I just cried because I realized just the type of God we serve how powerful our God is and I didn't have anywhere near enough for the need but I had him and the reality is he cares far more about the hungry than I'm ever capable of he cares far more about bringing children out of slavery than I am ever capable love Becky carried that lesson with her as she took more and more Steps of Faith in June 2008 she and Matthew got married the following year Becky went on a trip to Kenya to be part of another feeding program but before going out I began to pray and say okay God what do you want on this particular trip is there something that you want to do to impact the place where we're going to and as clear as the day when I was 18 God spoke to me again and he said Now's the Time look for land and so at this point I was bursting with excitement because for a decade I'd been carrying a promise from God about doing some sort of work with vulnerable children but I didn't know the when I didn't know the where and holding on to a promise and not seeing anything happen for a few years is really testing Becky says she was determined to wait patiently for God's timing and not try to take things into her own hands so when God opened the door in Kenya for her to begin a Ministry to vulnerable children she was thrilled she met with an African Bishop who had helped a friend of hers coordinate a mass Ministry Outreach in the area I shared with him and I said look I know you don't know me I could be some crazy person but this is what I feel God has put on my heart well as I began to share with him his eyes began to fill up with tears and he said Becky I've just been given a plot of land it's yours and he took me to this tiny little village called bumala be it's in the rural part of Kenya about an hour or so from the Ugandan border it was just a field at the time afterward Becky went back home all along the way wondering how she was going to get a Ministry off the ground with just 2,000 in the bank that's the equivalent of $2500 she named the ministry one by one because her life was changed by that one little girl on the streets of Sierra Leon that one encounter changed my life and all of a sudden this little girl humanized a problem that was Global and sometimes we're so distracted by the Shia need so there's currently 50 million people trapped in slavery that for me is overwhelming where do you even begin and that's our heart with one by one as we stop for the ones that God brings across our path day in day out if we would just have eyes to see as we do that we will impact Villages and towns and nations with the love of Jesus Christ Becky needed to see God answer prayers both for the the new ministry and in her personal life in 2011 I gave birth to my little boy and he was very ill he was in and out of hospital that whole year and so in a year that I felt so incredibly weak I'm just nursing my own child and I remember thinking this is just impossible Becky was given a bill by the architects who had designed the new Ministries residential Center it was for more than 190,000 us dollar Becky began to have doubts she was starting to feel foolish for telling everyone about her promise from God but I remember saying okay God I cannot do this you're going to have to do this just like you did with the rice back in Sierra Leon yet again I've got nowhere near enough for the need and in 2011 God brought in every single penny that we needed to pay for the builders and all the Architects designs and everything that we needed for the property one by one a ially opened its first residential Center in Kenya in December 2012 it looks after children who've been orphaned abandoned or who are at high risk of exploitation initially they came and lived on our site now over these last few years we' spent a lot of time with social workers working with local families in the community and so we've now managed to reintegrate every single child into a family center care which is incredible but we run on our side a primary school a secondary school a chur Church a medical center and then in the surrounding Villages we've planted several more churches so hundreds of kids have gone through our Center in Kenya many of whom are now studying at University Becky thinks of one girl in particular who went on to higher education a little girl who was so sick when she came to the center that she wasn't expected to live this particular little girl she is so passionate and so strong willed and she knows who she is in Christ and so not only did she excel in elementary education but then she went on to high school and was in the top of her class for that well I'm delighted to say fast forward to today today she's graduating as an accountant and just finished University but to see this little girl who wasn't even supposed to make it back in 2012 now she's excelling and has got a whole life ahead of her but amid the joys of what was happening with her Ministry Becky was faced with a crisis in her family in 2014 her husband Matthew contracted malaria after being at the center and the malaria went cerebral I was taken into a side room and told that my 27 year-old husband at the time had got two hours left to live his heart his lungs his liver and his kidneys all went into organ failure and the malaria was multiplying at such a rapid rate and so the doctors actually took him off all the malaria medications and had just placed him on pain relief well I remember just going into shock at the time thinking not my husband and so I literally just picked up my phone and tyed into social media urgent please pray for Matt well I knew family and friends would pray but what took me by surprise is that people around the world began to pray and intercede for my husband people who had never met us people who had no reason to pray for us but through the kindness of God they did as people around the world were praying Becky received shocking news from the nurse she said Mrs Murray I have no idea what's going on because we stopped the medications hours ago but I've just done another set of pathology on your husband and the malaria levels in his blood has just dropped but we can't explain why and I remember at that point thinking God's doing something and he was well it took about three weeks God did a miracle in Matthew's body and he made a full recovery the following year Becky once again visited their Kenya Center this time she was approached with a different need I had two moms approach me asking for help because their children had gone missing I found out that human trafficking was happening right there in the village where our first ever residential Center was based and so I began to connect with a lot of the local schools to see is this a rare scenario is this a common Trend like what's happening and I found out that sadly that wasn't rare that many children go missing in villages like that because in a village where children aren't necessarily list Ed on a national register and if their parents have passed away or if they've been kicked out or whatever's happened no one's even necessarily looking for those children if they were to be taken and so I found out trafficking was happening quite frequently Becky also learned of something that traffickers use to their advantage she calls it period poverty girls would drop out of school early due to missing a week of classes every single month although some girls would use techniques like old rags or grass to try and make it to school through the week that would often lead to their getting infections and missing even more of their education the traffickers were onto this and so they were targeting young girls who weren't even going on to high school they were dropping out after primary education and so I thought well what if we got to the children before the traffickers why don't we go into school provide girls with reusable Sanitary products that they can stay in school every week of the month but also address what human trafficking is the tactics that traffickers used to try and entice children let's get to them before and so we started the dignity project thinking it was just for our little rural Village in Kenya little did Becky know what God would do with the dignity project it has since expanded to 10 countries and reached almost 45,000 children the project also caused one by one to visit Pakistan in 2018 where they reached 1100 girls but once again while doing that work they they realized there was another need to be met on the last day of the trip there they took me into a brick kilm now I'd seen slavy in terms of human trafficking and in human trafficking everything is covered up because everybody knows it's wrong but walking into a brick hilm where people are trapped in bonded labor here was a form of slavery that was very blatant as a western white woman I was allowed to walk around these brick factories and meet with families trapped in slavery and they weren't wearing chains or or bound up in that way but they are very much trapped they took out a learn from a brickmas whether that was to pay for a surgery or pay for a dowy but little did they know when they took the lean that the interest rates on the loan are greater than the daily wages Becky saw many people working in the brick Factory who were second and third generation slaves she even watched four-year-olds make bricks for 14 hours a day they had been born into this body labor and would never have the opportunity to attend school and by the age of four they have a quota that they have to make every day not the family's quota Mom and Dad have got their own quota but the four-year-old is given a quota that they have to make x amount of bricks if they're going to eat that day and so I walked around this brick Factory and I remember just saying God where are you in this this is so unjust and the response that I felt back in my heart is daughter where are are you in this what are you going to do about this and so we began to pray and seek God's heart as a result one by one built a safe house in Pakistan for children they managed to get out of the brick kils so far over 80 children have been freed from slavery and are living in a safe house there they receive education and love and support for the trauma they've experienced this last year we actually saw an entire family set free we'd had two of their daughters living in our safe house and because of that the the parents had managed to get by quicker and so we've managed to get the whole family out and have now set them up in a micro business where he now runs it's like a Tuk tuck business like a taxi sort so he paid for his driving lessons and his driving license and paid for the the Tuk Tuk as they call it the little three-wheeler vehicle so that now he can run his own micro business and continue to see his whole family set free from slavery that's in Pakistan one by one has expanded its mission to also help stop human trafficking in Uganda it's been working with the country's local police over the last year and they got in touch with us and they said we're now starting to recognize these girls who were caught up in sex trafficking we're bringing them out but we don't know where to put them they had one particular child who was a six-year-old little girl who'd been caught up in sex trafficking for the last 2 years she didn't know the name of her Village she didn't know the name of her family she was so tiny when she'd been taken by the traffickers and for two years had just gone through utter trauma and abuse and so the police didn't know where to put her and the only place they had a safe bed was a prison cell and so that's where they had to put her because there was no shelter the Ugandan police asked one by one to build a shelter they are and it will be called The Mercy Center it will serve as a safe place for girls who have been rescued out of human or sex trafficking those girls will be able to receive care from a team of counselors and Trauma therapists at the center all the work that God is doing through one by one to change girls lives goes back to that encounter Becky had with a little girl in Sierra Leon and now every time we're taking another child whether it be into our safe house in Pakistan or our Center in Kenya or God willing when we open the Mercy Center in Uganda every time we're taking a child in it's like I'm rescuing Felicity again and again and again Becky Murray has seen firsthand God's remarkable work as she followed his leading one step of Faith at a time what about you are you walking in that type of Faith with Jesus Christ if you haven't yet begun a relationship with Jesus that's the first step and we can help you wherever you are in your faith Journey visit us online at fine peace with good.net that is fine peacewithgod.net or if you'd rather call us at the 24hour Billy gram prayer line the number is 855255 pray 855255 7729 and if you didn't catch the number or the website address no worries it's also in our show notes in just a moment you're going to hear one more word from Becky talking about how to trust God and take bold Steps of Faith you're listening to GPS God people stories a podcast production of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association now the gospel of Christ has no meaning unless it is applied to our fellow man who hurts and is in need Billy Graham when is the last time that you shared your life with another person or someone of another race or your material Goods with the poor or your knowledge with those who crave knowledge or your skills with the untrained you stopped to teach them what you know and Jesus said Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength and mind and thy neighbor as thyself and greater love hath no man than this that he lay down his life for his friends and the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross and while he was on the cross he was thinking about you because he was God he could look down the centuries and called you by name on that cross and say I love you I will forgive you if you will come to me learn about God's love for you and his offer to forgive your sins go to find peace with god.net let's find peace with god.net our guest here on this episode of GPS is Becky Murray she encourages you to make yourself available to God and watch how he might use you to tell others about his love for them I think we need to learn how to trust God I think sometimes we're nervous to step out because we don't know if we've got it all together we don't think we've got enough for the need but time and time again I've seen God take the little that's in my hands even when that hasn't been enough and he's brought it to pass the type of God we serve helped a widow in one king 17 who was dying of starvation herself and just had a few sticks and a little bit of flour but trusting in God he brought about bread and if we would just give God what is ever in our hands we might just see a few L and Fishes but God sees a banquet for 5,000 and if we would just trust God with our yes even if we don't feel like we've got enough or we're not enough we don't have the capabilities or we don't have the gifting or we don't have the finance there's so many times we hold back from stepping into what God wants for our lives because we nervous we're just not enough but every single time when we just say Yes to God it allows him to do what we cannot do and he's faithful and he's true and thankfully for us God's Not Looking for the most intelligent person in the room or the most financially capable person in the room or the most talented person in the room all that God is looking for is the most available the ones who are willing to say yes here I am send me that again is Becky Murray and we are very grateful for her joining us on this episode she is making a difference and putting an end to all forms of trafficking if you enjoyed listening to Becky's story consider telling your friends and family about GPS we're available wherever you listen to podcasts I'm Jim Kirkland and this is GPS God people stories it's an Outreach Of The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association always good news ((applause)) ((music playing)) ((applause)) ((music playing))