[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Love Justice Podcast where we hear from different voices who are joining us in the fight against modern day slavery. Please welcome today's guest, Carrie Hasenbog.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Today we are honored to welcome Carrie Hasenbog, a passionate advocate for child welfare, adoption and social justice. Carrie is the founder of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute CCAI where she has dedicated her career to championing the rights of vulnerable children and reforming adoption policy. Her work, deeply rooted in her faith, has touched lives through advocacy, policy reform and support for families in need. Carrie and her husband Scott have been active in numerous impactful efforts over the years, including the founding of Show Hope alongside musician Stephen Curtis Chapman and their founding work with the Christian alliance for Orphans. C AFO we're excited to dive into Carrie's inspiring journey and explore the pivotal moments that have shaped her mission to protect children and fight trafficking. Kerry, welcome to the Love Justice Podcast.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Thanks for having me. I'm really excited. I love your work.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: I. Yeah. What our listeners don't know is that we just chatted for about 30 minutes before this, just geeking out about all the people that we have in common. And I feel like we could talk for hours, but we had to, we had to do the recording. So here we are.
Carrie, for our listeners, tell us more.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: About who you are.
That's always a hard question, isn't it? You don't know where to go. So I will just say that relationally, my identities, right, we have our identities. My relational identity is that I'm. I'm a wife to my husband Scott.
I have four children, so four very dependent people.
I myself am very dependent on the Lord. So internally, my internal identity is that I'm addicted to the peace of the Lord. And so I spend a lot of time dialoguing with him.
Externally, my identities are, like I said, mom, I've been called a serial pioneer for non profits.
Currently I'm an author. I have a book coming out. I speak. But I do a lot of leader care just so that people are emotionally healthy.
And in my past lives, I've done a lot of work in the OVC space. Orphans and vulnerable children, from adoption and child welfare to anti human trafficking. My focuses right now, I think are just around wanting people who work in those spaces to be. To be healthy and to sort of see how their story mixes with their calling.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. And Carrie, you have a pretty robust maybe resume, if I could call it that, of just involvement in this space. And I would love to hear. How did you get started? How did you get started, what did you start with? And maybe outline a little bit of your journey in this space from when you started to where you're currently at now?
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Sure, yeah. It's a great question.
So I would say that I started in this space maybe knowingly around 1992 when I went to live in Russia. And it was right after the communist wall came down. And because the entire nation was shattered in the economy, there were a lot of street children. And so that was my sort of being thrown into all the evils that you see when children don't have proper coverings. And so I mean it was a very secure, circuitous path to get ultimately to working on Capitol Hill in for the Orphan Care and Adoption Caucus and sort of being a part of the federal policies that would affect the people that had changed my life and affected me and broken my heart around these issues.
Should I just keep going around that?
[00:04:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm hanging on every word, Carrie.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: I mean ultimately I ended up creating a non profit as a sister organization to the official congressional caucus that I worked for because there was so much need at the federal level because it was at a time when there were tens of thousands of children crossing borders for international adoption. But it happened to be in the time frame in history when we didn't have any international laws overseeing it. There was the Hague Convention on Inter country Adoption, but we were not yet. We had not implemented it or ratified it in our country. And so in that sort of my office became a stopgap for that. And so I was part of helping create programs to take members of Congress over to talk with government officials and presidents of foreign countries so that these kids were not falling through the cracks. Yeah. And so I also was involved in the foster care work as well because our caucus oversaw children aging out and children in our system.
And so yeah, my roles were, I think my. The thing that God called me to was to make sure that those with lived experiences were connecting with those who had the power at a federal level to create macro level change. Because if the policies aren't informed by real life experiences, they usually don't turn out good and they actually can cause more harm. And so God sort of used me as like Elmer's Glue to just oh, you need to talk with you. Because if together you actually have a conversation, we'll have better outcomes for larger numbers of people. So that's kind of the role I played. And my husband was the founding executive director of Stephen Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman's foundation called Show Hope, which helps eliminate the barriers to adoption. And so when I sort of stepped out of CCAI so that I could raise my family, I became a. What they called me, the chief volunteer officer. I wrote a lot of the content for the. What would ultimately become a very large.
Yeah. Non Profit. Yeah.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: Wow. Wow. And so you started your. Maybe, is it fair to say you started your career in this space at ccai and then that kind of blended into Show Hope because you were also connected with that. And. And then that led to your guys's work with cafo, which is the Christian Alliance.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: How did those all connect and streamline together?
[00:07:27] Speaker A: So I'll start with the fact that my, my career probably started with Russian adoptions because I speak Russian and I had studied Russian. My, my studies were intercult international relations and international economics with Russian. And so when Russia, when the, when the wall fell, there were all of these children and we had a good relationship with Russia. And so children started crossing borders. And I was hired as an interpreter for government officials that were willing to talk about children being connected with parents. So I was in international adoption. I didn't facilitate them. I just was the bridge. Language, bridge.
Then I ultimately ended up on the Hill because as a citizen lobbyist, I came in to fight to get the members of Congress to have dialogue with the foreign officials because we weren't having the dialogue. And so laws were not going well, things weren't going well relationally.
And then when I worked on the Hill, I think after that, created the sister organization that supported the work on the Hill, then I was having babies and supporting my husband and Show Hope and doing a lot of the writing around the content. And in that time period, I was sometimes still leading trips like we. I led trips to Africa for Show Hope.
And one of the passions that I have is for the unity of the body around these issues. Because when nonprofits have a pizza pie mentality and act like another organization might take part of their pie, we don't actually do what well for, for the kids. We don't realize that we each have a unique gifting and we need to assemble into the body to do our piece. And so I was one of the people who had called a prayer meeting. And I called the prayer meeting the night before 9 11, 2001.
And it was just this, I mean, time period in history. And so we all came together and prayed that we would be able to do this better within the church, in the body. And, and one of the things that came out of that was about 20 some of us got together in Little Rock, Arkansas, to talk about creating an alliance for orphans, bringing people who love Jesus and have a call in this area and to drop our logos and to drop our egos and to do this. And so that became, was the first summit. It ultimately became CAFO Christian alliance for Orphans, which is the largest orphan care entity, I think, or gathering.
And we just had our 20 year reunion. So I was asked to come back as one of its founders. But my role there at the time, what God called my role to be, was really to call us to repentance so that we could be clean and usable vessels for the good work to which God was going to call us. And, and yeah, it was a beautiful, it was a beautiful reunion because one of the gentlemen who had heard me speak at the first and second summit said, I want you to know that so much of this is because we repented, because you were willing to say the hard things. So that's sort of me in a nutshell.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: I love that. I love that though. And wow, that's. I mean, you casually dropped a couple of big things in there. Speaking Russian, being one of the co founders of the cafo. And I know that some of our staff, actually, some of the Love justice staff internationally had flown into the US for that conference too, because what, what a lot of people actually don't realize about Love justice is that it started off as a kind of family homes ministry in Nepal and started with family homes. And it was through that process that they realized kids were coming off the streets and into the homes because they were also vulnerable to human trafficking, particularly in that part of the world, just given the volume of brothels in India, et cetera, et cetera. And so there's even a lot of crossover there, I think that we honestly haven't gotten to talk about much in the podcast yet, the family homes model and our approach there. Um, but it's, it's so interconnected, absolutely interconnected.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: I, I say that I'm sort of human. I've always been human trafficking. My call has been human trafficking adjacent. Anti human trafficking adjacent. Because the. I'll just say the very first moment that God made it clear, the call that he had on my life was in Russia when I met a girl named Ira. And I met her because she was. I was translating for a missions group that had come to town in 92, I believe it was maybe 93. And we were in an underground metro because it was winter. And there's this escalator. They have, Rush has these long escalators. And at the base of the escalator was a little girl sitting in a puddle of blood next to a dog. And it was just this heart wrenching sight. But I mean Russia was a mess, but it was extra heart wrenching. And so she was in like tattered clothes and dirty and she's sitting in the blood with this dog, really mangy dog. And so I went over and I just started talking with her because I could talk to her and just she. I found out she was 12. I found out her name was Ira. And as we continued to talk, she shared with me that she had run away from the orphanage where she was and that she was now homeless. And well, I'll just say I ended up inviting her because she have anywhere to stay. Invited her to the hotel where I was staying with this missions group in St. Petersburg. And over the course of a few days with her, I found out that she had. When they would discipline the children, they would strip them naked, put them in front of the window for passersby to see them. And ultimately it's actually because they were, this place was trafficking the kids. And so in my journey, working with members and going, being in hundreds of orphanages, I got to a place where I could see, wow, this is an orphanage where they're actually bringing men in and sleeping with these teenage girls. Like they're not, it isn't. I don't think it's typical, but I do think it is happening in some of these places and it's more rampant in an orphanage that doesn't have family style where there's more accountability. So I really appreciate the family style accountability because there is a time when kids need lifeboats. Right. Like we ultimately want to get them into families, but it, it is, all of them are susceptible to it when they age out because they don't have the resources. And so you can't be in the this OBC space and not be addressing or aware of what the trafficking pieces that happen.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that just makes me sick to my stomach just hearing that. And that's talk about the like, what moments in your journey and career have shaped your commitment to child welfare and anti trafficking efforts? That's got to be one of them having that personal connection. Are there any other moments in your career that have continued to just shape your overall commitment to this issue in the midst of these tragic stories?
[00:15:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I have many, many moments that have shaped me. I mean I'm thinking of three off the bat. So I'm just trying to figure out which one to pick I will just say, like around the issue of orphan and the susceptibility to trafficking.
I was invited to Rwanda to speak with the first ladies around orphan. Ish. The first ladies of Africa were gathering and to talk about what they can do as a continent, essentially. And in that trip, I wanted to take one of these young girls that I had met in one of our programs that we did on Capitol Hill, who was from Rwanda, who had aged out and ended up being brought here without her family after the genocide. So I took her back with me to help her try to find her family. And when we were there, I was introduced to all these other young people who had lost their families in the genocide and were still looking to be reunited in this very crazy environment.
I ended up coming to know a family of orphans. There were 12 of them.
And one night, this girl that had this interconnection with the orphans in Rwanda, because they spoke the same language, they had the same story, they all lost their families. She wakes me up and says, hey, I need you to come with me. And we went to pick up these twin 13 year old girls out of a hotel where they were working and there were men with AK47s outside. It was just ridiculous. And I'm thinking, I am not equipped for this.
But she went in, got these two girls out and brought them with us. And I came to find out that this was. They were being trafficked. I mean, this is what was happening. And so that really shaped me in understanding that this is what happens.
But I think the other thing on the positive side that shaped me was when we had these young people and we would put them on Capitol Hill to intern for members of Congress, they would inform the members of what was happening. And that has gone on to inform laws and support that goes to anti human trafficking, that goes to support of kids in foster care, that goes to support of programs that are actually making a difference. Yeah. So, yeah, it's the individual stories, right? I mean, some of them still come to my house for Christmas because they were.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Wow. I think this is a good segue, Carrie, into the next question I was going to ask you, which is how do you approach advocacy and policy work to create tangible changes in child welfare and anti trafficking laws?
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Yeah. So it took me a while to really understand how I operated. But what I realized was God would bring in someone that had sought him, that he saw. I mean, he is the father to the fatherless. And so there were times, so many times when I felt like the king of kings, the one that I worship was saying this one would highlight this one child and say, love this one as your own. And I would feel something that was different than I felt about all of them. But I knew that it was the Lord saying this one. I'm highlighting this one just like he does with a scripture verse where you go, this, it was illuminated. And these kids will be illuminated to us individually and we'll know that's the one we're to talk to.
And I will engage. And I'm awake because I'm spiritually awake, knowing I have to pay attention. There's a call here and in that God would then walk me through and show me what was my peace. But what I would also see was they represented a larger problem that needed to be addressed. But I would have this one story or this one or two kids and realize I need them as the spokesperson, their voice to be heard in a place that can have macro level change. And, and so in my job. So over here's my ministry. Jesus is talking to me, care. And then over here in my job, it was, I need them, the policymakers to, or the philanthropists to feel what I feel and to see what I see. But I'm not the right spokesperson. My job is to put them together and cause them to see one another.
And I, my job was to creatively devise plans with God to make this happen, knowing that not all the policymakers are going, oh, I hear Jesus say, love this child. Right?
So one of those ways was a program that I helped create called Foster Youth Internship, or FYI. It's the FYI program, for your information.
And so I went around asking congressional members to give up their coveted intern spots in the summer and let me fill them with former foster kids. And a lot of times we would fill them with former foster kids who had been trafficked or lost their parents in a genocide abroad. And they ended up in U.S. foster care. And so we would put them on Capitol Hill to intern for the members. What happens in that process is members love their staff because they're, they need their staff, right? And they develop this relationship. The conversations come out, the youth start advocating, they write policy papers for part of their job. And this program has now existed for more than 20 years. Many, many federal laws have come out of this program.
I mean, Hillary Clinton had the person that, the intern for her when she was a senator in the first chapter of her book and introduced her at the dnc. I mean, there is real massive impact. And this is how one of our kids went on to Work for Bill Gates and. Yeah. Work for the mayor. Got their law degrees. And there this is sort of this secret, I don't know, army that God has created that's on Capitol Hill. I mean, that's what it is.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: So that is wild, Carrie. That is wild. That, like, prompting that prompting that you had in the spirit that is having. I mean, you kind of answered the next question I was even going to ask you, which is can you share a success story from your work that has had significant impact on the lives of these children and families? And that's one of what. I'm sure you probably have as many. That is amazing. And also in a very, you know, I would say not overtly Christian space. Right. Like, I'm sure not to say that there isn't, you know, Jesus in those spaces, but it's not one that's known as, like, an evangelical, you know, building. It's very much like the Lord infiltrating these different spaces with his agenda and his care for the poor, the orphans, the powerless, the people that he talks about in the Bible all the time. That is amazing.
And I would love for you to share with our listeners how your faith and relationship with God influences all of this, because you've given some, like, little innuendos here and there, and I get the feeling that that's the foundation of who you are, the spaces that you've been put in and the fruit that you've seen in your work. And I think that. That I would love to just dig into that a little bit more. Tell us more about that and what that looks like. And.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. Yeah, it's such a. It's such a sweet question for me, actually, because I have my tissues, because these are things that are really close to my heart. I am. I'm a.
I'm a weak person. I'm a disorganized person. I'm a little flighty. I'm probably sort of like the mad professor type of person. And in my weakness, I'm very dependent on the Lord.
And so I am the one that's crying out, lord, I do believe. I believe. Help my unbelief.
But I cannot do this thing that is in front of me. I mean, I'm answering to 170 members of Congress and I have no staff. And then, oh, now I have staff, and it's just two of us and we're out of our basement. But we have to set up a trip to go talk to the president of China or Romania. I mean, it's God Made us. I was Gideon of threshing wheat in a wine press going, I am so not mighty, I cannot do this. And I haven't actually become any stronger in the day to day. Like I'm just as vulnerable every day.
But God will answer if we will express our need. And I'm just really good at expressing my need to Jesus. And I do. And I will tell you, I look back at when CCAI started and at the glorious, I mean glorious, powerful things that God did.
He did them. The most glorious things happened when I was most weak. I mean that is absolutely. I'm, I'm over 50 now and I'm so aware that the strength was in the greatest weakness. I'll give you one example if you want.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: Yeah, of course.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
So when CCAI had just started out of my basement with our, you know, our rent, our rented phones are like secondhand phones.
Was when China was sending a lot of kids to America at that time. But their, the Hague Convention wasn't in place. And the Chinese really respect federal government intervention. Right. Because they run things from the government and they wanted to talk to our State Department, but our State Department wasn't overseeing international adoptions at the time and they wanted to have conversations at the federal level. So people started calling my house asking us to organize a congressional trip to China to meet with the federal government. And I was pregnant at the time. And anyway, by the time that we would do this trip, I would be almost six months pregnant. We had no money to get there. And I cried out and the Lord had somebody call and say, I have a Bombardier Challenger that can fly your delegation to China. And so we flew to China, I'm pregnant.
We requested a meeting with the President, but why would he meet with us? And we were almost entirely a delegation of women.
We got to. We sort of at the very last were given a meeting with President Jiang Zemin. And it was supposed to be 15 minutes. And our 15 minute meeting became a two hour meeting and was an hour and a half. And then he invited us to go on a tour that he was going to lead us on to this. Where Mao Tse Tung last lived and worked in the palace, which I found out was because he was under house arrest. But anyway, so we go into this room and I have, I'm so emotional. Like I, I prayed every morning, I threw up every day. I was sick my entire pregnancy. I was, I mean I was so weak. We had no resources. And my husband went along for the trip to like help me because I was so Sick at the time. And I'm organizing the trip. So we're now in front of this president, this supreme leader of the largest, most populated country in the world. And he says, hey, who here plays the piano?
And I was thinking, I don't know who plays the piano. Like, I'm the one who put this delegation together, but I don't think anyone plays the piano.
And the person standing next to me, who knew me as a child, she was one of the people who support us, said, carrie, don't you play the piano?
And I was like, she did not just say that. I. This is. No, I haven't touched the keys in 10 years. Like, I have no ear for music. I was forced to play with the Catholic nuns, you know?
And my husband says, yeah, don't you play? And I'm thinking, don't I play? Have you ever heard me play? I'm married to you. Like, and. But the supreme leader heard them say this, and he said, yes, you will play.
So I take my big, giant, pregnant body, and I.
This otherworldly power comes over me, and I sit down, and I am so needy, Hannah. So needy. I mean, it's the neediest moment of my whole life.
And God allows me to see in a vision the final piece I ever played for my national auditions. A decade before. I had not touched a piano key in 10 years. And I could see it, and I played it, and I played it perfectly, and then the page didn't turn.
And so I was like. My panic. I was like, G Octave. So, you know, and I stood up, and he says, that is my favorite classical piece of music.
And the senator who was standing next to me, who was so glad I did not play Chopsticks because she was sure I was gonna embarrass her, says, and our sweet Carrie speaks Russian, too.
And the president turned to me and spoke. Starts speaking to me in Russian, and no one in that room spoke Russian but me. And I had no choice but to speak. But I am telling you, Hannah, I would never have spoken in this room, because my job was to set the table for leaders to have leader conversations, you know? But it was like, it would have been rude not to speak.
But we were there for two reasons. To allow international adoptions to continue because there was a quota that was closing adoption. And number two, we were told about Bible smugglers who were on death row. And it had been brought up in the meeting, and he wasn't pleased about it. But here I am talking to him, and I just told him, I'm so Grateful. I'm thank you for this time that you've given us. Like, just gratitude starts pouring out. And then thanking him for considering mercy for those who've broken his laws, mercy for the Bible smugglers and mercy for families. And I walked away.
And the senator, who was right behind me says, starts, I mean, being effusive. How did you do this? How did you do this? And I'm not a disrespectful person, especially to my leadership, but I couldn't help it. It was like it just came pouring out. How did I do this? I didn't do this. Look at me. I'm pregnant and I'm sick and I'm tired. And like, God did this. Like, did you miss that? God did this. How did you miss that? God did this.
That senator began to say, from that day forward, God did this. God did this. God did this. Years later, she called me and she said, and we had a lot of miracle moments, Hannah. A lot. Because God is the father to the fatherless, because he hears their cries, because he will use anyone who is willing to be a useful vessel for him if they will cleanse themselves.
So we saw so much. Because I might be the weakest person you know, I am so not capable. You could ask my kids.
And that senator called me, I don't know, years later, and she said, I now know why the miracles always happen through you or with you and not with us. She said, because we're so filled with our own ideas, and you're just empty.
It's funny. And then God just can use you.
So that's why my faith is. It's everything. It's all about faith. Like, I can't manifest the power. I just have to admit my powerlessness. And so God has laid me out four or five times in this journey. I have seasons of total desolation. And I'm like, man, everybody's just climbing. Their careers are just getting bigger and better and bigger and better. And I'm back to desolation. And the Lord reminds me, because I want to use you in glory again. And you have to know, it's me. I'm the seed giver. I'm the water. I'm the light giver. Like, you have to start over again. You're just soil. You're just soil. And there's season that we have to start with desolation again.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: Carrie, I'm, like, speechless. I don't even know that what to say. That is a wild testimony.
And honestly, what's coming to mind right now and We. We prayed before this podcast of just like, Lord, lead this conversation. And this is not a question that we had planned on by any means. But what's really interesting about the timing of this is we had Love justice, had our internal global call a week ago where we kind of recommitted ourselves to just what you. The message that you just articulated, which was becoming needy before the Lord. Love justice is in a season where we're experiencing exponential growth that could lead to a tipping point. There's. There's indications that, you know, the cost of trafficking becomes so high that it stops. And we're seeing that in our work. We're seeing that in some research that's coming out. And we are in a situation where we don't necessarily have the funding to keep up with our expansion, and we're having to, you know, limit our impact because of that, and that being really tricky and wanting to be an organization that's really deeply committed to excellence and being reminded time and time again that it's not us, it's not in our own strength that we do this work, but it's from the Lord. And our founder, John, he shared a graph where he could pinpoint our impact that's grown in the last 20 years and where we had very intentional efforts towards prayer and fasting. And then you could see after this, like, commitment to prayer and fasting, boom, there was an uptick, and then we got to another season of, like, real dependence on the Father and. And another commitment and then an uptick and another. And. And being in this season where, like, we're in a season of. Of need, of, like, we're, you know, manna mana from heaven, Lord, like, how can we do this? And it was one of those moments where we're currently. This is not like, we're not on the other side of this. We don't know what the fruit of this is going to be. But the whole organization is reorienting ourselves to this posture of neediness because, you know, we're all. We're all killing it, you know, or we feel like, man, we've got the model, we've got the training, we have the systems, we have the processes. Like, we are primed and ready to go. And for whatever reason, not for whatever reason, I think purely for dependence on God, we haven't gotten necessarily, like that green light to just go, particularly as it relates to resources, what you said. And this isn't like a fundraising pitch by any means, but more just. I don't think we talk about this enough in The Christian NGO ministry space about that complete dependence on the Lord. And so there could be someone listening today that's like, how do I do that? What does that look like?
What does that mean? And so I'm just curious, like, if you are counseling an individual or an organization or just how to replicate that posture and the power that you experience. Not because, you know, like, we want to experience. Like we're so hungry to experience the power of God, but just to experience Jesus in our mission, in our life. What would you say to them?
[00:36:22] Speaker A: Well, I love where you are, by the way, and I love what you just shared. Like, I would. Well, let's just say the scripture that comes to me as you were sharing when you said about manna. We're waiting for that mana. It reminds me of the verse in Deuteronomy where the Lord, through Moses is saying, remember the whole way that you walked. Remember the whole way that you walked. You were, I made you hungry. I made you hungry. Then I fed you, I made you thirsty, and then I gave you something to drink. Man does not live by bread alone. So that you would know. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. We disconnect, asking for mana from our past stories that this is God's pattern. This has always been the pattern of God with man. For us to recognize we have an insufficiency that we cry out, he enters and reveals something to us. He gives us the seed, and then we have to tend that seed. But he was answering our cry that we have this dialogue. He answers us, and then there's work to do, right? We've been created for good works, but if we forget that we. We aren't the seed, right? But then we start to think, well, I have this gift. This is my gift. It's like, no, your gift is meant to be broken open, poured out, and have to become something entirely different. There's this whole journey in that, right? But it always begins. It has to always begin with an expressed need before the Lord so that when he comes in power, you will not harm your own soul and take glory and credit for it. Because if we take the glory and credit for it, that's the end of our story. We are no longer useful again. We have to get useful again by giving him the glory, giving him the. The, you know, sharing it for the common good, right? And then starting. Starting again before him without our shoes on, right? It's like, take off your shoes. You're standing on holy ground. Like you're not the ministry that you walk in. Those are just shoes. You are bare before the Lord. Take off your shoes. Do not come in with your ego. Do not come in with your logo. Come in to me, cry out to me. Let me manage you. Let me sustain you and fill you. And then I will put shoes on your feet and I will send you out it as love, justice, or I will send you out as cci, whatever you are. But that's not who you are. That's just the work you've been given to do. But you can't do the work if you don't bring the your being to him and cry out in your need. Our needs are our invitations back to get more from him so we can go back out in power. That's what I would say to people. Yeah.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: Oh, that's so good. And I feel like testimonies like this just fan the flame, right? Like there's going to be someone listening to these stories and feel so encouraged and prompted and motivated by the spirit simply because man, look what God can do. And the God who did it for Carrie, the God who did it for that team that went to China, the God who did it for love, justice is a God that can also do it for what he's called me into. And just that, that connectedness to, you know, so many people feel that God has called them into something and just that acknowledgment of if that's true, then God cares about it more than we do and he knows. Right.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: And I do think that sometimes we have these big needs and the Lord begins that process by giving us what we need for the next step. But he doesn't fill all of the gaps because he also needs us to know that his body on this earth, they have gifts that he's given to them. And the gap filling also becomes part of that assembling. Like, there's a lot of components, you know, in, in the work that I do now, Hannah. We look at all of these different practices and how they build upon one another. It has to begin with my relationship with the Lord for Him to reveal who he wants, who he wants me to know him as. But then there's this whole process of us having to be changed and reconciled in our own story and. And then ultimately how we become reconciled with other members of the body in their giftings and their stories. So that when we go out to battle, like you're doing as love justice, as you're going back out to address and rescue, you're doing it with More power now because you've received more from him, new things from him, aspects of his character. You've become something different and you're seeking to assemble with other people have become new things in him have become more reconciled in their own story and the army. This is how we become the new Jerusalem. This is how we become the church that goes out and brings in the vulnerable first. Right. I mean, even in the rebuilding of the temple in the days of Zerubabel and Ezra, it talks about, like, put down your paneled house. Like, stop building your own individual paneled houses. Right. Your own ministries, your own. Build my house first, right? So that I will bless the work of your hands, bring the orphans and the vulnerable in first and the poor. Right. And then I will bless all of the aspects. We lose that order, I think, because we think, well, I've become something more because this great thing that God did through me. I must be a special Christian. Like I'm, you know, and it's like, oh, my gosh. But if we lose our, our soilness, our. Our realization of our soilness, we also lose the power we. We love.
[00:42:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, so good, Carrie. So good.
How do you envision the future of child welf welfare and anti trafficking efforts evolving? And what role can organizations like the Becoming love, justice? And Feel free to share a little bit more about the becoming too. What roles do organizations like the. Those play in this fight and also the. The supernatural fight element of it?
[00:42:50] Speaker A: So I'll start with the end of your question about the supernatural fight of it.
The times are getting darker. I know that there's. There was extraordinarily dark times, you know, during the days of, of Sodom and Gomorrah and Job and all that. But I think we're returning to that again. And we cannot ignore the, the demonic, the, the dark things of the unseen realms role. I think we're foolish to do that. And so we need to be more dedicated to prayer, truly, like really dedicated to prayer as a body, and not act like we're just dealing with weapons that are seen.
I know the Lord is really showing me that. And it's, it's been.
Yeah, it's. It's daily that he is showing me these things.
I'll say that I'm really pleased that the National Day of Prayer that's coming up May 1, it's, you know, something that's celebrated every year through her, you know. Yeah. In many, many nations as well.
They have partnered with me and my writing and one of the tools that I teach Called Stand they are. We're doing a collaborative publication to go out for free to everyone who is, you know, in part of the National Day of prayer, there's like 77,000 prayer hubs. And I'm really excited about it because it's about how do we stand in the darkness right now? How do we stand when the hurricanes hit? Our lives and people, we experience these seasons of overlapping hurricanes. And this is happening to a lot of people in the body right now. I'm hearing about it. And so God is saying, persevere, be faithful in prayer, because he wants to bring us through. Because when the whole world is going through this kind of darkness, we are lights in those places because we've learned how to stand ourselves. In terms of where I think the, the, this, the ministry around these things is, is evolving. I mean, I think God is calling us to unity, but he is cleansing us as individual vessels right now so that what comes together are components that are transformed, clean, cleaned, repentant, and that there are. And we're coming in with, I would say, our pearls.
And what I mean by that I keep. If you don't mind, I'll just give you a little like picture because I don't know how to explain it in normal human words. You know how in Revelation it talks about what the New Jerusalem will look like and it says that it will have its gates and bolts and bars, and it will. I'm sorry, it talks in Nehemiah about the gates and bolts and bars. And then Revelation, it talks about these semi precious stones, but it specifically mentions that the doors of the New Jerusalem will be made out of pearls. And I was so struck by that. And I thought, okay, I really need to understand deeply the making of pearls because. Right, and we know that pearls always start as out as like a grain of sand or a fragment of something. Well, that means it's something broken. And so the brokenness in our lives, right, has to be transformed into a pearl. If that's going to be the doorways of our lives. Doorways are what welcome other people in. So our job is to allow our brokenness to become transformed into pearls, right? Which takes work and the movement of the pearl inside the depths, in the hidden places, in the darkness, in the presence of God. That's how. That's our job is to allow our brokenness to be transformed in the presence of God. Which means we got to get into the presence of God and take our brokenness to Jesus so that our stories are transformed and become redeemed. And then those Stories. I think Everybody should have 12 because there's 12 doorways. And those 12 doorways are 12 different aspects of our story.
So that when people who are still broken come to us, they don't see judgment and self righteousness, but rather somebody saying, come in, I was broken too. And look at the glory. This should give you hope. Come in to. And so we have to tell our stories. We have to allow our stories to become a united whole in us. And we need to understand that we're not the whole temple. We are one section and our neighbor is a section. And so I'd like to see more unity in the body, but also integration of our own stories so that we're speaking not out of our brokenness, but out of the time spent with Jesus in having our brokenness healed.
[00:47:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Amen to. Amen to that. And that is a. Is a good segue too, into sharing a little bit more about what is currently on your heart, which is helping leaders in this space do that really well. You, you talked about before we started recording that you kind of had this, your beginning season of being very hands on, knee deep in child welfare, anti trafficking efforts. And now you're at a different position where you are empowering and supporting people who are doing that work. Talk to us a little bit more about becoming. Talk to us a little bit more about how you are helping leaders in this space do exactly what you just said, which was the, the repenting, the being whole made whole and owning our story, sharing our stories. I would love. Yeah, I think, I think that would be really lovely for our listeners to hear a little bit more about.
[00:48:29] Speaker A: Thanks, Hannah. Yeah, it's funny, I struggled for a long time using the term leader because I don't seek out leaders, I just walk. And the Lord said, illuminate. Somebody or somebody is coming to me, asking me for some help. So it, I've realized that it's leader care because I watch how just about, I mean, I think every person the Lord's ever sent my way in their broken states ultimately is either already a leader and they're getting called to more, or they're about to be called into leadership. That's the pattern the Lord has revealed in who's come through this sort of wholeness, ministry and discipleship.
One example is one of the girls from Rwanda that was trafficked here. And I met her in her deepest, darkest, painful life situation. And all of her siblings I met in Rwanda and they became like family when the Lord shined a light on her and told me to love Them, their whole family.
I just walked with them in their, in their day by day brokenness. Here they need education, here they need, you know, whatever the thing is they need a dowry so they can get married. You know, it's just all those things. Anyway, she ultimately wrote her story and George W. Bush just happened to be handed her story and, and she has written one of the most glorious books ever. It's called A Voice in the Darkness by John Celestine Lake. And she now is a representative for an anti trafficking spoke before Congress. I mean it's like I met her in her deepest pain and so this was an example of the Lord going and again I, I know who I'm calling to lead, but I will reveal them to you in their smallness sometimes. So it is leader care. I just am realizing when people come that they're leaders.
The book that I wrote called the Way of Becoming it is these 12 practices that walk people through their own story and it's a story based book but it then invites them to go into their own becoming story so that they can do this work of seeing where God's been, entrusting where you need him to be now, and also understanding how to find belonging out of what you've become in him as keep transitioning.
[00:50:59] Speaker B: Carrie When I think about just as we're, as we're coming to a close and I think about this conversation and how it kind of took a, a little bit of a completely different turn than I was expecting coming into this and just thinking about the purpose of the podcast is around is having conversations about fighting the world's greatest injustices. And I think the two themes that have come out of today is in order to do that there's this element of leader care and there's also, but even more so this element of like complete dependence on the Lord in prayer. As, as we come to a close, is there anything that you would want to encourage our listeners with?
[00:51:40] Speaker A: I mean I think I take it back to the pearls like know your stories, dive in and learn your stories and Becoming foundation is one of those places that you can enter into that or the Becoming Academy or the book. But it's, I think it's really important to understand your brokenness in its redeemed form and get letting it sort of cycle in the grace of God's presence has become, is meant to become something precious that's not just for you. It's a pearl that is meant for those whom the Lord shows you it's for right, not for the swines, but for those who are seeking him and looking for answers. And so to encourage people, your story does matter that what you're going through right now is not your forever. The Lord wants to come in and prepare you as a noble vessel to be useful for every good work. I would also say, like, for love, justice. I absolutely love. I mean, I love, love what you are doing. It's such a specific niche and thing that is necessary. You are, your. Your work is going out to these places and going, lord, illuminate who here right now is in the darkness. Who do you see? Whose story do you know that you're sending me to engage with? Like it. It's complete dependence on the spirit of God. Like it absolutely is. And then you go, and I will speak and I will enter into this person's story.
But it's so important that it's people who are also working on their own stories that are entering in, because it's. I'm not going to get my worth by being the savior of this person. I am saved by the Savior, and for now, I am a vessel right now. I'm a vessel for this person. They will go on to have other vessels in their life and other organizations that will make a difference in their life. But I am being faithful to the thing in my life right, right now. So my encouragement is that be faithful in what is before you right now, in what you do and what you are becoming.
[00:53:42] Speaker B: Carrie, I love that. And I feel like there could be a part two to this conversation, because a lot of what you just said, I'm like, man, we could talk about that for a really long time of just doing this work out of an overflow and not out of a deficit or a burnout.
And. Yeah, that's so true. And just to reiterate what you were sharing a little bit earlier about just being in the darkest places in the world and asking for God's wisdom to say, show us. Show us who here is at risk. Show us who is in the process of potentially being trafficked. And I got a. I got a WhatsApp message this morning. One of our teams, they gathered together at the start of their day and they prayed and they just put themselves before the Lord and said, lord, like, lead us to whoever we need to talk to today. And, yeah, that in and of itself, like, just the strategy, this, you know, strategy that we have that isn't maybe talked about enough of, of just pouring into our staff and, and putting them in a place where they're dependent on Jesus and, and them being so I mean, the faith in the developing world is unparalleled, and I. I will never. I will never haven't get over that enough. And I. We don't have enough time even for me to, like, share some of those podcasts right there. I know, I know. Just. The faith in the poorest countries in the world is unlike anything I've ever seen. And just to watch the teams in the field have such a spirit of fervent prayer that goes beyond my own, you know, and. And being so inspired, encouraged by that is just connects with a lot of what you're saying. So I just thought I would share that. But, Carrie, I 100% feel like there needs to be a round two of this. Maybe we can make something work.
But I think this is. This is so great and so encouraging and just thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.
[00:55:32] Speaker A: Thank you. Hannah, you are, I mean, you're, first of all, so precious. And I really. I mean, I genuinely am really honored to be on a podcast connected to the work that you're doing, and I'm committed to pray for. For your work. And I do love that you're in a needy place because it means it's a. God is. He's cultivating a new area of the land, of the soil, of Love justice and of. Of each of you. Because he. He makes orchards. I mean, and that's what he's going to do. And it'll. It'll be generational fruit. And you just happen to be in the early pioneering stages and the ground is hard. Right? The ground is hard. And you're. You're doing that.
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