Monthly Mission: Unbound

I’m writing this Monthly Mission at 6:52am in the bed of our RV. And by bed I mean strange little futon couch that is made for a 4’2″ person and squeaks like….I don’t know, I can’t think of anything squeaky. But it’s squeaky. Trust me.

This Monthly Mission is going to be an exciting one because we’re doing an a-thon! You know, like a read-a-thon? Bowl-a-thon? Walk-a-thon? The kids and I are trying to decide which one to do–I’m partial to the read-a-thon. They want to do a bowl-a-thon.

When we get back from our RV trip, I’m going to come up with a little form to help the kids ask for sponsors. Knowing my children, it will be their grandparents and one nice person from church.  Anywhoo, people will pledge a certain amount of money per round (or book, or lap, etc.). For example, if we do the walk-a-thon, people will give X amount of money per lap my kids make.

Then one day we’ll devote the whole thing to our a-thon and my kids will go at it to see how many laps/books/whatever they can do. (Seriously, I can’t decide. Which one should we do?)

Now. What are we raising money for?

Kat introduced me to an organization called Unbound which was founded by a mom during her kid’s naptimes. Unbound’s mission is to see the church mobilized to end human trafficking. This is such a buzzword and high interest cause right now–and with good reason. The UN estimates 27 million people are enslaved with 2 million of them being children.

I wasn’t planning on doing a mission about human trafficking because the whole slavery issue is synonymous with sex-trafficking and that is, clearly, not something I want to talk about with a 7 and 4 year old. However, I have been reading a Civil War series and    the ignorance (deception) of the people who didn’t see anything wrong with slavery in the south OR the people that were against it but did nothing about it. I hope I would be the person standing up for slavery and letting my kids know how wrong it was instead of benefiting from it.

And here I am in a time where slavery exists–not in my backyard and in my home, but certainly in my city and in my sphere of influence. And I want my kids to know it exists, that we oppose it and will work to stop it. When I introduced this mission to Lydia and Asa I just talked to them about what they knew about slavery and what they thought about it. We talked about it if it was wrong to own someone else. We talked about how in some places, this still happens. And in order to stop it, organizations need money to buy slaves out of slavery, provide homes for them, sneak in and rescue them or provide jobs for poor people so they won’t fall into slavery. The kids totally got it, didn’t find it scary but did see how serious it was. It was very  much on their level and they are excited about this one!

Check out Unbound‘s website for more information about human trafficking and how they work to protect at-risk people. You can also follow them on Twitter or Facebook to keep up with their work.

So, now, your mission should you choose to accept it is to do an a-thon with your kids! When I get out of this RV, I’ll be updating more details on how our little a-thon will happen.

Anybody up for this one?! If you join along, please link up your stories on our main Monthly Mission page and use the hashtag #MonthlyMission on your social media networks!

{ps: it has taken me TWO days to find the wi-fi to finish this post. Right now I’m in the kids’ section of the library my mom used to visit when she was a kid in her grandparent’s hometown!! Follow me in Instagram to see all my crazy #ohRV adventures!}