skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Dear Friends:
Melinda Tankard Reist, author of Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualization of Girls, has put out a call for the public to respond to the forthcoming release of the music video for "Monstrous" a song by Kayne West.
The outcry is in connection to a video teaser leaked by HipHopConnection.com. The leaked video is now being blocked, but you can get a sense of some elements of the video by watching this behind the scenes video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuZ_VR6nLdw&feature=related. This behind the scenes video shows a "dead" woman laying spread eagle on a table in front of Rick Ross as he eats a plate of raw meat.
In just 30 seconds the leaked (but now blocked) video showed viewers image after image of eroticized violence against women:
· Dead women, clad in lingerie, hang by chains around their necks
· West makes sexual moves toward dead or drugged women propped up in a bed
· A naked dead or drugged woman lays sprawled on a sofa
Life on the Edge
One Woman’s Extreme Journey to Finding a Life That Matters
Click here to view the Passport Through Darkness book trailer! 
Each one of us longs to know we matter. We hunger to know that we have purpose, our life has meaning, and God dreams great dreams for us. In Passport Through Darkness: A True Story of Danger and Second Chances, Kimberly Smith invites us into her own struggles as an ordinary woman who feels those aches, asks those questions, and stumbles through a quest to find her place in a broken world.
Kimberly L Smith, co-founder and president, of Make Way Partners a non-profit mission agency that goes where women & children are at highest risk of human trafficking, forced prostitution and other forms of modern-day slavery and where little to no other help is available because it is considered either "too" dangerous, "too" expensive or "too" remote for most people to go.
Smith was an average American woman—a wife, mother, corporate executive, and faithful church member. But she knew something was missing from her life. When a bone-chilling experience awakened her desire to find true purpose, Smith and her family began a lifelong adventure serving those who never knew a greater purpose could exist.
Traveling around the world and deep into the darkness of her own heart, Smith’s worst fears collided with her faith as she and her family discovered the atrocities of human trafficking. But in that broken place a self-centered life was transformed into an international effort to save thousands from modern-day slavery, persecution, disease, and genocide.
As Smith and her husband risk everything for orphans at-risk to human trafficking in Eastern Europe and Africa, they see God work again and again in impossible situations, especially in their own lives and marriage. They see God change them—even in their exhaustion, marital struggles, and physical limitations. They see the beauty of living out God’s dreams.
This is a book of hope for anyone who longs to see God’s redemptive power heal broken hearts, fill empty bellies, and shelter uncovered heads. It is a call to take one more step on your own journey to know God’s heart and purpose for your life. It is a guide from one ordinary person to another to find a life that matters.
Smith writes, "My prayer is that God will use my wounds and my transgressions to encourage you to risk losing everything to discover the life God dreams for you. It’s life on the edge, where so much is uncertain, maybe even scary, certainly out of our control. But it’s also where true freedom lives."
Your story may be different from hers, but God’s hopes for you are just as big. "Your destination," Smith writes, "is the same as mine—an intimate encounter between you and your Creator. But your route will be filled with adventures, both mild and wild, made just for you. It will lead you to where God’s pleasure and your purpose meet."
Let Kimberly’s remarkable story show you the grit, the pain, and the beauty of letting go of it all to find the dream God dreamed when He shaped you in His Hands.
About the Author: Kimberly L. Smith is the president and cofounder of Make Way Partners, a mission organization committed to ending human trafficking. She is currently leading Make Way Partners to build the only private and indigenously based anti-trafficking network in Africa and Eastern Europe. A devoted wife, mother, and grandmother, Smith lives with her husband, Milton, in Sylacauga, Alabama.
Passport through Darkness: A True Story of Danger and Second Chances by Kimberly L. Smith
January 1, 2011/ISBN 978-1-4347-0212-8/224 pages/softcover/$14.99
http://www.kimberlylsmith.com/
What others are saying about Kimberly L Smith’s new book Passport through Darkness:
"Kimberly Smith voluntarily walks through the gates of hell. If you can read her accounts without being affected, you should check for a pulse."
- Philip Yancey, author of What Good is God? And What’s So Amazing about Grace
"I appreciate your efforts and those of Make Way Partners to rescue and care for the orphans of Sudan. I respect the ministry you lead and the fact that it cares equally for all children, whether Christian, Muslim, African, or Arab. By eliminating the divisors of religion and skin color you exemplify Christian peacemaking."
- Jimmy Carter, former US president and founder of The Carter Center
"Kimberly Smith has seen the desperation and powerlessness of people caught up in the struggle for life and survival. Her experiences in Darfur bring home the brutality and pain of those who suffer and the indifference of the world beyond. Yet the central message of this book is not despair, but hope. It is a powerful reminder that God forgives and renews and that His love stretches into the most hopeless situation in life and draws us into truth."
- Dr. Elaine Storkey, author, broadcaster, president of Tearfund, and ambassador for Restored
"If I didn’t know Kimberly well, I would have thought she was writing fiction. Passport through Darkness is real, raw, full of vulnerability—and is infused with much hope and love. But I do know Kimberly well and I know that she has experienced the darkest sides of humanity—and the brightest piercings of the light of God’s redemptive love. Reading this book will propel us all beyond our self-imposed boundaries, to the ultimate risk of finding and following Christ’s call for our own lives."
- Rev. Dr. Lauran Bethell, global consultant, Ministries with Victims of Human Trafficking and Prostitution, International Ministries, ABC/USA; coordinator, International Christian Alliance on Prostitution (ICAP); and former director, New Life Center, Chiang Mai, Thailand
"From her camp in the desert Kimberly L. Smith pulls back the canvas of her tent to show us the good, the bad and the ugly of our world today in Passport Through Darkness. She allows us to see into her ‘tent of meeting’ (Exodus 33:7) with God. The level of transparency and intimacy she reveals in her walk with God and her husband is encouraging, inspiring, motivating, and challenging. This book challenges Westerners about their contentment with insulated ‘secure’ lives—as we sit and sing our polite little songs in our pristine churches. How do we not stand up for our brothers and sisters thousands of miles away where human beings are treated without dignity—trafficked, bought, sold, and traded like animals."
- Tomi Lee "T.L." Grover, PhD, anti-trafficking consultant and founder
Read more!
