Stepping onto the tarmac in Quito City, Ecuador, I was filled with both apprehension and hope. As always, there are thousands of new stories to tell when I reach new city. I was excited at the prospects for the coming weeks, yet had no Idea what they would hold. Wesley Dean, a team videographer with Silent Images, was my contact on the ground as well as my host for the three weeks ahead.

From the moment my feet hit Ecuador I was running. I dove into a list of organizations, people, missions, names, numbers, and places. So many people to serve.

Though I was able to serve half a dozen organizations that each impacted me in a different way, one story about one amazing boy truly left me changed.

Daniel’s Story: Faith in the Fire

The Town of Huaticocha, basically a village with a population of about five hundred, had held an enormous question mark in my journal since day one. I knew I needed to go there, but had no idea why. Alone in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language, I was to take a bus to meet a missionary named Mark Shafer eight hours away deep in the jungle. As the small bus wound along a narrow mountain pass above the cloud forest I could not help but maintain a silent anxiety over what story I would cover there.

On my way to Huaticocha, I gave little thought to this little town my bus passed called “10 de August”, the Tenth of August. Mainly I found it comical; odd name for a town. The bus passed on by and I met Mark without a problem. The evening was spent preparing for several days beneath a mosquito net in the middle of nowhere. Honestly, I suppose I prefer it that way really.

At night, over our supper, Mark and I discussed the possible stories I could cover in the coming days. It all sounded very straightforward. Aside from the exotic terrain and the mission school they are building with the aid of their Ecuadorian mission family and an intern, I felt pretty sure that these next days spent in the jungle would not bring a life-altering story for me. Still there was that question mark and I felt I was, in one way or another, missing something important. I just had no idea what it was.

The next morning Mark and I prepared to take some shots of the mission and the plot of land where they were building the school. As we were walking together, he mentioned that he would like a portrait of a young boy who had been burned several months ago. “I just need an updated photo of him, nothing fancy really, just a snap.” Sure, no problem.

I could not have known the weight this story would hold the afternoon we went to meet a ten year-old boy named Daniel.

Daniel lives in the town of “10 de Augusto,” that town with the funny name my bus passed through. He lives in a two-room house with his mother, father, and older brother. His parents are both workers on their plot of farmland growing lentils, peanuts, corn, watermelon and cacao, which often leaves Daniel and his brother alone to cook for themselves. This also means building a fire.

On one particular day, he and his brother are having difficulty lighting the wood. Rain is a constant factor in jungle life; wood is almost never dry. The two spent a great deal of time with no results. With only embers within the pile, Daniel’s brother gets an idea. Pointing to a bottle typically used for water, he instructs Daniel to fill it with gasoline. The moment Daniel pours the gas onto the embers, it ignites and the flames travel instantly up the stream of liquid. The bottle combusts; engulfing Daniel in flames. He runs 600 meters toward the river while on fire.

Daniel is rushed to the hospital in Coca, a larger town famous for its dangerously filthy water. It takes the bus several hours to arrive. The first thing done to Daniel is he is given a shower in unfiltered water, a terribly hazardous substance on an open wound. Each day in the hospital his bandages are applied then later ripped from his burned and exposed muscle tissue; a torturous experience. Daniel’s parents can’t watch their son go through such pain. They take him from the hospital.

At home Daniel begins homeopathic, natural medicines, which fail. An infection sets up in the exposed tissue over one half of his body. He is found one month later by neighbors who just “felt they should come by.” They had heard a boy had been injured and wanted to check in.

What they found was horrifying.

Daniel had lost over half of his body weight, was oozing puss from his now entirely infected burns, yet, felt no pain due to the death of the nerves on his left side. Mark Shafer was called and given a description of the situation. He came immediately. He was also completely shocked by Daniel’s condition.

“Your son is dying,” Mark told Daniel’s father,”let us take him to the hospital.” The boy’s father couldn’t again listen to his son’s screams or see his pain in the hospital. He said no. Mark then calls a friend, a doctor in the relative area, and describes in detail what he sees. The doctor, shaken by what he’s hearing, gives Daniel one week to live in his condition. This message gives Daniel’s father the change of heart needed to trust Mark and allow his son to be taken to the doctor.

Remarkably, Daniel survives.

Daniel, a now energetic ten year-old, is on his way to full recovery. He has undergone multiple surgeries, is working through physical therapy, and lives the life of other ten year-old boys in the jungle. The scars, however, will be always with him. Throughout his struggle, Daniel’s two children’s Bibles his parents gave him were constant companions. Weeks in bed, he could not move, so he read. When asked if he had a favorite Bible verse, Daniel began a series of his favorites in a rapid-fire, expansive fashion. A powerful testament to true “strength made perfect in weakness.”

While in 10 de Augusto, I was able to meet with Daniel several times, go into their home, and interview him about his ordeal. His story truly resonates with me personally. He loves to paint and draw, things I have done since childhood, and aspires to be an actor, something I had also done since childhood. I knew that this was the story; this is what children back in the US needed to hear. So often, stories are not designed to connect with kids. Daniel has a story of survival that hits home with everyone, but children especially. I know this is something I will be sharing back in America, which will hopefully inspire so many kids and adults. The question mark in my journal over Huaticocha and 10 de Augusto became a story of true faith in the fire. This is a story that will make an impact. This is the story that needs to be told.

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Turns out I didn’t know that much after all…

 Peru Part 1: Iquitos

Jesse, our photography intern, and I touch down in Iquitos, Peru, walk out the airport, can’t find the missionaries that are supposed to be picking us up, and quickly come to the conclusion that we should have taken Spanish in college. Confused, we sit on a bench. Thankfully the missionaries noticed we were the only white people at the airport and guessed we were the media crew.  Good guess.

This began our first week in Peru serving Abundant Life Ministries. Their mission was the truest form of street ministry I have ever seen. They literally spend their days going into the streets known for drugs, gangs, murder, prostitution, and sex trafficking to do mercy ministry and share the gospel. The ministry has also opened a safe house for youth and men who want to turn away from a life of drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, and many more horrors. In the safe house the men go through rehab and are spiritually discipled by Peruvian leaders, most of whom have been through the program themselves.

Jhonatan has been with Abundant Life Ministries for a year. He is now drug free, lives with his new family, loves the Lord, and dreams of becoming a Christian rapper.

Having also been a missionary in China before working with Silent Images, I thought I knew a lot about redemption. But you can’t help but discover something dramatically new about transformation from the inside out when you are talking with the people there. For instance, an 18 year-old boy named Jhonatan who had lived on the streets since he was eleven, became addicted to drugs, became a drug dealer, stole to make a living, sex trafficked children to support his addiction, prostituted himself, murdered… I could go on. The real point is that as I listen to his story I am not scared of the horrors he has done but rather completely amazed by the power of the gospel to absolutely change him. I’ve never had such a clear example of what it means to be a new creation than when I observed the lives of these men in the safe house, see the evidence of the Lord in their lives, and then hear their tragic, though glorifying, tales.

Luz in the hospital fighting for her Luz was diagnosed with consuming rat poisoning, mostly likely from ingesting rat fecies. She is now out of the hospital and recovering.

Luz was admitted into the hospital after she was found unconscious by her mother who is a prostitute and drug addict. The missionaries at Abundant Life Ministries rushed to the hospital to care for her and cover her medical expenses.

While the stories of these safe house men certainly touched my heart, I was most affected by the opportunity I had to film a 4 year-old girl named Luz who was in the hospital dying from an unknown cause. The child of a prostitute and drug addict, she was severely malnourished and neglected. She had slipped into a coma after suffering multiple seizers. I was only in her room about two minutes before a nurse forced me out, but that tiny girl with sores covering her body, a bloody IV, and a quiet, desperate moan still brings tears to my eyes every time I think of her. I knew Luz for two minutes, yet she will live with me forever as motivation for why to work hard for missions like Abundant Life Ministries who are fighting desperately to save children like Luz. If everything I did and everything Abundant Life does was for the sake of saving beautiful little Luz’s soul, it would be worth the greatest effort. Luz is worth it and so are the thousands of children in Iquitos that she represents, who are also neglected, forgotten, and dying physically and spiritually. Because of the prayers and efforts of Abundant Life Luz is now recovering. It’s a miracle if there ever was one.

I thought I knew what I was getting into when planning out the videos I would make about Abundant Life Ministries. Though they want to expand the safe house so that they can house more men, the ministry’s main hope is to raise support to build a house for women, particularly prostitutes trying to escape that life, and children and youths, from newborns to 16 year-olds. It was strange starting my day saying, “Ok, I really need to find some prostitutes today”; or “Where is the best place to find street children”; or “Hope we find a youth doing drugs today.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t too difficult to find all these situations to film, which shows this is the reality in Iquitos, Peru, that the world needs to know. Little did I know this trip would take me down back alleys where we found a house where children were sold into sex trafficking, down streets where men are digging in pure sewage to find a possible lost coin so they can buy their next drug fix, or up a main street where a 12 year-old boy is huffing drugs from an old water bottle.

My prayer from my week in Iquitos is that the videos and photography that I produce will inspire people to join in the efforts of Abundant Life and other ministries like them. These are the ministries serving those who seem so lost most people have given them up for hopeless. But nothing and no one is hopeless to the Lord. I pray I can help make sure these people are not forgotten. I pray the videos I make will help raise the funds needed to build the houses needed to give children like Luz and Jhonatan a home and a family.

Before my trip to Peru I thought I knew why I did my job with Silent Images. But my trip to Peru allowed me to reach a new depth of understanding as to why I am passionate about this work. It’s a blessing to tell the stories of these beautiful people, who should never be forgotten and always be shown love.

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I never expected that I would never have the chance to see some of them again. “Only a couple of the ladies you met last time are still capable of getting around and maintaining their jobs,” Dhru tells me on the car ride from the airport to the guest house where I’ll be staying. “The others are not doing so well … the HIV has taken over their bodies.”

It seemed so factual. So ‘to-the-point.’ And it is. It’s the harsh, unfair reality these women have had to face in their short lives.

They are not much older than I am. One was only two years older than me, and she is gone. Others are only 5-6 years older, and yet their disease-abused bodies reflect otherwise.

As I head out on a walk, trying to keep myself awake a little longer to avoid as much jetlag as I can, I begin to think about Dhru’s words. I can remember being invited to go on a few hospital visits with the ladies last time, a very vulnerable thing for them. I can remember the fear in Kamala’s (in the image, name has been changed) eyes as she waited for the doctor to call her name. I remember holding her hand, her squeezing it tightly, and afterwards some tears and hugs. Even back then, they were much more sick than I realized.

The next day I visited one of the homes, where the ladies now live. Kamala lies on her bed most of each day. She now suffers from severe blindness and is unable to make it to doctors visits. Instead, health care is brought to her.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that most of my friends are in poor health, but somehow it does. I wasn’t expecting it. I was looking forward to being reunited with them, to hearing stories of more healing and wholeness. I was looking forward to laughter and fun.

As my feet step over trash and one dirt-covered slab of cement after another, I can’t help but think, “This was not their fault!” It seems so unfair. So unjust. These women were raped repeatedly as young girls and as if that wasn’t enough, now they are dying from someone else’s disease. Where’s the justice in that?

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The Art Institute of Charlotte is hosting the Silent Images gallery on the Kachin; it will hang from May 15 until July 15, 2012.  On June 7, 2012 David Johnson  went to the Art Institute to speak about the Kachin and his time with them in Burma.

The story of the Kachin is one that is tragic and unheard; this gallery gives a voice to the Kachin’s story of injustice.

The Amnesty International reported a story on the Kachin:

“Amnesty International has accused Myanmar’s military of committing crimes against humanity in ethnic conflict zones, where ongoing fighting has overshadowed sweeping political changes.

The rights group also alleged that authorities had blocked humanitarian aid from reaching tens of thousands of desperate refugees in conflict areas and said soldiers had sexually assaulted civilians.

“The government enacted limited political and economic reforms, but human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law in ethnic minority areas increased during the year,” Amnesty said in its annual report.

“Some of these amounted to crimes against humanity or war crimes.”

The Myanmar army had launched “indiscriminate attacks” that at times targeted ethnic minority civilians, it said.

In northern Kachin, where a decades-old conflict erupted again last year, there were reports of extrajudicial executions, shelling that killed children, forced labour and unlawful destruction of food and property, it said.

In neighbouring Shan state, civilians were tortured, arbitrarily detained and forcibly relocated, according to Amnesty.

“Soldiers reportedly sexually assaulted Kachin and Shan civilians,” it added.

There were credible accounts of the army using prison convicts as porters, human shields and mine sweepers, it said.

Myanmar’s quasi-civilian government has agreed ceasefires with several armed ethnic minority groups since coming to power last year, raising hopes of an end to civil war that has gripped parts of the country since independence in 1948.

But a series of meetings with the rebels fighting in Kachin, where a 17-year ceasefire was shattered last year, have failed to end the violence there.

The reformist regime recently overhauled its negotiating team, putting the president at the helm of the process and removing some elements of the previous delegation seen by Kachin rebels as linked to army hardliners.

President Thein Sein’s government has won international praise for releasing hundreds of political prisoners and welcoming pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her party back into mainstream politics.

An end to the conflicts and alleged rights abuses are key demands of the international community, which has begun to roll back sanctions.”

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If you haven’t submitted your Silent Hero, you have until June 19th to nominate your personal hero. Read more about the project below and visit www.mysilenthero.org.

Frustrated by the divisive headlines covered in the media, nonprofit photography Silent Images took on a mission, asking everyday citizens to submit photos identifying the unseen heroes of Charlotte.  The community responded by the dozens to our request, contributing stories of hope, dedication and sacrifice.  Soon after, the Levine Museum of the New South invited Silent Images to display these community-contributed photos in a five-month gallery from July to November 2012 during the Democratic National Convention, a time that could potentially cause political tension within Charlotte.

Momentum for the project continued to build when the Silent Heroes project was announced in the fall of 2011 among some of the most innovative and inspiring thinkers on the east coast at TEDx, where it was met with great enthusiasm.  Following this announcement, the Charlotte Observer featured a story on the project, applauding its originality and uplifting message.  Hopefully, the Silent Heroes project will be a refreshing change of pace for individuals citywide as it changes the local conversation from scandals surrounding racial and political division to a celebration of the silent heroes living among us.

Although the idea of heroism has spanned humanity’s existence, there are few organizations that have taken the time to share the stories of local heroes. There are some broadcasters, like CNN for example, that have hosted programs highlighting heroic acts across the U.S.  But, while these heroes have certainly affected the world and deserve recognition for their efforts, the majority of Americans do not have the ability to start an orphanage in a developing country or create a nonprofit in their spare time.  Our local heroes have, however, sacrificed their time and energy for their communities.  We want to tell the story of the local teacher who spends her evenings tutoring to give students every opportunity to improve or the elementary school girl who began a club to pick up trash in her neighborhood.  While an article about a global humanitarian hero may inspire, it often strikes us as distant and unattainable.  The next-door-neighbor serving in your community gives a closer reflection of an everyday hero who not only inspires us but connects with us as well.  We believe local heroes will not only make this project innovative and dynamic but also inspire a new tone to the conversation of Charlotte.

While time is drawing closer to the gallery opening, there is still time to submit your hero.  We are continuing to ask citizens throughout Charlotte, whether young or old, male or female, student or teacher, secretary or CEO, to send us a photo of your hero and in 50 words or less, why they have inspired you.  All submissions will be displayed at the Levine Museum of the New South for five months, beginning with the opening Silent Heroes gala on July 19, 2012.  Submit your hero today at www.mysilenthero.org.

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Since March, more than 25 children from Matthews Elementary and Habitat for Humanity community have participated in the free photography classes SI has hosted. The project will culminate with participant-created galleries hung during Matthews Alive this fall in the Matthews Library and Community Center. The gallery will feature photos from each community and showcase their talents and unique viewpoints.

So far, the classes have been huge successes, and the children have come away with a sense of excitement and pride in the photos they create through the class. We look forward to the June classes we will hold with Plantation Estates and several small businesses in Matthews!

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“Out of my distress, I called on the Lord. The Lord answered me and set me free.” – Psalm 118:5

Charlotte, NC

During her childhood in Charlotte, Neet dreamed of owning a bakery. But those dreams faded when she was sexually exploited at 16 and later trafficked into prostitution for three years. For years the hopelessness she felt and the pressure to earn money to assist her family was used by the men who exploited her in the illegal commercial sex trade of North Carolina, currently ranked 8th in the nation for human trafficking. But years later, her life was changed again when a friend introduced her to a loving and grace-giving God, and Neet became a Christian. She gained the confidence to escape her trafficked life and took up baking again; after a four-year recovery, her prayers are becoming realities. Now Neet owns her own baking service, employing other survivors of trafficking while reaching out to exploited women in Charlotte to help them find the hope and healing to be free to pursue their dreams.

For more information on trafficking in North Carolina, visit www.neetssweets.com or www.seedsscholars.org/humantrafficking.

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In April, David was able to secretly enter Burma (also known as Myanmar) to serve the Kachin people, a minority people group who are refugees within their own country. Since 1961, the Kachin State has been in conflict with the Burmese government after the Kachin Independence Army emerged to gain autonomy for its people group. After a long ceasefire, fighting broke out again June 2011 by Burma Army soldiers, and the attacks have continued into 2012. Many of the Burmese attacks have targeted Kachin civilian villages, forcing thousands of the Kachin people to abandon their homes and live as internally displaced people within their own state. Currently, more than 50,000 internally displaced Kachin live in camps near the border of Burma and China, with thousands more hiding in the jungles.

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