I have received many email forwards, then I have forwarded them to people on "my list". I love these touching, warm, funny emails. I started saving them on my computer, so I would never lose them. I decided to create a blog to hold all these email forwards, so others can enjoy them and so I can easily refer to them when I want. I hope people who love email forwards as much as I do, or like reading funny and inspirational readings will find this site and share it with others.
The Orphan Trains were a social experiment in the United States between 1854 and 1929, during which an estimated 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children from crowded Eastern cities - mostly New York - were sent by train to rural areas across the country to be placed with foster families.
Organized by charitable institutions like the Children's Aid Society and the New York Founding Hospital, the movement aimed to provide these children with better lives through adoption or indentured labor.
While many children did find loving homes, others faced exploitation or abuse, sparking debate about child welfare and leading to the rise of the modern foster care system.
John Guy writes: "What God did at Pearl Harbor that day is interesting and I never knew this little bit of history.
Tour boats ferry people out to the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii every thirty minutes. We just missed a ferry and had to wait thirty minutes. I went into a small gift shop to kill time.
In the gift shop, I purchased a small book entitled, "Reflections on Pearl Harbor" by Admiral Chester Nimitz.
Sunday, December 7th, 1941— Admiral Chester Nimitz was attending a concert in Washington, DC. He was paged and told there was a phone call for him. When he answered the phone, it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the phone.
He told Admiral Nimitz that he (Nimitz) would now be the Commander of the Pacific Fleet. Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941. There was such a spirit of despair, dejection and defeat--you would have thought the Japanese had already won the war.
On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters everywhere you looked. As the tour boat returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked, "Well Admiral, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?"
Admiral Nimitz's reply shocked everyone within the sound of his voice. Admiral Nimitz said, "The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make, or God was taking care of America. Which do you think it was?"
Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, "What do mean by saying the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes an attack force ever made?
Nimitz explained:
Mistake number one: The Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave. If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk--we would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.
Mistake number two: When the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships. If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired. As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them to America. And I already have crews ashore anxious to man those ships.
Mistake number three:
Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is in top of the ground storage tanks five miles away over that hill. One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply.
That's why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make or, God was taking care of America.
I've never forgotten what I read in that little book. It is still an inspiration as I reflect upon it. In jest, I might suggest that because Admiral Nimitz was a Texan, born and raised in Fredericksburg, Texas -- he was a born optimist.
But any way you look at it -- Admiral Nimitz was able to see a silver lining in a situation and circumstance where everyone else saw only despair and defeatism.
President Roosevelt had chosen the right man for the right job. We desperately needed a leader that could see silver lining in the midst of the clouds of dejection, despair and defeat.
There is a reason that our national motto is, IN GOD WE TRUST.
Why have we forgotten? PRAY FOR OUR COUNTRY! IN GOD WE TRUST."
The Hospital: Scarlet Fever in Lancashire by Marypat
THE BACKGROUND In 1939 at the age of twelve, I went to join my elder sister at a new school. It was a direct grant grammar school of about 350 girls run by nuns, and we were among the eighty or so boarders. Just before Easter in 1943, my younger sister, aged thirteen caught scarlet fever and was taken to the hospital where she stayed for a month. On her return she told us all about it, she had been well-looked after, and best of all she had been given chocolate biscuits, unheard of luxuries in those days At the beginning of November in the same year, just after I had gone into the Lower VIth form, I developed a headache and a sore throat. I was put into the school infirmary and had been there for five days, feeling very ill, being seen by the school doctor, when one of the nuns told me that I would be going to the scarlet fever hospital that day. School was not my favourite place, and the thought of chocolate biscuits and a break from routine did not seem to be a bad prospect. I had no idea where the hospital was, because we only left the school grounds when we all went for a walk in a crocodile in the local park, when our patents came to take us out for the afternoon, or when we went home for the holidays.
THE JOURNEY It was already dark when the ambulance came. I left wearing my nightdress, dressing gown and bedroom slippers. The only things the nuns would allow me to take were a comb, my toothbrush, six white handkerchiefs and five shillings. By the time the ambulance came at around 5.30 in the afternoon, I was feeling a bit better and told the nurse that I didn't need to lie down, so she wrapped a red blanket round my shoulders and we sat opposite one another, chatting. After a few minutes the nurse said she didn't feel well and she really seemed to be in pain. She lay down on the stretcher, I put a red blanket over her and she didn't speak again. We kept on going in the darkness and when the driver opened the door, I was standing there. "Where's the nurse" he asked, I told him she didn't feel well and I got out and he went to attend to her. I walked through the open door of the building. I did ask the next day what had happened to the nurse, they told me she had peritonitis and had been driven straight-away to another hospital. Somehow this strange happening was a portent of what was to happen.
THE EPIDEMIC I went in through the front door of the hospital, which was in a small single-storey building made of wood. I learned afterwards that it was one of a number of similar buildings separated from one another by lawns. I was taken from the entrance hall and shown to the first bed in an adjacent ward. I heard one nurse say to another "We don't need to bath her she's from the convent". The ward was not full and one by one the girls, who were all younger than I was, were taken to have their baths.During that evening other children were brought in to fill the empty beds, and all through the next day I watched the ambulance men carry new children into our ward and the boys' ward opposite. Late that evening a nurse came and told me to get up and put on my dressing gown and slippers. She told me that both wards were full and that they were going to have to open another block. It was already dark and I followed her out and across a lawn which was crunchy underfoot and glistening with frost in the moonlight. She produced a key from her pocket and opened the door of an identical building to the first one and she told me it had been closed for a long time. She pointed to the third bed on the right hand side, put some bedding on it and told me that I was being put in that ward because I was the eldest patient. Then another nurse arrived carrying a little girl called Edna May who was about two, and they put her in a cot opposite me. Then the nurses left, leaving us alone and locking the door behind them. There were no curtains at the tall windows and I was absolutely terrified. I imagined that bogey men were peeping at us through the windows or lurking in other rooms. I was so frightened that I was unable to get out of bed even to attend to Edna May who was crying, I comforted her as best I could by talking to her and singing lullabies until eventually she fell asleep.
SETTLING IN The next morning two day nurses arrived, two men came to put up blackout curtains and black shades on the light bulbs, and more children were brought in. For some reason the nurses decided to fill up the first ward with both boys and girls before starting on the second. In a few days there were 37 children in our block and then the epidemic seemed to ease off. Luckily for me, two ladies were brought in on the second day. One was a married lady of twenty-three and the other was a shorthand typist who was eighteen. They were put in the two beds between me and the door. We never had a night nurse during the whole time I was there. It must have been very difficult to recruit nurses for hospitals for infectious diseases when nurses were needed to care for casualties of war, victims of the blitz as well as fighting men who had been injured overseas and brought home. There was a list of instructions in the bathroom saying that each child had to be bathed every night, stating the correct temperature and the fact that every child had to have clean water. The two ladies and I had to do this. One lady did the bathing, the other did the drying and I carried them to and from their beds. Unfortunately, we couldn't guarantee clean water, so we changed it after every four or five, because we were also ill and it was very hard work.
FOOD AND DAY-TO-DAY LIVING We had bread, jam and tea for breakfast, which was given to us when the nurses came on duty. At lunchtime every day, a trolley cam from a central kitchen with our lunch. We had minced meat, mashed potatoes, either carrots or cabbage and rice pudding every day.I never ate any lunch because I didn't feel hungry and couldn't face it. At tea time before the nurses went off duty we had bread and jam and tea again. Every night we had the smallest size bottle of Bovril to make a hot drink for all of us and some cream crackers. The two ladies and I got this ready and gave it out to the children. Every Monday morning, a parcel arrived from the convent. It was quite big and was full of what was known as 'ration chocolate' and sweets. I know that the nuns had all parted with their weekly sweet ration to provide this and I was very grateful. As soon as the parcel arrived, a crowd of children stood around my bed, we divided the contents as evenly as we could among all of us. We were not allowed to send letters or to use the telephone. Any visitors who came had to speak to us through the closed ward windows. My father had fought in Belgium through the First World War and he was now 51. His work involved the provision of animal feeding stuffs. Because he had to travel over the north west, he had a petrol ration. When he was in the area, he used to visit me and we had to shout at one another to make ourselves heard. We had been taught in school not to complain about anything. If we did, we were reprimanded and told that young men, only a few years older than we were, were fighting for our freedom, and that whatever our complaints they were nothing compared with what they had to endure. And of course this was true. But in any case, I didn't want to worry my parents, so I never told him I had any problems. The only visitors to the wards were the doctor and two chaplains who came every week to talk to us. Our doctor was lovely, and one day we were told that he had lost his two sons in the war and that he wouldn't be coming back.He was replaced by a lady but she never came into the ward. She just stood in the doorway and looking at each of us individually, waved her hand and said things like "How are you today?" or "Are you feeling better?" or "Has your headache gone?". I was angry with her at the time because I thought she was afraid of catching something, but having thought about it since, she had probably been 'borrowed' from another hospital and could not come in for fear of contaminating other patients.
NEW ARRIVALS This story only becomes extraordinary when I relate what happened next. Two sailors from a naval prison were brought in and they were wearing white tropical kit. Keith was 21 and Jim was 18. They told us that they had each been sentenced to three months in the prison for having an argument with some Americans in a pub when they were on leave. They also told us that they didn't have scarlet fever, they had eaten carbolic soap. They said it was well-known in prisons that if you eat carbolic soap you get the symptoms of scarlet fever. They didn't want to leave the navy, they just didn't want to be in prison where everything had to be done at the double. In the central area between the two wards, there was an office, a bathroom and a kitchen. Through the kitchen there was a sideward. I never went into it but Keith and Jim were given two beds in there.
ECONOMIC ADVENTURES Soon after their arrival, Keith and Jim started to sneak out during the day. still wearing their tropical kit. They climbed over the perimeter fence and found a little general shop quite near the hospital owned by an old woman, and she sold them balls of string. They used the legs of an upturned chair which they put on the kitchen table, and then using their fishnet making skills, they made shopping bags with two handles. When they had completed a few, they took the bags back to the shop and the old woman bought them for five shillings each. At night, after the nurses had gone,they would go out and spend the money in the local pub. It amazed me that nobody ever became suspicious of two sailors wearing tropical kit in the middle of winter. On their return they would play cards with the two women on the beds next to me and I used to watch them. They never asked me to play or offered me any drink. I had had a very sheltered and protected upbringing, and after four years in the convent I was very naive and innocent. One night one of the ladies said "Who is getting into Pat's bed tonight?" Now I can see that they were only teasing me but at that time I was shocked and horrified. I had to make myself stay awake until the sailors went back to the sideward late in the night. There is no comparison between a sixteen-year old brought up as I was in those days and a sixteen-year old of today.
CHANGES On one of his trips outside, Jim broke his ankle and went off somewhere to have a plaster-of-paris cast put on it. He had taken on the responsibility of preparing the supper and I can see him now, hopping down the ward with a tray of cups.I wore the same long, pink nightdress for all the time I was there. It had got very dirty and I was ashamed of anybody seeing it, so I used to manoeuvre myself into my dressing gown before getting out of bed. I asked one of the nurses to buy something for me outside, but she refised saying she couldn't take my contaminated money out of the ward. So I had to manage. I was a tall girl and took size seven in shoes. Soon after he came Keith passed me in the ward and said "I'll have those" pointing to my slippers. He took them from me, put them on and walked off. I was well- trained in self-discipline and had been taught to consider others before thinking about myself. Also, I knew very little about men. I had three sisters and my two brothers were very young. So I was much too afraid to challenge Ken and ask for my slippers back. I walked around for the rest of the time in my bare feet.I got a bad throat infection and because of this I had to stay longer than the normal four weeks. The treatment I got, because there were no antibiotics then, was a bottle of Condy's Fluid, a bright reddish- purple liquid which when diluted was used as a gargle.
GETTING READY TO LEAVE Before leaving hospital, quite a ritual had to be performed. The convent had been contacted and they had sent a set of underclothes and my school uniform but these were kept away from me.The night before I was due to go, I had a bath and washed my hair and was told to put on my underclothes.I was put in a bed near the door, told to lie at the wrong end with my feet on the pillow and my feet and hands were exposed. I stayed like that all night and then the next morning, someone came to inspect my hands and feet to see if they had stopped peeling, as this was an indication that I was better. We were not supposed to leave the hospital with lice in our hair, but we all had those and nobody ever mentioned them. After I had been cleared I went into the bathroom and put on my uniform. Then I was told to wait in the kitchen. I put my nightdress, dressing gown and money in a brown paper carrier bag after having squirted them with disinfectant from a spray. We had not seen Keith for a few days as we were told that he was ill and they thought he had a mastoid. As I sat on the kitchen table waiting for my father, a man went into Ken's room and a few minutes later wheeled him out on a low trolley. He stopped in front of me and went out to speak to one of the nurses. Keith's eyes were closed and on the ends of his feet were my slippers. Spying my opportunity and making sure nobody was looking, I very delicately removed them from his feet, sprayed them with disinfectant and pushed them down the side of the carrier bag.
HOME My father came to collect me and I was received with much joy and happiness when I arrived home, and much excitement from my little sister and brothers. I hadn't seen my mother for a long time and we were all very happy. Later that evening, we we all sitting round the kitchen fire when I told them the story of my slippers.I was feeling proud, we were short of clothing coupons and my mother wouldn't need to buy me new ones. After hearing what had happened, she jumped up, grabbed the slippers and threw them onto the back of the fire. I didn't go back to school for quite a long time because I had a chest infection and got out of breath when I went upstairs. I was well looked after by the family doctor, but my mother had the real remedy. Every night she poured a bottle of Guinness into a cream enamel jug and added some sugar and powdered ginger. Then she put the poker into the fire until it was red hot and plunged it into the jug. The liquid went all frothy and then I had to drink it. My mother said the iron in the poker would make me strong !
AFTERTHOUGHTS I think all the people at the hospital did their best for us, but the epidemic took them unawares and they didn't thave the facilities to cope with it.The experience had such an effect on me that I decided there and then to make sure I could remember every detail, because I knew that sometime in the future, someone would find it interesting. There were so many sad, strange and memorable stories of bravery, hardship and real suffering during those years, that my story would not have meant much to anybody. So I decided quite consciously to keep it in my memory until the time came to tell it. Perhaps that moment is now.
When a train filled with a large transport of Jewish prisoners arrived at one of the Nazi killing centers, many Polish gentiles came out to watch the latest group as they were taken away. As the disoriented Jews were gathering their possessions to take with them into the camp, a Nazi officer in charge called out to the villagers standing nearby, "Anything these Jews leave behind you may take for yourselves, because for sure they will not be coming back to collect them!"
Two Polish women who were standing nearby saw a woman towards the back of the group, wearing a large, heavy, expensive coat. Not waiting for someone else to take the coat before them, they ran to the Jewish woman and knocked her to the ground, grabbed her coat and scurried away.
Moving out of sight of the others, they quickly laid the coat down on the ground to divide the spoils of what was hiding inside. Rummaging through the pockets, they giddily discovered gold jewelry, silver candlesticks and other heirlooms. They were thrilled with their find, but as they lifted the coat again, it still seemed heavier than it should. Upon further inspection, they found a secret pocket, and hidden inside the coat was .... a tiny baby girl!
Shocked at their discovery, one woman took pity and insisted to the other, "I don't have any children, and I'm too old to give birth now. You take the gold and silver and let me have the baby." The Polish woman took her new "daughter" home to her delighted husband. They raised the Jewish girl as their own, treating her very well, but never telling her anything about her history. The girl excelled in her studies and even became a doctor, working as a pediatrician in a hospital in Poland.
When her "mother" passed away many years later, a visitor came to pay her respects. An old woman invited herself in and said to the daughter, "I want you to know that the woman that passed away last week was not your real mother ..." and she proceeded to tell her the whole story. She did not believe her at first, but the old woman insisted.
"When we found you, you were wearing a beautiful gold pendant with strange writing on it, which must be Hebrew.
I am sure that your mother kept the necklace. Go and see for yourself." Indeed, the woman went into her deceased mother's jewelry box and found the necklace just as the elderly lady had described. She was shocked. It was hard to fathom that she had been of Jewish descent, but the proof was right there in her hand. As this was her only link to a previous life, she cherished the necklace. She had it enlarged to fit her neck and wore it every day, although she thought nothing more of her Jewish roots.
Some time later, she went on holiday abroad and came across two Jewish boys standing on a main street, trying to interest Jewish passersby to wrap Tefillin on their arms (for males) or accept Shabbos candles to light on Friday afternoon (for females). Seizing the opportunity, she told them her entire story and showed them the necklace. The boys confirmed that a Jewish name was inscribed on the necklace but did not know about her status. They recommended that she write a letter to their mentor, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, explaining everything. If anyone would know what to do, it would be him.
She took their advice and sent off a letter that very same day. She received a speedy reply saying that it is clear from the facts that she is a Jewish girl and perhaps she would consider using her medical skills in Israel where talented pediatricians were needed. Her curiosity was piqued and she traveled to Israel where she consulted a Rabbinical Court (Beit Din) who declared her Jewish. Soon she was accepted into a hospital to work, and eventually met her husband and raised a family.
In August 2001, a terrorist blew up the Sbarro cafe in the center of Jerusalem. The injured were rushed to the hospital where this woman worked. One patient was brought in, an elderly man in a state of shock. He was searching everywhere for his granddaughter who had become separated from him.
Asking how she could recognize her, the frantic grandfather gave a description of a gold necklace that she was wearing.
Eventually, they finally found her among the injured patients.
At the sight of this necklace, the pediatrician froze. She turned to the old man and said, "Where did you buy this necklace?"
"You can't buy such a necklace," he responded, "I am a goldsmith and I made this necklace. Actually I made two identical pieces for each of my daughters. This is my granddaughter from one of them, and my other daughter did not survive the war."
And this is the story of how a Jewish girl, brutally torn away from her mother on a Nazi camp platform almost sixty years ago, was reunited with her father .....
Adapted from the book "Heroes of Faith"
This is an incredible link below with incredible stories - well worth your time . . .
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a1a3d64b9ea4488aa6912255c3297b8a Holocaust Survivors - See the journey, struggle, heroics and survival -- The Stories of they who lived through it . . . Dr. Carole Vopat, former University of Wisconsin- Parkside professor, held a class called "Holocaust Studies". Through the help of HERC in Milwaukee and the Skokie Holocaust Museum, they found survivors who were willing to travel to Parkside to tell their stories of survival.
You will find through studying the Holocaust that many survivors are reluctant to share their journey, but there are others, who through age found that it was their duty to share in their experiences, to be able to give the youth of today a story of how one person surviving, one person defying the odds, one person standing up for whats right is the reason that these stories must live on. Through perseverance and strife these people and their families overcame what many at the time would have thought impossible. They survived. Now we get to hear their stories and remember for generations to come, that no matter how big or small an act of genocide can be, it is detrimental to human civilization.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article addresses the atrocity of child sex slavery—one of the fastest growing and most lucrative criminal industries in the world today. While we have made every effort to avoid graphic language, this article might be disturbing for some readers.
On a balmy February afternoon in the poverty-stricken country of Haiti, Timothy Ballard is thrown to the ground and handcuffed by local law enforcement. Lifting his head from the asphalt, he watches as the woman who just sold him two young children—a brother and sister ages 2 and 3—for $15,000 apiece is hauled away by police.
Little did the woman know that Ballard is a former CIA and Homeland Security agent who was working with the Haitian government in an undercover operation that would liberate 28 children from her “orphanage.” Little did she know that Ballard would go on to rescue more than 200 children from human traffickers in 2014 alone.
Ballard describes himself as a modern-day abolitionist and is doing everything in his power to educate the public about the little-acknowledged plague of human trafficking in society.
“We go about our lives thinking we have eradicated slavery, but it’s bigger than ever,” he says. “There are more slaves today than all the slaves in 300 years of the transatlantic slave trade.” In fact, human rights organizations agree there are at least 21 million victims of human trafficking in the world today, including 2 million children. Rescuing these children has become Ballard’s mission in life—a mission he believes is inspired of the Lord.
Into the Darkness
“I didn’t run into this line of work heroically with my sword unsheathed,” he clarifies. “I went in kicking and screaming.”
As a government agent, Ballard had been trained to fight terrorism, so he was surprised when his boss specifically requested that he help form a child crimes unit.
“I told him no,” he recalls. “It’s the one thing I wouldn’t do. It’s the worst possible thing anyone can see. Who knows how that would affect you?”
But his boss insisted that Ballard’s LDS faith would help strengthen him against the horrific crimes he would be facing.
“He felt my religious background would be a protection for me,”Ballard says.
After fasting and praying with his wife, Katherine, the couple felt strongly that the answer was “yes.” “The very reason I said no at first is the very reason we came to the decision to say yes—because we have children.”
So Ballard began his job as an undercover operative who assumed the role of pedophile or child trafficker. It wasn’t long after his first case, which led to the rescue of a 5-year-old boy, that he again doubted if he could withstand the emotional, psychological, and spiritual toll.
“This little boy was being violated in the worst possible way,” he recalls. “I was the first agent on the scene, and he jumped into my arms and wouldn’t let go. I came home that night and collapsed on the floor and cried like a baby.”
Ballard continues, “I told my wife, ‘I can’t do this.’ These children are being kidnapped and raped. There is nothing worse on earth. There is nothing worse in hell.” But he felt a powerful confirmation that this was what he was supposed to do. “I made a commitment to God and to that little boy that I would do everything I could, even if it killed me.”
So that’s exactly what he did for the next 12 years.
Divine Inspiration
As a government agent, Ballard could only work cases if a US citizen was involved. “There are limited resources,” he explains. “I don’t fault the government—it’s just the way it is.”
However, Ballard’s frustration grew unbearable as he infiltrated child trafficking rings only to be forced to leave innocent victims behind.
“I’ve had cases where I knew where the kids were, but I couldn’t get them out because there was no US connection,” he says. “I couldn’t take it anymore.”
He continues, “I had several very profound spiritual experiences that made it clear to me that I was to do something more in this field. I started getting powerful feelings that my family needed to leave California and move to Utah, but we had no idea why we were supposed to go.”
So Ballard and his wife went to the temple for guidance. The next morning, in what Ballard describes as a “spiritual download,” he received a clear and undeniable answer: “Find the lost children.”
“I knew exactly what that meant. I was to find those kids who were out of our jurisdictional reach by starting a private, nonprofit organization. I didn’t know how, but something in Utah would lead to this.”
The family moved to Utah in the summer of 2012, and soon everything fell into place for Ballard to found Operation Underground Railroad,which specializes in rescuing children trapped in slavery.
“Before I left the government, I called all my contacts in other countries. I asked if they would still let me come in and operate privately, and they all said yes.”
So the father of six assembled a team of former Navy Seals, ex-CIA agents, and other operatives with unique skill sets. Despite not knowing where the money would come from, networking and word of mouth quickly led to enough donations to begin operations in January of 2014.
“Even as the money was dropping, I felt like Jonah—I wanted to run and hide. But it got to the point that as hard as it was to walk down this unknown path, not taking it became scarier. I became petrified at the thought of sitting down with the Lord and explaining why I didn’t do what He had asked of me.”
Spiritual Strategy
Ballard’s team consists of people of all faiths, but many are LDS, including childhood friend and former Navy Seal Dutch Turley, who serves as vice president of Rescue Operations. Former US diplomat and intelligence officer Matt Osborne, who serves as vice president of Foreign Missions and Intelligence in the organization, is also LDS. In fact, Osborne joined the Church two years ago because of his friendship with Ballard in graduate school.
“Tim bore his testimony to me and planted the seed,” he says. “I investigated off and on for over a decade before I put Moroni’s promise to the test and got a response that was overwhelming.”
It was Ballard’s same conviction of heart that convinced Osborne to leave behind a stellar career in government to join Operation Underground Railroad. “There was something about what he said and the way he said it,” Osborne recalls. “At the end of the day, I can say I did this for the right reason—for the possibility of doing good. That’s what ultimately led me to jump.”
According to Osborne, having a team of people who sincerely desire to be humble and righteous has made all the difference.
“We pray constantly,” he says. “We pray for protection. We pray for guidance—to find the children, to find the honest government officials in other countries. It’s very difficult to know whom to trust.”
“We aren’t a vigilante group, and we never try to force things to happen,” says Turley. “We do everything we can, but things will happen on the Lord’s time—that’s when it is the most productive.”
“Some of the most spiritual moments of my life have happened while sitting across the table from a child trafficker,” Ballard says. “I feel the Spirit with me in those moments of complete darkness.”
Operation Triple Take
Ballard’s team found tremendous success on nearly a dozen operations last year, but the crowning achievement of Operation Underground Railroad in 2014 occurred on October 11, when, in cooperation with the Colombian government, they executed the largest-known human trafficking bust to date.
“We performed three operations within an hour of each other in three Colombian cities: Cartagena, Armenia, and MedellÃn,” says Osborne. “They resulted in the rescue of 123 victims and the arrest of a dozen criminals. The traffickers [in each city] were not connected, but we wanted to take them down at the same time so we could keep the element of surprise.”
Ballard, who served a mission in Chile and speaks fluent Spanish, participated in the Cartagena operation, just off the coast in the Rosario Islands. In a dramatic sting, he posed as an American businessman who wanted to rent a beach house and throw an elaborate party for his friends—complete with children for their “entertainment.”
Ballard had originally arranged for the traffickers to bring 20 children at $300 apiece. When he learned the traffickers wanted to build a child sex hotel on the island, though, he saw the opportunity to rescue 30 more. So Ballard asked a friend in the real estate business to pose as a potential investor.
“Mark* (name has been changed) is a successful real estate mogul. He can talk the talk, so we knew he would be perfect for this mission,” Ballard says. “I told the traffickers they would have to show us bigger numbers before Mark would be interested in investing, so the traffickers arranged to bring all the children they had to the party—even those still being ‘groomed,’ or prepared for life in the sex trade.” This included four virgins as young as 11 years old that came with a hefty price tag of $1,000 each.
The children were brought by boat to the island. With hidden cameras rolling, money exchanged hands, and a Colombian operative gave the signal for law enforcement to make their move. But there was a snag.
“Agents were supposed to storm the beach within five minutes of the signal, but it took 45 minutes for them to get there,” Mark recalls. “I thought, ‘What am I supposed to do now? It’s time for the party to start.’”
In an effort to stall the traffickers and keep them at the table, he started drawing up a business plan for their hotel. “Right at the top of the paper, I had written the cost of a child. It was sickening,” he says. “But it worked. By the end, they were arguing over who would get what percentage.”
Finally, 30 Colombian agents hit the beach and stormed the house.
One of the hardest parts for the undercover operatives is resisting the urge to comfort the children. Instead, they allow the children to believe they are pedophiles to maintain the integrity of the mission.
“When the takedown happens, we’re arrested along with the bad guys so we don’t blow our cover,” says Osborne.
In this instance, however, someone outside the team told the children that the operatives were the good guys, and as Ballard’s team left the island, they could hear the children cheering and singing and laughing. “It was very emotional,” says Osborne.
“There were Navy Seals in tears. It was a tender mercy that the Lord allowed Tim to have this connection with these kids on his last undercover mission.” (Ballard and Turley have since chosen to end their undercover work so they can bring more awareness to the public about modern-day slavery and raise donations for Operation Underground Railroad, but they are still deeply involved behind the scenes of each rescue mission.)
Three months after Operation Triple Take, Ballard returned to the streets of Colombia and began asking local traffickers if they could sell him a child for the night. “They told me, ‘Don’t you know? No one is going to sell you kids now. It’s too dangerous.’ We created a huge deterrent for the traffickers and scared off the sex tourism travelers,” he explains. “We rocked the whole country.”
Since October, Colombia has completed five operations of their own—and that is exactly what Operation Underground Railroad hopes every country will do. “Our goal is to work with these governments, teach them what they need to know, and show them that they can do this so they can have the confidence to do this without us,” says Turley. “We can’t save everyone, but as more countries join in the fight, we can make a huge difference.”
A Life of Freedom
The rescue missions don’t end at the arrests of the traffickers; a great deal of care is given to the children after they are freed.
“The most important part of the operation is the rehabilitation of the children,” says Osborne. “We partner with organizations who are skilled at that, and we screen reputable orphanages ahead of time, so when children are rescued they have somewhere safe to go. Unfortunately in many cases, family members are the ones who have sold these children into slavery, so they can’t go home. We want to keep the safety net as tight as possible so the victims never return to that way of life.”
“Every child is precious,” he says. “We can’t solve this problem overnight, but by just saving one child, we can give them back the life that God intended for them.”
As for the tiny brother and sister Ballard “purchased” in Haiti last February, the children’s parents couldn’t be located or identified. Ballard, who bonded with the siblings during the sting, couldn’t bear to leave them behind, so he and his wife are in the process of adopting them.
“They are already part of our family,” he says.
A Beacon for Change
In addition to executing rescue missions around the world, Ballard’s team is developing software that will track child pornography and lead law enforcement to the pornographers.
“The problem of child sex slavery is 100 percent the societal consequence of our pornographic world,” Ballard explains. “Pornography is a drug. Adult pornography is marijuana, and child pornography is the cocaine. When people move on to child pornography, eventually they want the real thing. This software will change everything.”
To date, Operation Underground Railroad has conducted rescue missions in Haiti, Guatemala, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Thailand, and the United States, but according to Ballard, this is just the beginning.
“We have been getting requests from governments all over the world,” he says. “We have several cases pending, and we never know when we’ll have to jump on a plane. It could be tomorrow. But my wife doesn’t even complain—she knows this is what we are meant to do.”
“The only thing that stands between evil taking over this world is good people who face their fears and take action,” says Mark. “People who do nothing allow evil to flourish. I can’t sit back and allow atrocities to happen. I’m not going to allow my fear to stop me from doing what is right.”
To donate to Operation Underground Railroad or learn more about the organization, visit ourrescue.org.
The Abolitionists
When Gerald Molen, Church member and Academy Award–winning producer of Schindler’s List, learned of Timothy Ballard’s efforts to rescue children from sex traffickers, he knew he had to capture the story for the big screen.
“We want to create awareness of this problem. I’m excited to help in the little way that I can,” he says.
With hidden cameras rolling on every Operation Underground Railroad mission, Molen’s film crew captured powerful footage of the operations that not only makes for a compelling documentary but provides irrefutable evidence that leads to the conviction of child traffickers.
“The footage we shoot becomes an evidence package to help prosecute criminals,” says co-producer and director Darrin Fletcher.
“There’s no doubt when the judge sees that evidence. It seals the deal.”
“We’ve felt a hand on our shoulder guiding us the entire time,” says Chet Thomas, co-producer and director. “There’s a reason for this beyond a movie or a television series.”
Timothy Ballard is the founder and CEO of Operation Underground Railroad. He is also the author of the best-selling book The Lincoln Hypothesis and the new book, The Washington Hypothesis. He will be a speaker at certain Time Out for Women events in 2016. Visit tofw.com to learn more.
Published on Jan 3, 2015
On December 10th, 2013 Special Agent Tim Ballard turned in his Homeland Security badge and resigned from his employment with the United States government. He had spent over a decade rescuing children from child sex tourism both domestically and overseas. Though his job was difficult, he was proud that his country was one of very few in the world who was actually doing anything about this problem. However, mired in red tape and bureaucracy, Tim left to begin saving the children that he saw falling out of the purview of the US government. These children constitute over 90% of the children lost to child sex slavery and he could do nothing to help them while in the employment of the US government.
This is a story about the lost children and the OURrescue.com jump team’s exploits as they investigate and liberate enslaved children from around the world.
A screenshot from a handout video made available Thursday by Syrian activist group Aleppo Media Center shows a 5-year-old boy with a bloodied face sitting in an ambulance after a house was destroyed in an airstrike Wednesday night in Aleppo, Syria.
BEIRUT
The Russian military said Thursday it was ready to back a U.N. call for weekly cease-fires for Syria’s contested city of Aleppo, as haunting footage of a young boy’s rescue from the aftermath of an airstrike shook global media.
The image of the stunned and weary-looking boy, sitting in an ambulance caked with dust and with blood on his face, captured the horror that has beset the war-torn northern city as photographs of the child were widely shared on social media.
An hour after his rescue, the badly damaged building the boy was in collapsed.
A doctor in Aleppo identified the child as 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh. He was brought to the hospital, known as “M10,” on Wednesday night, following an airstrike by Russian or government warplanes on the rebel-held neighborhood of Qaterji, said Dr. Osama Abu al-Ezz. The boy suffered head wounds but no brain injury and was later discharged.
“We were passing them from one balcony to the other,” said photojournalist Mahmoud Raslan, who took the dramatic photo. He said he had passed along three lifeless bodies when someone handed him the wounded boy. Raslan gave the child to a rescue worker, who rushed him to the ambulance.
Eight people died in the strike, including five children, according to a doctor who gave only his first name, Abo Mohammadian.
The fighting has frustrated the U.N.’s efforts to fulfill its humanitarian mandate, and the world body’s special envoy to Syria cut short a meeting Thursday of the ad hoc committee – chaired by Russia and the United States – tasked with deescalating the violence so that relief can reach beleaguered civilians.
The U.N. envoy, Staffan de Mistura, said there was “no sense” in holding the meeting in light of the obstacles to delivering aid. The U.N. is hoping to secure a weekly 48-hour pause to the fighting in Aleppo.
Later Thursday, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Russia would back the initiative on condition the aid convoys travel to both rebel-controlled and government-held parts of the city. He said Russia was ready to support deliveries starting next week.
A nurse who treated Omran said “he was in a daze.”
“It was as if he was asleep. Not unconscious, but traumatized – lost,” said Mahmoud Abu Rajab.
Medical workers feared internal injuries, but an X-ray and an ultrasound revealed his wounds were superficial. Abu Rajab stitched up the child and wrapped his forehead and left eye in a bandage.
Omran’s three siblings, ages 1, 6, and 11, and his mother and father were also rescued from the building. None sustained major injuries.
“We sent the younger children immediately to the ambulance, but the 11-year-old girl waited for her mother to be rescued,” said Raslan, adding that the woman’s ankle was pinned beneath the rubble.
In the video posted late Wednesday by the Aleppo Media Center, a man was seen carrying Omran away from the chaotic nighttime scene and into an ambulance. Looking dazed, the boy ran his hands over his blood-covered face, then wiped them on the orange ambulance chair.
The powerful imagery reverberated across social media, drawing to mind the anguished global response to the photos of Aylan Kurdi, the drowned Syrian boy whose body was found on a beach in Turkey and came to represent the horrific toll of Syria’s civil war.
Such scenes are commonplace in Aleppo, where 233 civilians were killed in indiscriminate exchanges of fire between rebels and government forces in the first two weeks of August alone, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.
“It’s taxing, emotionally,” said Abu Rajad. Doctors in Aleppo use code names for hospitals, which they say have been systematically targeted by government airstrikes. “We are afraid security forces will infiltrate our medical network and target ambulances as they transfer patients from one hospital to another,” Abu al-Ezz said.
The Story Continues in the Sunday, August 21, 2016 Newpaper:
Brother of Aleppo boy in photo dies
— THE WASHINGTON POST
The rescue of 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh, pulled from the rubble of his bombed-out Aleppo, Syria, home Wednesday, dominated media coverage of the wartorn country.
Less widely shared was the story’s devastating postscript. On Saturday, activists said, Omran’s 10-year-old brother, Ali, died from wounds sustained in the same air-strike, launched by forces allied to the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“Omran became the ‘global symbol of Aleppo’s suffering’ but to most people he is just that – a symbol,” wrote Kenan Rahmani, a Syrian activist based in Washington. “Ali is the reality: that no story in Syria has a happy ending.”
