GOODlife Magazine January 2017

Imagine that one day while at home, an emergency broadcast was released saying that there was a deadly virus
sweeping across the nation, and it was in your town, in your schools, at all the big sporting events. But everyone
chose to ignore it and go about their lives as usual because they had yet to see anyone get sick, or they didn’t feel sick
themselves. However, the news reports confirmed that not only was this deadly virus in your town, but so was the
cure. Would you seek out the cure, or would you choose to overlook it like everyone else until it directly touched your
life? What if you or someone in your family got sick, and you could no longer get the cure yourself, but your neighbor
could? What if they chose to do nothing, leaving you with no options and no
hope?
I have a message for you: this scenario is real. No, it is not a viral epidemic, but
rather an atrocity against the lives of countless people right around us. And you
have the ability to help save them.
We sat down with Susan Norris, an international speaker on the topic of Sex
Trafficking and Founder/ Executive Director of Rescuing Hope, as she brought to
light the abomination of sex trafficking right here in our area. Our prayer here at
GoodLife magazine is that this article will help you become aware of the reality
of the epidemic among us today and become equipped with practical knowledge
of how you can, literally, save the lives of the people around you. We cannot allow
this evil to continue unchallenged. In the words of Edmund Burke, “The only
thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
“Every two minutes, evil strips innocence from a child and sells her into slavery
for sex. Not in a third-world country, but in the United States of America.” This
staggering, and near incomprehensible, fact is the reality that Susan works daily to fight against. Susan entered into
the battle against sex trafficking with the question “Where’s the weak link?” knowing that no matter if it’s a cause, a
business, a church, or a family, there are always areas that need work. She quickly realized that there is a severe lack of
awareness that this is a local issue, as well as a national one. “No one knows it’s happening here; not just in the U.S., and
not just in the inner cities. There’s not a county in Georgia that this isn’t being reported in.” So God not only led Susan
to write the book “Rescuing Hope,” but has also chosen to use her as a voice of hope to reach the hearts of all and to
continue to inform and equip the nation to jump into the fight against this atrocity in our midst.
The sobering reality is that this sex trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry, and those who benefit from it desire
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