by Barb Roose | Apr 10, 2017 | Better Together Podcast
My first exposure to human trafficking came in 2010 when I walked by a wooden shipping crate and saw a young girl huddled inside. She was tucked into a corner of the small crate wearing a t-shirt and pair of shorts. Her head tucked into her knees with long, dark hair covering her face.
How did a human being get shoved into a wooden box? How was that possible?
Luckily, the young woman in the box was an exhibit at our church women’s conference. Every half hour or so she was free to stand and stretch her legs. At the end of the night, she packed up her display and drove home.
But millions of humans around the world aren’t free to go home.
Over the past few years, a lot of attention has been directed toward human trafficking. One of the things that I fear is that we think that talking about the horrors of human trafficking is the same as actually doing something about it. Even as I type these words, I’m feeling the pressure of the question, “Barb, what are you going to do about it?”
My freedom means that I’m often too busy to consider someone’s desperate slavery.
In part 2 of my Better Together episode with Merrie Karimov, she talks about human trafficking in her hometown Orlando, which ranks #3 in Florida for human trafficking. However, we know that forced slavery occurs in every community, including yours.
Merrie’s interview walks you step-by-step through how you can get involved with human trafficking, but here’s a summary of what we should know:
1. Make sure that you are educating yourself about what’s happening in your local community.
2. Find out which human trafficking organizations are already doing the work and partner with them – you don’t need to start something.
3. Remember that we are not the savior of the survivor. God doesn’t need us to fix them, just love them in a responsible and sacrificial way.
RESOURCES:
Fight4Freedom at Discovery Church (Orlando)
Harbour Hope International
US State Department Report on Human Trafflicking (2016)
About Merrie…
I am passionate about life, love God and love people. I am the wife of a “Rusky” (Russian), mother of twins AND one adorable big brother. I am a daughter, sister, friend and all around adventurer at heart. I am candid and creative and live to cultivate, invest in, develop, & mobilize others. I believe that inside every person is a hidden treasure waiting to be discovered, developed & encouraged.
Connect with Merrie via email at merrie@harbourhope.com.
by Barb Roose | Apr 3, 2017 | Better Together Podcast
Do you find it hard to say “no” when someone asks you to do something that you don’t want to do?
Do you feel a driving need to keep the peace, even if it means that you have to stuff your real feelings and keep silent?
For many women, being a people-pleaser is a survival skill that we picked up during our younger years. Maybe we wanted to earn the approval of our parents or boyfriend or we wanted certain kids to like us. No matter our motivation, the driving need to be liked or accepted is something that we’ve all had to deal with at one time or another.
Today’s guest, Merrie Karimov, shares her story of growing up as a people-pleaser. She’ll tell us about how a powerful daily encounter with God helped her break free from living for other’s approval in order to live for God’s approval alone.
Merrie will also tell us about how finding her identity in Christ gave her the courage and confidence to say “yes” to some incredible God-driven opportunities, like moving to Russia when she was 20 years old.
If you’ve struggled with people-pleasing or you want to be inspired by someone who said “yes” to God in a HUGE way, you’ll enjoy part one of my conversation with Merrie Karimov.
Make sure to join me next week for part two of my conversation with Merrie. She’ll tell us about Fight4Freedom and her women’s ministry’s mission to restore dignity and value to human trafficking victims one at a time. You won’t want to miss this!
BONUS!
I’ve developed a free download for you! Like Merrie, we need to live God’s approval and not humans. So, this free sheet includes several verses that we can say to ourselves each day to help us focus on our identity as God’s children rather than trying to get people to like us. CLICK HERE to download.
About Merrie…
I am passionate about life, love God and love people. I am the wife of a “Rusky” (Russian), mother of twins AND one adorable big brother. I am a daughter, sister, friend and all around adventurer at heart. I am candid and creative and live to cultivate, invest in, develop, & mobilize others. I believe that inside every person is a hidden treasure waiting to be discovered, developed & encouraged.
Connect with Merrie via email at merrie@harbourhope.com.
by Barb Roose | Mar 27, 2017 | Better Together Podcast
How often do you find yourself scrambling to put together dinner? Are you tired of relying on pizza or grocery store rotisserie chickens to bail you out when there’s nothing thawed in the fridge?
A few years ago, I was lucky enough to latch onto a group of women interested in transforming their families’ dinner time experience. Once a month, we’d spend 3-4 hours preparing 10-12 delicious freezer meals in our individual homes. Then, we’d meet at a designated location and exchange our meals with each other in a 15-20 minute “meal swap.”
I’d drive home a cooler filled with entrees and side dishes, all prepped and ready to hang out in my freezer until I thawed it for dinner. We enjoyed meals like dijon pork loin with Israeli couscous, Monster Meatballs, Chicken Enchiladas with salsa rojo, chicken fajitas with all of fixings, Million Dollar Spaghetti and so much more!
Not only did our family enjoy great dinners without the epic mom-meltdown, but our meal swap group also discovered how our meals would make a difference.
In this Part 2 episode with Laura Bell and Alison Frye, we’ll share more stories about our meal swap experience and how we used meal swap to bless our neighbors, friends, people at church and even families overseas.
FREE BONUS!
Would you like to host a meal swap group in your neighborhood or at your church?
Download the first 12 pages of our cookbook, Never Make Just One. We provide step-by-step instructions so that you can successfully set up and launch your own meal swap group. Give it a try! Click here to download the free sample. We’ve included a sample recipe for you to try!
WANT TO BUY THE ENTIRE COOKBOOK? Here’s a link to the entire cookbook. You can purchase it for $5.00. All of the proceeds will benefit mothers and children served by our Moms on Mission team traveling to Honduras this summer.
SHARE YOUR FAVORITE DINNER WITH US! What’s your favorite dinner time meal? Tell us about it in the comments.
by Barb Roose | Mar 20, 2017 | Better Together Podcast
Mom, what’s for dinner?
Ahhh, the daily question that haunts mothers all across America. It’s well-known that 4pm-7pm is a mother’s least favorite time of day. Between after-school or daycare pick-up, sports practices or music lessons and figuring out homework, tired mamas often dread tackling dinner time preparation. As much as we’d love a hearty, healthy homecooked meal, what we want more is someone to make it for us!
But, what if you could enjoy a great home cooked meal with your family without all of the dinnertime craziness?
On today’s Better Together podcast, we’re going to talk about something that revolutionized dinner at my house. In fact, if I’d found out about this 20 years ago, our family would have eaten at home much more often and I would have cried a lot less!
Join me and my friends, Laura Bell and Alison Frye as we talk about meal swapping. This concept began as an experiment, but soon, it changed our lifestyles and transformed our families’ dinner time experience.
This two-part episode also includes a great bonus! You can download the first 12-pages of our cookbook, Never Make Just One. You’ll get all of the details on how to begin a meal swap group in your community, plus we include one of Laura’s recipes from the cookbook.
SPECIAL OFFER! If you’d like to purchase the entire Never Make Just One cookbook for $5.00, 100% of the proceeds will go toward helping moms and babies in Latin America when our Moms on Mission group heads to Honduras this summer.
BONUS RESOURCES
Click here to download the first 12 pages of the meal swap cookbook (free)
Click here to purchase the Never Make Just One cookbook for $5.00. (You’ll receive it via email. This is a digital download. There are no hard copies available.)
Check out this episode!
by Barb Roose | Mar 6, 2017 | Better Together Podcast
Have you been praying for something for a long time? Maybe you’ve been praying for:
…healing in your marriage or for a marriage proposal;
…healing from cancer or another disease;
…the restoration of a broken relationship;
…a pregnancy or solution to infertility; or
…a loved one’s salvation or freedom from an addiction.
Whenever we pray, we do so with the expectation that God will answer our prayer at some point in some way. But, what do we do when it seems like God isn’t doing anything at all?
Speaker and author, Marlo Schalesky grappled with this question during her 20-year battle with infertility. Her story is more than just trying to get pregnant. Marlo’s story is about her fight for faith while learning to wait on God.
During this new episode of the Better Together Podcast, Marlo and I discuss what she’s learned about waiting on God when the waiting gets hard. We talk about her new book, Waiting for Wonder and what we can learn from Abraham’s wife, Sarah’s long wait for baby. gritty conversation is a no-hold bars honest reflection on how God can handle our heartache while we wait for His divine purposes to be fulfilled in our lives.
Our candid conversation is a no-holds-barred, honest reflection on how God can handle our heartache while we wait for His divine purposes to be fulfilled in our lives. After you listen, please take a moment and share a comment about the broadcast. I’d love to hear from you.
One more thing…if you know of a woman who’s been struggling with waiting on God, especially a woman struggling with infertility, share this podcast privately with her.
TODAY’S SHOW RESOURCES:
Marlo’s Website
Marlo’s Book – Waiting for Wonder
Marlo Schalesky is an award-winning author of 10 books, including both fiction and non-fiction. Her novels have garnered the high honors of the Christy Award and ACFW Book of the Year. Schalesky’s non-fiction releases include Wrestling with Wonder: A Transformational Journey through the Life of Mary (Zondervan) and the latest, Waiting for Wonder: Learning to Live on God’s Timetable (Abingdon Press).
More than 1,000 of Schalesky’s articles have been published in various Christian magazines, including Focus on the Family, Today’s Christian Woman and In Touch. She has contributed devotional books for couples and children. She is a speaker and regular columnist for David C Cook’s Power for Living.
Schalesky is a graduate of Stanford University and has earned her Master’s in Theology, with an emphasis in Biblical Studies, from Fuller Theological Seminary. She is the founder and president of Wonder Wood Ranch, a California charitable organization bringing hope to a hurting community through horses.
Schalesky lives with her husband, six children and a crazy number of animals at her log-home ranch on California’s central coast.
In part 2 of my Better Together episode with Merrie Karimov, she talks about human trafficking in her hometown Orlando, which ranks #3 in Florida for human trafficking. However, we know that forced slavery occurs in every community, including yours.
