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By Brian Bates
JohnTV.com

11/19/2012 – Edmond, OK — An Edmond based non-profit targeting devastated communities internationally and prostitution and sex-trafficking locally held its second annual fundraiser earlier (last) month and raised significant funds to further their efforts globally.
JohnTV has reported many times on the local efforts by No Boundaries International to positively impact communities and individuals victimized by the sex trade, addiction and poverty in Oklahoma City.
In the year that No Boundaries has targeted south Oklahoma City, and specifically the South Robinson Ave. area, the organization has held a family friendly block party, free medical clinics, kids days, adopt-a-block activities, Jazz Concert benefit, a Fall Festival and Halloween Pics-and-Treats event, tree dedications for lives lost to prostitution, officiated a funeral for a young mother and street prostitute, conducts weekly street outreach, hosts weekly prayer meetings, organized local flier distribution for a missing & endangered teen, purchased a ministry outreach home near SW 42 and S. Robinson and so much more.
Many of the successes of No Boundaries International can be found on their YouTube channel (NoBoundariesOKC) and their new (updated) website. For more information, go to www.nbint.org or www.projecthopeokc.org.

Thanks Brian for that perspective!

Now comes the challenging part of building a community center! We need your help! If you, your family, your group or your business could donate or fund, in part or in full, any of the following items, NBI would be SO grateful and you would be touching the hundreds of lives that the community center will be serving!

We need the following:
~funding for internet and phone service
~a complete commercial kitchen (all appliances)
~volunteers to help with painting
~new or used laptops (no more than 4 years old…)
~2 flat screen TVs
~24 channel sound board
~100 foot snake
~microphones, cables and mic stands
~PA style speakers
~monitors
~new or used event tents (type used in wedding receptions, etc…)

All items would be tax deductible.
Since NBI will not take possession of the firehouse until after Jan. 1st, we would not be able to receive the items until that time or after. (If you contact us about the donation prior to Dec 31, the tax deduction would still be for 2012.)

If you have any questions, feel free to call us at 513-5453 or email us at info@nbint.org

Thanks for being a part of this exciting venture with us! Please pass this on to your friends!

As a beautiful, young woman, she was living with her sister in a large town in northwestern Texas. And then she met “him”. He told her that he loved her and she drank in the attention that he gave her. Consequently, she dove headlong into his world of partying and drugs.

Her sister recognized the reality of what was going on and told her not to get involved with him. But excitement and “love” won out over family concerns.

The couple quickly became an item and she gave herself exclusively to him. The partying continued and he convinced her to come with him to Oklahoma City to visit friends for more fun and more drugs. 

But the short drive to OKC ended up in a nightmare for her. Upon arrival here, he announced that they had no more money for a hotel room and their only alternative was for her to “work on Robinson” to make some quick cash. It certainly wasn’t what she thought would happen so she hesitated. The “boyfriend” saw the hesitation, got angry and beat her badly. As she covered her face, fear and shock set in. Reluctantly she gave in-after all, she thought, “what choice do I have?”

So with the boyfriend-turned-pimp parked nearby in a hidden car, she anxiously stood on Robinson street with other prostituted women and sold herself to strange men she didn’t know—all because of a dream of love gone bad.

After several days and weeks, she woke up in a cheap hotel room with her “pimp” laying next to her and realized—it’s Thanksgiving day: a day meant for being with family, enjoying each other and what God had given them. Getting beat up every day, being forced to do things she didn’t want to do and selling herself to strange men on Robinson certainly didn’t fit into her definition of Thanksgiving.

Then boyfriend/pimp woke up and announced that he was making “dates” for her later that night—meaning that he was making appointments with paying clients who would come to the hotel to have sex with her. Two men were already booked.

She refused and cried out to go home-home to her sister and the family she loved. The minutes crawled by as he beat her severely.

It was the last straw.

Upset and racked by fear, she waited hours in the corner until he took his drugs of choice and went back to a drug-induced sleep. Then she saw her opportunity and quickly slipped out the hotel door. Looking over her shoulder, she ran down the long hall to the elevator and frantically pushed the button over and over, as if the elevator could feel the panic in her fingers. The elevator responded by giving a “Ding!” back to her. It had arrived.

The elevator door opened as she heard the sound that she dreaded—the creak of the door opening and out he came yelling and stumbling with a wild look on his face. An elderly couple inside the elevator stood open-mouthed at the scene unfolding before them. Trembling, she threw herself into the elevator and into the stranger’s arms. All three adults frantically pushed the “close” button.

They ran out the hotel to the couple’s car where they locked the door, drove to a safe location and listened to her story. She cried as she told it. After a moment of consideration, they dropped her off at the Oklahoma City bus station with the assumption that her family would pay for the bus ticket home. They assumed wrong.

“Mary” called her family at that early morning hour and pleaded with them to send her money. After some discussion, they denied her request, not wanting to contribute to her drug usage and unsure of whether to trust her. She was deeply disappointed as she hung up the phone.

Not knowing what else to do, she contacted a local OKC ministry who referred her to a No Boundaries International outreach worker. As she sat in the bus station, she called the number and told her story to the woman who answered. The NBI staff person immediately sensed her distress and offered to first pray for her before any decisions were made. Mary pushed away the prayer but the NBI staffer persisted and prayed anyway. After more discussion, the outreach worker quickly told her she would see what she could do and would call her back.

The minutes ticked by as Mary sat in the bus station. Suddenly, the elderly couple who first helped her busted through the front door, scanning the room for Mary. The gray haired woman said, “ As we were driving further and further from the bus station, I felt like Someone told me to come back here and pay for your bus ticket back home. Is that OK?”

“Mary” cried in desperate relief. After the kind couple purchased the $55 ticket and placed it in her hands, she called the NBI worker back and proclaimed, “It’s all because of your prayers! Thank you so much!”

The young girl then boarded the bus and went home to her family, leaving behind her nightmare on Robinson.

A few days later, the group leader called No Boundaries and arranged for a time to meet up with Amanda Davis, NBI’s Children and Youth Outreach Director, to go toy shopping at Dollar Tree. Little did we know just how much this determined group of 12 actually raised. It shocked us all! They raised over $2500 cash in their efforts!

So off they went to Dollar Tree, picking and choosing gifts for all ages, both boys and girls! In the end, over 20 bags of toys were given by the group, with hopes for more in the coming days!

No Boundaries is so thankful and appreciative of groups like “Leaders of Tomorrow”–without their efforts, Operation Christmas Shoebox wouldn’t bring joy to those little kids lives!

“The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.” –Diogenes

These are the words engraved on the walls of a school that lies directly in the South Robinson community in Oklahoma City. But what has become of this community since its construction in 1928? Have these words, etched in beautiful, 3 story stone, with its castle like walls, become just another piece of history, faded and buried into the bricks with memories of what once was?

As a school day ends, teenagers leave this very building and make their way home as they walk the streets of S. Robinson. Teen girls get propositioned by “Johns” in their cars and young girls pass by prostituted women who walk the same streets. Drug paraphernalia, used condoms and sex plague the streets among these children and no one seems to notice… not even the children.

It’s normal to them. It’s home. Desensitized to the acts of violence, sirens, gunshots, and death, what kind of foundation stands under their feet? What kind of education leads to the deterioration of a community? Is it the same type of education that Diogenes was speaking of? Maybe not…look closer.

Among some of the children that share these streets with pimps and sexual predators, are children of the prostituted women who walk them. What happens to these children who grow up in a world where they know nothing other than what’s “normal” to them? How can a society shamelessly judge and hold accountable when they turn their heads to the education being instilled in their youth on these streets they call home?

Multiple pregnant prostituted women walk these streets today. Where did those women come from? What led them down those paths? Did they grow up, desensitized in the same way these children are today in the South Robinson community? Did they grow up in a world that was the only kind of normal they know? What kind of world will their babies grow up in when they’re born?

Will they grow up in foster care? Drug addicted babies taken from birth and placed into the system… taken from it’s mother because she can’t even help herself… babies who most people don’t want to adopt because they have severe physical or mental disabilities due to being born into addiction… What kind of life lays ahead for a crack baby that no one wants? Is it a lifetime of behavioral disorders, moving from one foster home to the next, never really knowing what a home is?

What about generational cycling? Children whose mother pimp them out at an early age and show them the only way of life they know, ending up full of addictions and selling their own bodies. Currently, a known mother and daughter team of prostituted women on S. Robinson are about to begin their 3rd generation of the cycle. What will happen to the baby of this daughter, whose mother raised her on these streets, neither of them knowing any other way of life? What will this young mom be able to teach her own child? What life experiences will she pass on to her own flesh and blood?

And what about children raised in sex trafficking rings who are left to be cared for by other prostituted women while their moms are trained, forced, and sold into slavery… What kind of life do children live surrounded in a ‘corral’ of enslaved women, among drugs and violence? What kind of future is ahead for the little girls that grow up being educated under the dictatorship of a pimp? What about the boys? What becomes of their view of women?

What about the prostituted women, the mothers, who die on those streets? Killed in cold blood like the disposable waste that society and their pimps see them as? What happens to her children that are left behind in tears without their mother, who saw nothing but everything good in her? Often they are abandoned to their grandparents or given up for adoption because their mother can’t take care of them. Some mothers fear they will lead their child into the same horrible life and hurt them, so they make the choice to give them away because they want their child to have a better chance at life than they ever had.

These are only a few thoughts to ponder on the life of a child of a prostituted woman. They are the children in the shadows, etched into the stone of memories, faded away into the background while society looks the other way and forgets about the stones they once built their foundations on… a society that is desensitized to the normalcy of everyday life for these children. How can you see what you don’t see? You only have to open your eyes.