We're happy to have Precarious Yates with us talking about her new book "The Elite of the Weak." She's on our sister blog at www.zoe-mack.blogspot.com. Please leave a comment there with your email address for your chance to win. Thanks!
Tell me about The Elite of the Weak
The Elite of the Weak is set in the near future, when Babylon is rebuilt over the ancient ruins, odd political alliances are forged and strong earthquakes occur in strange places.
Trained to do covert missions from a young age, Hadassah enjoys few things more than thrills, whether it’s jumping out of an airplane, a high speed chase after a Somali pirate or crawling through the air ducts in a mafia-owned warehouse. But nothing is more thrilling than rescuing kids from human trafficking. The only thing is, she might do better on a team than on her own.
Enter Revelation Special Ops and their unique short-term mission trips. This elite group of people, R.S.O., is trained to rescue kids from the darkest forms of human trafficking. And they may just be willing to take seventeen year old Hadassah on board.
Why did you write about human trafficking?
In the summer of 2010 I knew I needed to start writing again, but I didn’t want to write about just anything. I had spent almost two years in intense study of the book of Revelation, so I knew my book would have an End Times theme. Also, by that time I had spent ten years raising awareness about the horrors of human trafficking throughout the world, and this theme snuck into everything I wrote anyway. But I took three days where I asked God what He wanted me to write about. That’s when the idea came to me for Revelation Special Ops.
We all agree that kids should not be trafficked. It’s just plain wrong on so many levels. But I prayfully wondered: will there be people trying to rescue these kids when the world as we know it starts to fall apart? It was from that question that I started writing the first book of Revelation Special Ops, The Elite of the Weak, during the 2010 NaNoWriMo. I was so inspired by the character of Hadassah that I wrote over 62,000 words in a month—by hand. I hope she inspires others too.
What inspired you to become an abolitionist?
Eleven years ago, I took a summer job working for a company that did electronic funds transfers for non-profit organizations. You’d think a job like this would be mundane, but my boss, a former Navy Seal, was anything but mundane. He’d spent four months in early 2000 filming a documentary about forced prostitution in Eastern Europe. So my job title went from passive receptionist to an active abolitionist. I was asked to help put the presentation together, pooling articles about human trafficking from a dozen or more news sources. I learned later that my boss took this presentation to the Vatican when he had an audience with the Pope and other Vatican staff.
Once I learned about what happened to girls and women around the globe, I couldn’t be silent about it any more.
Does human trafficking only happen overseas?
There are over 100,000 kids caught in human trafficking in the USA. As many as 95% of those trafficked have been in foster care.
What are some practical steps a teen abolitionist can take?
(1) First of, get close to God. He is the great Emancipator and the great Abolitionist. A friend of mine said recently, “In Exodus 2, Moses was an activist and a revolutionary. But in Exodus 3 he became a prophet and a deliverer. That’s what... an encounter with God will do to you.”
(2) Allow the Lord to soften your heart toward those who are oppressed. It’s easy to feel compassion when they are far away, not so much sometimes when they are up close.
(3) Prayerfully, and with your parents’ full knowledge and support, befriend someone who may be on the brink. Many kids in terrible circumstances will be more likely to tell a friend they were propositioned by a pimp. Love, advice and help from peers can lead kids on the brink toward positive choices. But tell your parents and direct this friend toward the guidance counselors at school or your youth pastor. Remember that you are powerful in this person’s life (even when they mock you), but you also can’t and shouldn’t do this on your own.
(4) Get involved with organizations that work to end trafficking. Here’s a link http://precariousyates.wordpress.com/links to a list of them .
(5) Start a prayer meeting, or bring it up as a topic in your next prayer meeting.
(6) Tell friends about the issue, or tell them about books, news articles, organizations, etc.
(7) Hope in the Lord always. With God all things are possible, including a world without slavery.
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