My uncle is a senior executive at a large international retail company. This role has kept him constantly on the move, visiting new cities and countries and flying more than most people do in a lifetime.
He has closely followed my journey with HOPE61, and I think it has changed the way he sees the world more than he realizes.
Earlier this year, he was on a flight in Canada when he noticed a man in his mid-50s sitting next to an African woman in her mid-20s. The seating arrangement was what caught his attention first. The man kept trading seats with other passengers, methodically and patiently, until he had maneuvered the woman into the window seat, with himself in the middle. It was deliberate. Once he had her there, he did not relax. If anything, he grew more tense.
My uncle watched him. The man was nervous in a way that had nothing to do with flying. It was the kind of nervousness that comes from managing a situation, not from being in it. And the woman never spoke. She never made eye contact with anyone around her. She kept her eyes on the window and stayed completely still.
My uncle trusted what he saw. He got up, found a flight attendant, and told him what he had noticed. Initially, the flight attendant was reluctant. There was no hard evidence, nothing he could point to that would hold up on its own. But my uncle was calm, clear, and persistent. He was not asking for much. Just have someone at the gate assess the situation when the plane landed. He gave the flight attendant his number and went back to his seat.
After the plane landed and passengers began to file out, he kept watching. The man guided the woman off the aircraft in a way that looked casual but was not. He stayed close, keeping her moving. She went into a restroom near the gate, and the man stopped just outside the door. He appeared to be standing guard, not merely waiting.
A short time later, my uncle saw security approach the man. He did not stay to watch what unfolded and went on to his next gate.
About 20 minutes later, his phone buzzed. It was the flight attendant. The message said it looked like the woman had been trafficked.
My uncle had never been trained to spot trafficking. He had not been looking for it. He was just a man on a routine work trip who decided to pay attention and then to act on what he saw, even though the first person he told was not sure it was worth pursuing.
I think about the fact that he has been watching my work with HOPE61 all this time. He has never made a big deal of it. But something he heard stuck with him. A way of seeing people, really seeing them, that he did not have before. And on that flight, it mattered in the most concrete way possible.
Somewhere out there is a young woman who got to walk through a different door that day.
This is exactly why HOPE61 exists. Not just to train pastors and church leaders, but to change how people see the world around them. Awareness spreads. It moves from a training room into a conversation, from a conversation into a family, and from a family onto a flight, where a man who has never taken a class decides to trust what he sees and speak up.
That is the power of awareness. When we know what to look for, we begin to notice what we hadn’t before. And when we see it, we have a choice. We can look away, tell ourselves it is probably nothing, and keep walking. Or we can do what my uncle did. We can trust what we see, speak up, and let someone else take it from there.
If this story stirred something in you, we would love to connect. HOPE61 trains churches and believers to prevent human trafficking. Visit us at hope61.org to learn more about how you can be part of the solution.
