Building God’s Kingdom on a Day-to-Day Basis

Jon Kakaley got involved serving at Restore NYC, an organization that identifies sex trafficking victims and provides services for adult female foreign national survivors, when several of his friends at Apostles Union Square had a desire to get their community more involved in serving.

The first time they did an event with Restore, the plan was to take a small group to clean their safe home. Jon says he didn’t expect more than seven or eight volunteers to show up. Instead, 22 people showed up and they actually had to turn people away from volunteering that day. Talk about an outpouring of support!

“It was very encouraging,” Jon says. “And I could clearly see God’s hand in this.”

Jon told us that he sees the work he and his friends do with Restore as a way of fighting against the objectification of others that we all—if we’re being honest with ourselves—have been guilty of projected onto others at times.

“I think that the objectification of human beings is one of the great wrongs that exists in the world, and at the core of that is the same sentiment that's behind human trafficking,” Jon says. “Objectification (in a general sense) is responsible for a lot of the hurt that people feel.”

Through volunteering at Restore, Jon has seen firsthand that this sort of thing is not a far-removed problem that only exists in Third World Countries. Rather, it’s right here in our backyard. And we have a responsibility to take action and do something about it.

When we asked what Jon’s learned from being involved at Restore, he told us this:

“Building God's kingdom is not some lofty, philosophical goal that's accomplished by going to church once a week. It's built with actual work on a day-to-day basis.”

Click here to get involved serving with victims of sex trafficking through Restore NYC.