Last Fall I sat down with Kristin Weis, one of the founders of The Demand Project. She explained that The Demand Project is an organization located in Tulsa, OK, whose mission is, “Fighting to eradicate sex trafficking and the sexual exploitation of children.” They do this through four areas: Prevention, Prosecution, Rescue, and Restoration.

As we talked, she shared her and her husband, Jason’s, God Story of how The Demand Project began. Their story is an amazing journey of God’s provision. Join me this month for Part 1 of their story about how God first prepared and called them to this work…

Tara Cole: Were there ways you saw God preparing you for this ministry beforehand?

Kristin Weis: I did! In the church we were going to, we got involved with Whiz Kids. We were tutors. We also started to work at the Children’s Hospital, and even if we would go in and hold babies all day, we would do that.

Then we did another mission through the church. It was called Lifeboat 14. Lifeboat 14 is named because that is the only lifeboat that came back for the Titanic victims. We had an apartment complex where our church would bring the ministry to the apartment complex.  We rented it out through the church, and we would bring the kiddos in and do Bible studies with them, teach them how to cook, play games, and pick up trash in the neighborhood.

We were trying to change the lives of the people just in that community. I think that’s where our strong sense of changing our own community versus going out and telling the whole world how to live while we’re dying right here came from. I think that’s probably where that was birthed. So in working with kids, we knew that we would do something in this, and Jason and I did all this together.

One thing that is awesome about Jason and I is you don’t always find that spouse who has the other half of your mission. The other half of your calling. It’s interesting how The Demand Project is built because we have the Prevention, Prosecution, Rescue, and Restoration.

We both do the assemblies and the prevention, but then he takes over the prosecution with legislation, the cyber investigation, and the law enforcement. Then I come in with the rescue and restoration part of it. So we’ve broken the organization out to be two-fold. It’s four titles to it, but he’s got a whole half and I’ve got a whole half, and we meet in the middle and do it together. So it’s pretty amazing how God did prepare this.

Tara: I saw where you all had heard the news report in 2004 of a little girl who was abused, and then you picked up your family and moved from Colorado to Oklahoma. Why did you all choose Oklahoma?

Kristin: I know. What a strange place to go to a training ground?

Tara: Yes!

Kristin: When we saw that story, and we believe she was two, and we heard everything that happened, we heard about the thousands of people who watched [the abuse] online. We’re fighters so that just boiled our blood and made us so angry. We didn’t know where to turn, we had no idea what to do, but we knew we needed to do something.

So I was going to see a prayer minister, and I told her that we wanted to figure all this out. She was praying for me, and she could see that there was a lot more to the calling on our lives than what we knew. Her strong, strong suggestion and I say it nice like that, but it really wasn’t a suggestion, it was God saying, “This is what you’re going to do.” She said, “You need to go to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Go to Victory Bible Institute (VBI), and you need to go and get trained up for what you’re about to do because the very thing you’re fighting can destroy you if you’re not careful.” I didn’t really know what she meant at the time because I’m thinking, “Nothing is really going to destroy us that we’re fighting.” But you don’t know how perverted it is and how emotional the fight gets.

Even just driving in today, I was having one of those mornings. I hadn’t even put on my eye makeup yet because I was having one of those mornings. Jason is overwhelmed with cases with predators, and the case doesn’t just start and end after he gets them. Then you’ve got to do all this stuff in the meantime while we’re trying to do all these events, and I’m trying to work with my rescued girls, and it’s just getting to be overwhelming.

And I don’t know why, but I passed by a house in Jenks. I had a really horrible feeling, and I imagined almost the story we had seen [on the news], and it just crushed me. All the way to work I was feeling that empathy for a child starting their day out being raped. You know most of us start our day out by eating breakfast, getting our clothes on our back, putting on our shoes, maybe we’re yelling at the kids to get in the car, “We gotta go!”  But the trauma these kids have to go through every day.

So when she said that I don’t think we quite understood the depth of it.

But then we got to VBI. It was a miracle how it happened. It was right when the housing was plummeting. No houses were selling around that time. We were in a cul-de-sac in a nice neighborhood in Castle Rock, CO, and when we put our house up for sale. Well, let me back up…

When she tells us we need to move to Tulsa, Jason says, “Absolutely, no way, are we moving from Colorado to Oklahoma!”

Tara: Right, it’s the opposite!

Kristin: (laughter) Yeah, totally opposite. My family was in Colorado. My mom had Sjogren’s disease, so she was dying, and we had the only grandchildren in Colorado. So this was not going to go over well.

When she said to go and Jason said, “No.” It took one year from the time she told us to go and for every door to shut on Jason to get him to the breaking point of understanding we needed to go. But in the meantime, we started to do off campus classes through VBI, and it just wasn’t enough. It was awesome to learn the power of the Lord. We were going to church. Jason had never been to church before he met me. So we knew God, but we didn’t have the revelation of the relationship with Jesus.

Tara: I understand.

Kristin: You get that. Very different. So we started to get the revelation as we were with the prayer minister. We started to change churches and go more charismatic and more Holy Spirit led.

After that year, I went back to the prayer minister, and she said, “This is the time for you to go. You need to go home and tell Jason he is to quit his job. You’re going to bear the burden of all the money until you leave. Get all your affairs in order, and you need to go.” I said, “Okay, let’s just stop this right now. That is plenty for me to do. Because now I’ve got to go home and tell him.”

So I go home and sit him down, and I say, “Here’s the deal. The kids can go to school at Victory…” He broke emotionally, and he said, “Let’s go!” So that was that moment where we put the house up for sale. Like I said, no houses were selling, ours sold within a few weeks. From the time we figured out we were going to go, it was six weeks. We had told the family. They thought we were going to ruin the kids. My mom could not believe I was leaving her. We got the house up, came to Tulsa, found a house, enrolled the kids, enrolled ourselves, and we’re here within six weeks. It was huge, and we had been in Colorado for quite some time.

So we ended up going to VBI and trying to dive into what was this trafficking thing is, and that’s where our path began.

 

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If you’d like to learn more about trafficking today and how you can help, please visit their website: TheDemandProject.org. There you will find out more information about trafficking in the US and Oklahoma, and ways you can give and help.

 

*Photo Credit: TheDemandProject.org/about