#and then a player tripped me which sent me flying across the court

[missinghan]

「 what am I // stray kids 」

❖ genre : sci-fi; superpower au; platonic relationship au

❖ word count : 3,9k (bullet points only)

❖ warning : explicit language, most likely ain’t scientifically true at all

❖ summary : superpowers manifest in certain individuals once they hit puberty and naturally, those odd abilities will vanish as soon as adulthood occurs; but how will those teenagers protect themselves from the curiosity of science?

❖ a/n : this isn’t a proper fic since I don’t think I’ll actually write smth decent out of this but I don’t want the idea to rot inside my dungeon either- so yea, bear with me through this character intro post(?)

— bang chan ↠ locating ability-wielders & teleportation

· sometimes when he’s running errands for his parents, chan can feel a distinct ‘zing’ ins his bones if someone else with unusual abilities is nearby and can describe their power perfectly to the t; he ignores it at first but learns to make do with it eventually; can teleport another person with him and also needs to calculate carefully before teleporting because he once ends up in the middle of a freeway instead of school resulting from lack of sleep.

· looks intimidating but is the first to talk to a new kid in class and show them around as he’s president of the school’s student council; smiles and laughs a lot once you get to know him, and is also very caring, reliable.

· he wishes to apply for a music production company after his college graduation but his family turned the idea down almost immediately and sent him to a boarding school in Europe.

· chan starts taking notice in strange things at his new school after the first few weeks; for example: how they unreasonably force students to have a daily health checkup, how their food taste like medicine most of the times, teachers don’t really seem to care about what they’re teaching and some of his classmates mysteriously ‘move away’ whenever security shows up at their dorm in the middle of the night.

· after finding out where they actually are via photos of students being locked up inside cells, arms and legs chained up like domestic animals, injected with odd substances on a daily basis which were taken by an anonymous individual, chan secretly packs his stuff and decides to ditch this so-called boarding school for good.

· he works hard to hide his identity ensuing flying back to his hometown for a solid three weeks and the fact that there are more people cursed with supernatural abilities begins dawning onto him; cutting off contact with his family completely, moving from one crusty apartment to another every month, chan tackles this crazy idea of assembling a group consisted of extraordinary people to give him a hand with creating a safe environment for the ‘gifted’ youths.

— lee minho ↠ collapse

· law major, quite the loner, raised by a single mother; didn’t have much since little but his mother’s love and affection make up for everything.

· looks intimidating, is actually intimidating; the only person he talks to in college is his dance coach, doesn’t like school nor has many friends; his slightest glare is as cold as a wife trying to win custody of her children in court.

· minho can make his surroundings crumble and fall apart with his mind, which shouldn’t be confused with telekinesis since he can’t physically move objects to his will; this deadly power is triggered whenever he’s experiencing extremely negative emotions like fear or anguish and he’s not (still isn’t) very good at getting a hold of it.

· a group of suspicious men shows up at his house one day as he returns home from dance practice; they claim to be an agency looking for up and coming talents but by the way that his mother is staring at the ground nervously with her legs trembling, his institution tells him that something’s off.

· he firmly declines their offer with a stiff “I’m uncertain that I’m the talent you gentlemen are looking for, but you should know that when the cops are here to fill out their reports, I’m gonna be very helpful, as helpful as possible.”

· “what other random merry of fucking misdemeanors are going to pop up once they go through your records? domestic violence? illegal substances and weapons possession? human trafficking?”

· with a gun to her head, his mom scrambles to her knees and begs him to go with them, admitting that she’s already signed the contract; if he follows their orders and agrees to become an experimental subject, she won’t have to worry about any financial problems for the rest of her life.

· in the heat of the moment, they ultimately force him to activate his power for the very first time; as a result, his house collapses, the death of his only family and the group of men following suit.

· “I’m too late.”

· chan manages to find minho under the aftermath, severely injured and is hanging by a string of life so fragile that can only be saved after undergoing a twelve-hour operation at the hospital.

— seo changbin ↠ sound waves manipulation

· a good student, reputable within his social sphere at school, and comes from a pretty well-off family.

· changbin is able to bend and control sound waves to his advantage; whether it’s simply for his musical instruments or moving objects around, he can also use something as minor as his own heartbeat when he’s emotionally unstable; using the ability continuously for too long can give him severe migraines and potentially damage his brain to a degree if he’s not mindful of it.

· he stays up late at night to write and produce his own songs, keeping it a secret from his parents; posts his own songs on a SoundCloud account, or performs even live at a random underground club under the alias SpearB if he has the chance to.

· an organization full of outlaw scientists comes across a video of his performance on the web, analyzing how he can enhance the beat, his vocal cords without the help of any form of technology, and just like that, he easily tops the list of their targets.

· having no choice but to do what they want when those men hold his parents hostage inside his family’s mansion, changbin gets sent to the same boarding school as chan but they’re being observed in different buildings for his power is on the more useful and dangerous side; hence, his classes consist of a smaller amount of students and they are put through checkups more constantly.

· he doesn’t really pay attention to the skepticisms that reek off all over the place as he’s too busy being homesick and studying because he fully believes that the harder he works, the more obediently he acts, the sooner they’ll let him go; all hell breaks loose when those photos are scattered everywhere, from the hallways to the bathrooms; changbin takes advantage in the riot to get himself out of there as quickly as he can possibly run to the airport.

· changbin swears to never trust anyone again until chan and minho find him sleeping inside an abandoned grocery store with a pistol inside his sleeping bag, two daggers concealed in his sleeves at all times.

· “are we seriously going to contain some headass who was this close to blowing my brain out of my head?”

· “huh, funny, last time I checked, you almost smothered me to death under a gigantic block of cement when I was trying to save your life.”

· “who are you guys and how the hell did you get in here? I don’t recall not locking the door.”

— hwang hyunjin ↠ permeation & memory manipulation

· a true theater kid, meaning he knows almost everyone but every single student at school knows him; naturally, becomes the Prince after playing one too many male lead roles because of his godly features; rather well-mannered and diligent though he doesn’t look like it.

· mistaken to be a player by every new batch of freshmen that only ever gets to watch him practicing his lines from afar, swooning tremendously whenever he ties up his hair; always carries a camera around, doesn’t like to have too many friends but if you get close enough, he’s probably the most fun to be around, won’t ever judge your questionable life choices.

· hyunjin’s ability allows him to walk right through walls as well as any other solid matters but it will drain his stamina painstakingly, causing him to run short on breaths after using his power to change his costumes faster between scenes; the thicker the wall is, the more strength it takes for him to pass through completely.

· he can also erase a certain chunk of memory from someone’s mind but he needs to physically touch them; has only used this ability one time to wipe his existence out of a childhood best friend’s mind before moving away from his hometown. 

· his interest in photography sparks the moment his uncle comes back from a business trip and gives him a toy camera, it’s nowhere near the real ones but the ten-year-old hwang hyunjin sure takes it very, very seriously; after a decade or so, he has replaced it with cameras that actually work and developed quite the talent for taking photos of sceneries and people (jisung is his number one victim but he can’t care less as long as he looks decent and that hyunjin won’t save any crack ones to blackmail him).

· suddenly gets a sketchy summer scholarship to a boarding school in London (the same so-called school that Chan and Changbin went to), his mom encourages him to go after looking it up on the internet without knowing the chances of her own son being exploited for twisted science is shockingly high.

· and the culprit who takes those photos during a wandering around school after curfew is none other than hyunjin himself; he knows damn well posting those photos means getting himself into trouble but heck, his conscience forbids him to leave this hell-on-earth place without alerting these innocent people.

· so the night before those photos are spread everywhere, in every corner, every edge of the building, hyunjin smashes his camera completely with a baseball bat and burns the broken bits in the school backyard; he tries getting through those sleep-deprived men in their fifties who aren’t likely paid enough with his ability and flees.

· surprisingly, he comes rushing into his best friend’s house right after his horrendous flights only to find him being surrounded by three mysterious men.

— han jisung ↠ plunder

· the jokester of the class, takes great joy in stressing the living daylights out of his professors with irrational questions that aren’t necessarily relevant to the lesson, procrastinates, and sleeps through lessons like there’s no tomorrow but still keeps that shiny ‘A’ on his report card nonetheless.

· being friends with hyunjin results in occasional admirers here and there for him but he does kinda have his own fandom base after being pulled upstage out of the blue in the middle of last year’s spring music festival, musing him an opportunity to show off his rapping skills; because of that event, he takes writing music more seriously with the stage name J.One.

· if jisung is being honest, he hardly uses his power since it’s basically taking over anyone’s body and mind for a maximum of five seconds meanwhile his own body is immobile; and if any physical effects occur (for example, a basketball hits him on the head spontaneously), he’s obligated to endure that pain for that person until they become conscious of their own body again.

· he’s not a creep, he swears.

· and who knows? what if his body gets kidnapped within those five seconds?

· hyunjin and jisung know about each other’s ability but don’t really discuss nor talk about them because they don’t find walking through walls or temporarily possessing someone’s body cool.

· well, that’s that until chan, minho and changbin show up at his house the same day when hyunjin returns from his summer exchange program with a cut lip and bruised knuckles. 

· “han jisung, you’re going to have to come with us unless you want to live inside a cage for the rest of your life.”

· “I’m sorry, are you threatening me?”

· “we’re trying to protect you, smartass, you’re far too dangerous to be roaming the streets so freely.”

· “....me? I’m dangerous?”

· jisung not knowing the slightest bit about his own ability downright baffles chan—he’s only scratched the surface of it at this point; his true potential is if he’s taking over another ability-wielder’s body, he will then take their power for himself; and jisung can’t remember the last time he properly uses it either.

— lee felix ↠ imperfect invisibility

· initially lives in Australia but after finding out about his ability, he moves to Seoul with his parents to live a quieter, more covered-up life without being surrounded by too many relatives.

· an absolute sweetheart, smart, kind, honest, a little slow to read in between the lines at times; can concentrate relatively well on an empty stomach, but gets drowsy quickly after eating, especially big meals. 

· lix is also homeschooled up until high school in order to avoid any unwanted situation; later on, applies for a course that can be taken online for the most parts at an average-ish university to not draw so much attention. 

· since he stays at home most of the time, he spends lots of time playing different video games, experiences random cooking recipes without burning the house down, and teaches himself how to dance through online tutorials, getting awfully good at it fast partially thanks to his natural flexibility.

· he can disappear from a single person’s field of vision for as long as he wants to but it’s still limited and considered flawed since felix can only disappear from the sight one person of his choice at a time; although it can come in quite handy whenever he gets shoved into a dark alleyway by random people varying from cheap pickpockets with a box-cutting knife to muscular men dressed in black.

· learns boxing during middle school so he can still kick asses to preserve his own life.

· felix once punches jisung in the gut and slaps hyunjin in the face with a cabbage after seeing them follow each and every one of his movements the moment he steps out of the supermarket—he’s got used to listening to people’s footsteps over time. 

· “okay, first of all, ow, and second of all, why did I get the punch and he got the cabbage?!”

· “oh, don’t be such a baby.”

· “you two don’t look like those balding dudes in money-dripping black suits...what are you on? crack? what do you want from me? money? food?”

· “of course we’re not balding men in their forties! I take personal offense to that! and please, who do you take me as? a total creep who only ever knows how to follow people with his stupid sidekick tagging along for background noises?”

· “HEY! I NEVER AGREED TO BE YOUR SIDEKICK!”

· “well, it’s time you fucking did then, han.”

· “you know, I suppose this is the part where you two put me to sleep with some kind of drug and bring me back to your excuse of a headquarter.”

· “oh, did you bring the anesthetic pills?”

· “I thought Changbin gave it to you, no?”

— kim seungmin ↠ time-leap

· born in a middle-class family, very studious but also enjoys playing baseball during retreats, takes time to open up to people so he has more acquaintances than close friends but he doesn’t mind, that way he has more time for himself. 

· definitely and never will be the kid who lets his classmates take advantage of his wit, he does do a good chunk of every group project but makes sure everyone has at least one decent thing to do (low-key loves bossing people around); can be pretty distant at first, but he just weirds people out after getting closer and doesn’t hold grudges.

· seungmin is capable of bringing himself back to a specific past event to alter the future outcome though it won’t work most of the time unless he really, really has to for safety purposes or the situation gets out of hands; time-leaping won’t activate if he wants to retake a test but works like a charm when he tries to save a kid on the street from a car accident.

· actually does deep, proper research into other ability-wielders and often stays in school during nighttime to read the news, articles or anything that he can find on the web to learn about how that one cryptic boarding school in Europe that’s accused of abusing their students got shut down all of a sudden, the students never return and family members never bother to look for them. 

· hence, he adapts to hiding his ability and himself fairly well—never takes the late-night buses, doesn’t try to become close and bond with other people, asks his parents to change the door lock every month, burns bills each time he purchases something but he tries not to go out as much as possible. 

· seungmin has seen hyunjin use his power once by accident but decided to say nothing about it; eventually finds chan’s headquarter (which is just his crusty apartment) by following jisung and hyunjin after their practice hour, baffles them all a little but joins in no time. 

· after asking hyunjin to erase his parents’ memory about himself, seungmin gives everyone a hand for their plan of building a school and campus, completely safe and under the radar for other ability welders until their adolescence is over; he time-leaps back to back in order to collect as much information about lottery tickets as he can.

· another flaw occurs when he travels to the past for the third time: his eyesight gets weaker and weaker every time he time-leaps so he starts wearing glasses as a temporary resolution but chan stops him when he tries to do it for the fifth time, saying that they would rather work hard for a little longer than have seungmin lose his vision forever. 

· after over a year or so, they successfully repurchase an education organization and officially establish an exclusive academy for ability-wielders, reaching out to those individuals before scientists can get a hold of them. 

— yang jeongin ↠ superhuman speed

· the quiet kid who most likely won’t talk unless the teacher asks him to answer a question or someone tells him to let them copy his homework; has his earbuds in most of the time to pretend he can’t hear what people are saying so he won’t have to interact with them. 

· joins after you when chan finds him hitting a wall head-on at an abnormal speed while trying to save a kitten in the middle of the streets. 

· jeongin has extremely enhanced agility and reflexes but he still lacks accuracy for he is naturally a clumsy person; therefore, changbin tells him to wear a protective layer under his uniform so even in the worst-case scenario, he can jump off a building and make it out with minor scratches. 

· reluctantly buys lunch for every member of the student council (aka 00 liners + you) on a daily basis although he can’t really see which kind of sandwiches he’s grabbing at and they end up being mushy most of the time. 

· and for those people who say his resting face is scary, he’s mainly just frustrated because of his friends. 

· also usually is the one who returns with the most injuries because of his own ability—he always flees like his life depends on it to save jisung’s ass from being hit by a truck and hyunjin’s camera from being crushed (the sole purpose of the student council will be explained more thoroughly later).

· has single-handedly saved everyone inside a bookstore when a sudden fire breaks out. 

· minho scolds him and felix a lot for spending too much time at the arcade after school instead of doing their required tasks. 

· acts all tough and mature since he’s the youngest of the squad, loves to make fun of jisung for his height but still is and probably will always be a complete child who hates eating vegetables with a passion; gets yelled at a lot whenever there’s a BBQ party since he only ever eats meat. 

· “corn? why are we raiding the Asian market for corn at one AM?”

· “an outdoor, wholesome BBQ isn’t complete without corn, duh.”

· “do you want to get us caught?!”

· “oh please, they’re going to show up either way.”

· “YOU’RE NOT MAKING ANY SENSE!”

— y/n (reader) ↠ telepathic manipulation

· president of the student council, stubborn, slightly less bossy than seungmin, appears to be apathetic and cranky mainly because you can’t sleep that well; with that being said, you don’t feel too tired during ungodly hours when people are tossing around in the comfort of their bed but snap at irritating people a lot in the morning if they’re making too much noise. 

· your ability allows you to control people to your will, from something as meaningless as slamming their head through a wall to life-threatening actions like forcing them to point a knife at their own throat; it’s somewhat similar to jisung’s power though you don’t have to physically feel what your target is going through and you don’t need to worry about taking over their body.

· the only downside to it is that you easily fall asleep the moment you set your target free.

· minho is the one who gets you out of the laboratory where your parents were working on a huge, secret project about individuals with supernatural abilities for an unknown organization; you’re unfortunate enough to become their first-ever experimental subject which only nourishes resentment slowly, gnawing at your sanity while you’re dreading each day behind those cold metal bars. 

· perhaps joining the student council is what makes your life less depressing, perhaps; you’re far too busy facepalming at the beautiful monstrosity of their friendship and feeding them ensuing returning to the dorm after school since those boys only know how to eat, cooking is too much for them to comprehend (albeit felix).

· when your family was still… normal, your parents sent you to martial art classes every weekend so like felix, you don’t actually need your power to save yourself from some random mobsters on the streets.

· you’re also the only person who eats vegetables properly and even tries to incorporate more fiber into their diets but as always, they never listen, especially hyunjin when it comes to green onions.

· don’t have the best reputation in the academy because the idea of letting the new girl with a seemingly useless ability become president of the student council isn’t very appealing to many people, and it doesn’t help when every member of the council is exclusively allowed to drop out in the middle of a class to ‘collect’ any ability-wielders that chan manages to locate that day since he’s always worn out with changbin and minho from boring paperwork as well as other businessy stuff.

· even when your ability is considered almost perfect, you’ve only used it once when you thought minho was going to sell you off to another place and almost made him put a bullet through his own brain; you’ve refrained yourself from using it since that day.

#skzwritersclub #inkidz #stayshub #stray kids imagines #stray kids scenarios #stray kids fanfic #bang chan #bang chan imagines #lee minho #lee minho imagines #seo changbin #seo changbin imagines #hwang hyunjin #hwang hyunjin imagines #han jisung #han jisung imagines #lee felix #lee felix imagines #kim seungmin #kim seungmin imagines #yang jeongin #yang jeongin imagines #skz x reader #skz x you

[soccernetghana]

BYU-Hawaii soccer player fighting ‘national disgrace’ of child trafficking in Ghana

[caption id="attachment_805354" align="alignnone" width="767"] Lillian Martino-Bradley escaped horror in Ghana as a child and now is helping others do the same.[/caption] The most impressive person in college sports this school year may not be the football player who wins the next Heisman or the teenager who becomes the next No. 1 pick in the NBA draft. It may be an athlete from a team you’ll never see on television with a story that has nothing to do with winning a national championship of any sort. That’s because you have to look pretty far and pretty deep to find this story: halfway across the Pacific Ocean, to a Division II women’s soccer team in Hawaii. It’s a story of survival and of faith, of getting out of a hopeless situation and then of returning to that place in order to save others. It’s a story that’ll make you feel like you’ve accomplished very, very little in your own life but also one that’ll inspire you to do more. Lillian Martino-Bradley is a 19-year-old sophomore soccer player for the BYU-Hawaii Seasiders. She’s a pretty good player, quick on the pitch, technically sound and with a high soccer IQ. Her coach says that she would have been a surefire Division I talent if not for a slew of knee injuries in high school. But that will be the last mention of athletics in this story. Because the most impressive story in college sports isn’t really a sports story at all. After all, the soccer exploits of a young woman battling for a starting job on a team that finished 4-13 last year isn’t exactly something that’ll make your ears perk up. Instead, listen to the story of what brought Lillian to this Mormon university, where she majors in intercultural peacebuilding and aims toward fixing the atrocities committed against children just like her in her homeland of Ghana. It’s a story about the worldwide fight against human trafficking, which – if this Division II soccer player hadn’t been rescued from Ghana at age 3 – would have enveloped her own life. “It’s hard for even me as her coach to understand what she’s gone through let alone for other 18-year-old girls to understand it,” said her soccer coach, Mark Davis. “Just the amount of faith she has. She never complains. It’s so contagious with the girls. She’s just so stinking impressive.” ****** Lillian was born in a field. There were no doctors on hand. Her uncle helped her mother deliver Lillian, born amidst tall grasses and to a future that seemed doomed. At best, Lillian would have the same life as her mother, a life of selling goods along the dirt roads in order to buy food for her family. At worst? At worst it would have been a life that you and I could never even imagine. Lillian’s mother died from childbirth complications. She never met her biological father; he was from another tribe, and it was taboo to marry a woman from another tribe. Her uncle raised her, but they were desperately poor. Her uncle would leave her at home when he went to work, and when he came back her body would be covered with ants. She’d walk miles with him just to get their mail. When she got a rare treat, it was a boiled egg. “I don’t remember any of it,” she said recently. “I was adopted really young.” Meanwhile, in Heber City, Utah, some friends of Lois Martino had just come back from a two-year Mormon mission to Ghana. In Ghana, they had met Lillian’s uncle. They knew he wasn’t capable of raising her – and they worried that she could be sold into slavery. Human trafficking is a huge problem in Ghana, especially in coastal towns where boys are sold into slavery as young as age 4 to work in the fishing industry. Estimates for the number of boys enslaved at the country’s largest lake range from 1,000 to 10,000. As recently as 1997, an estimated 5,000 young girls and women were sex slaves in the country. In the capital of Accra, an estimated 30,000 children are enslaved to work as porters, according to the U.S. Association for International Migration, which runs an anti-trafficking campaign in Ghana. Another international non-profit described Ghana’s human trafficking industry as “a national disgrace.” “Trafficking in Ghana is very, very ingrained in society,” said Maria Moreno of the International Organization for Migration. “It’s selling your children because you cannot afford to take care of them.” At the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ward where Lillian’s future family belonged, the couple came back from their Ghana mission and told the ward, “This little girl needs to be adopted.” Lois Martino and her husband, who owned a chemical company, had three sons. The youngest was in kindergarten. They made up their minds that this was something they were supposed to do. They traveled to Ghana, and at Lillian’s uncle’s tin hut in their tiny village, they met the girl they would adopt. She didn’t have a birth certificate. She was small and malnourished, her stomach protruding from a lack of food. When they took her to breakfast, she’d eat one grain of rice at a time, as if she were savoring every bite. “Then she’d look at us, and say, ‘More?’ ” Lois Martino recalled. “And she was so surprised when we said yes.” In Utah, Lillian acclimated surprisingly well. Classmates loved playing with her braided hair. She never experienced racism even though the town was virtually all white. The hardest part was food, but slowly, she began eating more: from strictly pineapple and rice to pasta to meat sauce to bread. At age 13 the family decided it was time for Lillian to visit her old home. She had no memories of the place. They boarded a plane to Ghana. As they were landing, Lois gave her adopted daughter a warning: When you get off the plane, she said, it will be overwhelming. The heat. The humidity. The noise. And most of all, the smell. Lois thought it smelled like sewage. “I walked off the plane, I breathed it in, and I was home,” Lillian said. “It was such a natural thing for me. It was a powerful feeling of connection, just so connected to who I was. Even smelling that air – it was kind of musky and different, but it was me. It was my home. My body remembered that.” “It was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen,” her mother recalled. The trip changed her life. Not just seeing her uncle, or meeting both sets of grandparents, or visiting the orphanage and school that her adoptive parents had funded in Ghana after adopting Lillian. It was because when she visited Ghana, Lillian learned a family secret: That when she was born, Lillian had been promised to a man in another tribe to become his sex slave in order to settle a tribal dispute. And it was because she befriended a boy who was about her age and who was living in her old village. And after Lillian returned to the United States, she learned that the boy – a boy she’d spent time with just months before – had been sold into slavery. This is how a 19-year-old college sophomore comes to start an international non-profit that has so far raised more than $20,000 through fundraisers and has opened a safe house in Accra for victims of human trafficking who are in the midst of court cases against perpetrators. The boy’s name was Enoch. His grandmother accepted money from a man who said he would put the boy to work. “This grandmother, they have nothing, and she doesn’t know how to feed her family,” said Lillian’s mother. “Someone came to her and said, ‘This is the oldest and strongest of your grandsons. I’ll put him to work on a farm and send the money home.’ It’s a matter of sacrificing one for everyone.” When Lillian and her mother learned he’d been sold, they knew they had to do something. But what? It’s not like she could just fly back to Ghana, pluck Enoch from his captor and set him free. The money never came home. The Martinos hired a private detective in Ghana. He tracked Enoch to a remote plantation miles into the bush, where he was doing farm work. Somehow – Lillian doesn’t know how – the private detective was able to wrest Enoch away from his captors. The captors were in the midst of sending a busload of children to Nigeria to be sent to a different plantation, the private detective told the Martinos. The private detective called the Martinos after rescuing Enoch, and here’s what Enoch told them: “I thought I would be lost forever.” Now he was free, but he didn’t have money for food or education or housing. Back in Utah, Lillian held a fundraiser. She put up fliers around town. At the rec center in Heber City, she held a benefit dance for Enoch. The money she raised became the seed of something much bigger. “From that moment on I realized how much I could help, how much everyone can help,” Lillian said. “You get people together. You have passion for a cause. And you can really make a special, significant impact in people’s lives.” Since then, Lillian and her mother have visited Ghana a few times. They set up the safe house in Accra, which has so far helped 19 children who are dealing with the legal system after having been victims of human trafficking. They found a local man to run the safe house; Enoch works there, too. They have raised more than $20,000 for the non-profit – it’s called Fahodie for Friends; “fahodie” means “freedom” in Lillian’s native dialect – but need more. The majority of the funding has come from friends and from Lillian’s adoptive father’s estate. (He passed away when she was in high school.) Lillian has spoken out against human trafficking here in the United States – at her school, in her hometown – as well as in West Africa, where she has given speeches to hundreds of young adults in Liberia and in two Ghanaian cities. This summer she got married, to a Mormon young man from her hometown who had spent his two-year mission in Ghana. She knows millions of children worldwide are sold into slavery, and she knows she could have easily become one of those forgotten numbers. Where will her non-profit go from here? She’s not sure. But she’s had conversations with her husband about possibly moving back to Ghana together to fight this issue first-hand. She was saved from tragedy when she was adopted from Ghana and came to the United States. But she knows Ghana is part of her. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she moves back,” her mother said. “She knows this was why she was saved. She knows this was why she was adopted. She was put on this earth for a reason, and this may be the reason.” By Reid Forgrave   Foxsports.com source: https://ghanasoccernet.com/

[footballghana]

FEATURE: BYU-Hawaii soccer player fighting ‘national disgrace’ of child trafficking in Ghana

The most impressive person in college sports this school year may not be the football player who wins the next Heisman or the teenager who becomes the next No. 1 pick in the NBA draft. It may be an athlete from a team you’ll never see on television with a story that has nothing to do with winning a national championship of any sort.

That’s because you have to look pretty far and pretty deep to find this story: halfway across the Pacific Ocean, to a Division II women’s soccer team in Hawaii. It’s a story of survival and of faith, of getting out of a hopeless situation and then of returning to that place in order to save others. It’s a story that’ll make you feel like you’ve accomplished very, very little in your own life but also one that’ll inspire you to do more.

Lillian Martino-Bradley is a 19-year-old sophomore soccer player for the BYU-Hawaii Seasiders. She’s a pretty good player, quick on the pitch, technically sound and with a high soccer IQ. Her coach says that she would have been a surefire Division I talent if not for a slew of knee injuries in high school.

But that will be the last mention of athletics in this story. Because the most impressive story in college sports isn’t really a sports story at all. After all, the soccer exploits of a young woman battling for a starting job on a team that finished 4-13 last year isn’t exactly something that’ll make your ears perk up.

Instead, listen to the story of what brought Lillian to this Mormon university, where she majors in intercultural peacebuilding and aims toward fixing the atrocities committed against children just like her in her homeland of Ghana. It’s a story about the worldwide fight against human trafficking, which – if this Division

II soccer player hadn’t been rescued from Ghana at age 3 – would have enveloped her own life.

“It’s hard for even me as her coach to understand what she’s gone through let alone for other 18-year-old girls to understand it,” said her soccer coach, Mark Davis. “Just the amount of faith she has. She never complains. It’s so contagious with the girls. She’s just so stinking impressive.”

Lillian was born in a field. There were no doctors on hand. Her uncle helped her mother deliver Lillian, born amidst tall grasses and to a future that seemed doomed. At best, Lillian would have the same life as her mother, a life of selling goods along the dirt roads in order to buy food for her family. At worst? At worst it would have been a life that you and I could never even imagine.

Lillian’s mother died from childbirth complications. She never met her biological father; he was from another tribe, and it was taboo to marry a woman from another tribe.

Her uncle raised her, but they were desperately poor. Her uncle would leave her at home when he went to work, and when he came back her body would be covered with ants. She’d walk miles with him just to get their mail. When she got a rare treat, it was a boiled egg.

“I don’t remember any of it,” she said recently. “I was adopted really young.”

Meanwhile, in Heber City, Utah, some friends of Lois Martino had just come back from a two-year Mormon mission to Ghana. In Ghana, they had met Lillian’s uncle. They knew he wasn’t capable of raising her – and they worried that she could be sold into slavery. Human trafficking is a huge problem in Ghana, especially in coastal towns where boys are sold into slavery as young as age 4 to work in the fishing industry. Estimates for the number of boys enslaved at the country’s largest lake range from 1,000 to 10,000. As recently as 1997, an estimated 5,000 young girls and women were sex slaves in the country. In the capital of Accra, an estimated 30,000 children are enslaved to work as porters, according to the U.S. Association for International Migration, which runs an anti-trafficking campaign in Ghana. Another international non-profit described Ghana’s human trafficking industry as “a national disgrace.”

"Trafficking in Ghana is very, very ingrained in society. It’s selling your children because you cannot afford to take care of them" - Maria Moreno, International Organization for Migration.

“Trafficking in Ghana is very, very ingrained in society,” said Maria Moreno of the International Organization for Migration. “It’s selling your children because you cannot afford to take care of them.”

At the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ward where Lillian’s future family belonged, the couple came back from their Ghana mission and told the ward, “This little girl needs to be adopted.”

Lois Martino and her husband, who owned a chemical company, had three sons. The youngest was in kindergarten. They made up their minds that this was something they were supposed to do. They traveled to Ghana, and at Lillian’s uncle’s tin hut in their tiny village, they met the girl they would adopt. She didn’t have a birth certificate. She was small and malnourished, her stomach protruding from a lack of food. When they took her to breakfast, she’d eat one grain of rice at a time, as if she were savoring every bite.

“Then she’d look at us, and say, ‘More?’ ” Lois Martino recalled. “And she was so surprised when we said yes.”

In Utah, Lillian acclimated surprisingly well. Classmates loved playing with her braided hair. She never experienced racism even though the town was virtually all white. The hardest part was food, but slowly, she began eating more: from strictly pineapple and rice to pasta to meat sauce to bread.

At age 13 the family decided it was time for Lillian to visit her old home. She had no memories of the place. They boarded a plane to Ghana. As they were landing, Lois gave her adopted daughter a warning: When you get off the plane, she said, it will be overwhelming. The heat. The humidity. The noise. And most of all, the smell. Lois thought it smelled like sewage.

“I walked off the plane, I breathed it in, and I was home,” Lillian said. “It was such a natural thing for me. It was a powerful feeling of connection, just so connected to who I was. Even smelling that air – it was kind of musky and different, but it was me. It was my home. My body remembered that.”

“It was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen,” her mother recalled.

[caption id="attachment_751585" align="alignnone" width="200"] Lillian Martino-Bradley escaped horror in Ghana as a child and now is helping others do the same.[/caption]

The trip changed her life. Not just seeing her uncle, or meeting both sets of grandparents, or visiting the orphanage and school that her adoptive parents had funded in Ghana after adopting Lillian.

It was because when she visited Ghana, Lillian learned a family secret: That when she was born, Lillian had been promised to a man in another tribe to become his sex slave in order to settle a tribal dispute.

And it was because she befriended a boy who was about her age and who was living in her old village.

And after Lillian returned to the United States, she learned that the boy – a boy she’d spent time with just months before – had been sold into slavery.

This is how a 19-year-old college sophomore comes to start an international non-profit that has so far raised more than $20,000 through fundraisers and has opened a safe house in Accra for victims of human trafficking who are in the midst of court cases against perpetrators.

The boy’s name was Enoch. His grandmother accepted money from a man who said he would put the boy to work.

“This grandmother, they have nothing, and she doesn’t know how to feed her family,” said Lillian’s mother. “Someone came to her and said, ‘This is the oldest and strongest of your grandsons. I’ll put him to work on a farm and send the money home.’ It’s a matter of sacrificing one for everyone.”

When Lillian and her mother learned he’d been sold, they knew they had to do something.

But what?

It’s not like she could just fly back to Ghana, pluck Enoch from his captor and set him free.

The money never came home. The Martinos hired a private detective in Ghana. He tracked Enoch to a remote plantation miles into the bush, where he was doing farm work. Somehow – Lillian doesn’t know how – the private detective was able to wrest Enoch away from his captors. The captors were in the midst of sending a busload of children to Nigeria to be sent to a different plantation, the private detective told the Martinos.

The private detective called the Martinos after rescuing Enoch, and here’s what Enoch told them: “I thought I would be lost forever.”

Now he was free, but he didn’t have money for food or education or housing. Back in Utah, Lillian held a fundraiser. She put up fliers around town. At the rec center in Heber City, she held a benefit dance for Enoch. The money she raised became the seed of something much bigger.

You get people together. You have passion for a cause. And you can really make a special, significant impact in people’s lives.

Lillian Martino-Bradley

“From that moment on I realized how much I could help, how much everyone can help,” Lillian said. “You get people together. You have passion for a cause. And you can really make a special, significant impact in people’s lives.”

Since then, Lillian and her mother have visited Ghana a few times. They set up the safe house in Accra, which has so far helped 19 children who are dealing with the legal system after having been victims of human trafficking. They found a local man to run the safe house; Enoch works there, too. They have raised more than $20,000 for the non-profit – it’s called Fahodie for Friends; “fahodie” means “freedom” in Lillian’s native dialect – but need more. The majority of the funding has come from friends and from Lillian’s adoptive father’s estate. (He passed away when she was in high school.)

Lillian has spoken out against human trafficking here in the United States – at her school, in her hometown – as well as in West Africa, where she has given speeches to hundreds of young adults in Liberia and in two Ghanaian cities. This summer she got married, to a Mormon young man from her hometown who had spent his two-year mission in Ghana. She knows millions of children worldwide are sold into slavery, and she knows she could have easily become one of those forgotten numbers.

Where will her non-profit go from here? She’s not sure. But she’s had conversations with her husband about possibly moving back to Ghana together to fight this issue first-hand. She was saved from tragedy when she was adopted from Ghana and came to the United States. But she knows Ghana is part of her.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she moves back,” her mother said. “She knows this was why she was saved. She knows this was why she was adopted. She was put on this earth for a reason, and this may be the reason.”

  Source: www.Foxsports.com//Reid Forgrave

source: https://footballghana.com/

[deadlydagger]

WHAT MADE ME DECIDE TO BECOME A LAWYER AND WHAT DID I LIKE MOST ABOUT THE PROFESSION?

On December 15, 1961, at age 22, I walked out of what I thought would be the last classroom in my life. It just goes to show you that there are two words that should be used sparingly: they are "never" and "always."

I loved playing football and was determined to continue playing even though my eligibility had expired at the end of the 1961 season. But the Marine Corps had a couple of military bases with football teams that played against college teams. One was Quantico and the other was Camp Pendleton. It looked like I was going to be drafted into the service one way or the other as they had sent me a notice to appear for a physical examination to see if I physically qualified for the military. If I passed the physical examination and got drafted, I would have a two year hitch as a dog face (Army slug). Both the Navy and the Marines had a three year hitch but it was remarkably better duty. The Marine Corps recruiters said they thought that they could ensure my matriculation into one of their two bases where I could play football.

I also met with the local recruiting agency for the Navy and they advised me that they had a football team in Japan that could play a college schedule. So I was caught between the two branches of the service. I was not interested in the Army or the Air Force at all. One of the people that I was working with, Harold Headlee, had been a Navy SeaBee and he crystallized the nature of the services for me. He told me I could decide between a Marine, ending up in a foxhole eating food out of cans, sleeping on the dirt, ducking hand grenades and other types of artillery. Or, I could be on a ship, eating three square meals a day in the wardroom, sleeping in a nice warm bed at night, and benefiting from other things that the Navy had to offer; such as sailing the seas of the world, an adventure in and of itself.

So I joined the Navy, went to Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island for 18 weeks, and then was assigned to a destroyer home ported in San Diego. (The promise of playing football in the Navy was a phony pipe-dream). During the three years that I spent on this ship, we sailed the entire Pacific Ocean twice and had many positive and negative experiences. One of the things that Harold never told me was that, in rough seas, we would have to hang on our rack throughout the night to keep from being tossed out of it onto the deck. He did not tell me that, if the seas got really rough, our full plates of food would fly across the room banging off the bulkhead, food all over the floor. At least, we never got shot at.

My Navy experiences were extensive and would be the subject of another essay. However, they did play into my ultimate career as a lawyer.

After officer candidate school, I reported to my ship on September 3, 1962. Twenty-five months later, in October, 1964, I had a 10 day leave during which I returned to my home right before my ship was due to head to the Western Pacific again at the end of October. I had already made up my mind that I would leave the Navy once my obligation was up in August 1965. I wanted to be a football coach, walking in the shoes of one of the great football coaches of all time, Woody Hayes. So I went to see Woody one afternoon while I was at home to discuss with him what I would need to do in order to enter the field of coaching college football. I did not know whether I had the talent to be a football coach but Woody assured me that I definitely did have all that I needed to be a success. He also assured me that he could set forth a path for me to establish a career in coaching. He would let me be a student assistant coach with Ohio State, learn how things needed to be done in order to be successful. However, there was a condition. He said while I was a student assistant coach, I needed to go to law school.

My heart sank. I told him that I never wanted to go into a classroom again and especially to law school which would have required three years of school. I told him pretty much flat out that I would not agree to that. He said that would be no problem but those were the parameters within which I had to comply to receive his assistance. (I think he had a vision of the future that I was too young to see).

After my leave, I went back to my ship and, strangely enough on my bunk was the biography of Clarence Darrow, one of the great trial lawyers of all time. To this day I have no idea who the book belonged to or how it got on my bunk. But I read the book cover to cover very quickly and was kind of inspired by it. While I was reading about Clarence Darrow, I was talking to one of the sailors on my ship who, at the same time, was reading about Samuel Leibowitz, a great trial lawyer and judge in the state of New York. As the sailor and I finished our respective books, we traded so I got to read that book as well.

Shortly after I returned from my leave, our ship left for the Western Pacific. Our destroyer group was escorting an aircraft carrier, the Coral Sea. We always stopped at Pearl Harbor to refresh and replenish before continuing to Westpac. On the way to Pearl, the Coral Sea blew a boiler and was unable to continue until repairs were made. So we were hung up in Pearl Harbor for 60 days. During that time and thereafter on that trip overseas, many of our sailors got into mischief, resulting in courts-martial. A court-martial consisted of a prosecuting officer, a defense officer, and several officers sitting as a jury. I was assigned to be a prosecutor and/or a defense counsel on every one of these cases.

An officer’s day is filled with many duties while on ship at sea. One day as I was working hard to prepare for one of the cases that I was handling, I said to one of my fellow officers that I was really enjoying doing these courts-martial and, if I did not have all of the extensive duties otherwise, the courts-martial work would really be challenging and exciting. Bingo! A transformation took place on the spot.

As a result of all of these factors coalescing at the same time, I made a decision to at least apply to law school, take the LSAT, and see where this took me. When I was released from the Navy in August 1965, I went to the administrative offices of the Ohio State law school to see what the status of my application was. I was told on the spot that I was admitted and to come for orientation at a particular date at the school. Jody Wharton, the Assistant Dean who interviewed me, who became a good friend of mine throughout the years, later told me that as soon as they saw my photo in full Navy dress blues, I was in!! It was clearly an easier process than later when my children went through the same thing.

I compressed my law school education into nine straight quarters. In other words, instead of taking summers off as most of my classmates did, I went to school in the summer of 1966 and 1967. I was not allowed to work for the first year of law school, per student rules. However, during the 1966 and 1967 football seasons, I was a graduate assistant coach. In 1966, I coached the freshman team. But in 1967, due to the number of guard and tackle positions, I was elevated to be a varsity coach, assisting Bill Mallory who was our defensive line coach. This was truly an unbelievable experience to prepare me for a career in coaching. I was able to be a definite part of the defense coaching team, participating in the evaluation of the players week to week and was present at all the defensive coaches’ meetings early in the morning, during the course of the day, and in the evening. Sometimes we would have meetings until 11 o'clock at night and have to be back on campus at 6 o'clock or 7 o'clock in the morning for more meetings or to work with the team. In addition to this great experience, Woody paid me $500 for the 1966 season and $1000 for the 1967 season. That and the little bit of money that I received from the G.I. Bill kept me afloat financially until I graduated.

I graduated from law school in December 1967. By that time, I was firmly committed to the law. By and large, coaching was the toughest job I've ever had, even harder than running jackhammers, hod carrying, digging footers, you name it, jobs that I had while in college. So I decided to be a lawyer!

I practiced law for 47 years. The first few years were kind of rocky. I did not receive a great job offer like some of the better students in my class. As a result, I accepted a couple of jobs that I did not like all that well and then worked for the County Prosecutor’s office for ten months during which I tried 47 jury trials. I was in trial all the time and as soon as I finished a case, I started another one right away. Sometimes, I had a jury deliberating while I was impaneling a jury in the same courtroom. I also started a little side practice on my own where I sometimes worked in the evening and also every Saturday and Sunday. So I was working seven days a week for about 27 months.

Well, if I wanted to be a trial lawyer, I sure got my feet wet in that career. But I was working so hard that I literally ran out of steam. In March 1971, I collapsed and was out of work for a week. Believe it or not, I was so happy to be in bed feeling like I just could not do anything but rest. After the week off, I returned to work for a week but collapsed again and had to take another week off. My body was sending a clear message to me which I finally understood.

In April 1971, I left the prosecutor's office, hung my shield, and became a real good trial lawyer. I developed a reputation statewide and nationally to some extent in my areas of practice. That lasted until 2014 when I retired. It was quite a thrill for me to seek justice for those who could not achieve it by themselves. There was no greater sense of excitement then to have a client reach out to shake my hand with tears in his eyes, telling me thanks for working so hard for him.

It is kind of ironic that high-powered law firms did not seek me out when I graduated. But, striking out on my own, working diligently every day, I was able to build a law firm with seven lawyers and 10-15 staff. This was a great contribution to our local community as well as making law in the legislature and the Supreme Court. Early in my life, I would never in a million years have thought that I would be a lawyer. Yet, that was exactly what I was cut out to do. There are no coincidences in life. We each have a plan set in stone. Our job, each of us, is to sort out what the plan is and follow it to its conclusion. Hopefully we will benefit those with whom we come in contact. In my case, that is definitely what happened.

If one looks at my history set forth above, it is clear that a large number of occurrences had to take place in a timely manner for me to end up where I am today. In another essay, I laid out my educational and athletic experiences.

From the time that I started high school until I left the University of Dayton six years later, I had one setback after another, a lot of adversity. In a high state of frustration, I entered Ohio State to finish my education but, through a miracle, I was able to play football, played for two of the greatest coaches in history and won a National Championship. I was urged by Woody Hayes to enter law school which I did not want to do, read the biographies of two great lawyers, was commissioned by the captain of my ship to participate in a large number of courts-martial, changing my attitude about law, was admitted to law school in a breeze, passed the bar and my life was changed forever. This is how I developed my philosophy of life: you never know what opportunities will prevent themselves, or what adversity you have to overcome to accomplish your goals. So: be prepared, never give up, show up every day.

Daniel D. Connor

December 22, 2018

#career #navy #football #coach #law #woody #Commitment