‘Faces of Children’ appear at prayer summit in Washington
By Parker T. Williamson, The Layman Online, June 18, 2003
WASHINGTON – A British baroness keynoted The Faces of Children Prayer Summit, sponsored by First Presbyterian Church of Midland, Texas and held at National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. June 11-12. “Faces” is a prayer ministry that spotlights the plight of more than 800,000 children who have been sold into slavery and sex trafficking.
Baroness Caroline Cox“I am a member of the House of Lords, not by accomplishment but astonishment,” quipped Baroness Caroline Cox, chair of the event. Cox said she was pleased that Parliament provides an opportunity to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. “But infinitely greater than my privilege at the House of Lords is the fact that today I address you in the house of the Lord,” she said.
A nurse by profession, Baroness Cox rose to prominence in the United Kingdom as a vice president of the Royal College of Nursing. Blending her medical knowledge with extraordinary political acumen, she has catapulted humanitarian concerns to the world’s center stage. In her spotlight are “the least of these,” the world’s abused, neglected, enslaved, beaten and broken children.
Leaving her ‘comfort zone’
Lady Cox told the Washington gathering that grim news from the Sudan moved her to seek out “brave pilots” who dared to fly her into Sudan’s “no-go areas.” There, the government has isolated Christian villages and threatened to shoot down any plane that brings them aid.
“Sudan’s soldiers are brutally exterminating Christians,” Cox said. The government’s jihad policy, she said, is threefold: (1) Military conquest. Christians are told to convert to Islam or be killed on the spot. (2) Declaring “no-go areas.” Cut off from all food and trade, an increasingly malnourished population is offered government aid if it renounces Christian faith. (3) Selling children. Government troops steal and sell children into slavery.
Cox has “bought” many of these children in order to set them free. Criticized by some for “encouraging” the slave trade, she snaps, “Look into the face of this child and tell me that I did wrong.” She says her purchase is but a tiny reflection of the price Jesus Christ paid to free us from our sin.
But buying children is only the beginning. Cox inspires a host of ministries that bind up children’s physical and emotional wounds, like World Relief, whose president, Clive Calver, also addressed the prayer summit. And she has enlisted armies of international warriors to lead assaults on governments that condone or allow the mistreatment and trafficking of children.
Christ’s prize fighter
While Lady Cox does battle at the House of Lords, a Harvard-trained lawyer in America has rallied troops of his own. In 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice sent Gary Haugen to Rwanda to lead a UN investigation into the genocide that had ravaged that country. “It was a massive slaughter,” said Haugen. “The Tutsi people ran to churches for sanctuary, but Hutu militia pursued them and hacked them to death.”
Gary HaugenHaugen said one of his gruesome tasks was to find bodies and document the slaughter. Under a pile of corpses lay an eight-year old girl who had hidden there for two days. “Looking into her eyes changed my life,” said Haugen. “She was beautiful, and it dawned on me that the Creator of the universe intended that this little girl exist and be with him forever. God wanted her so much, that he gave up his own son for her.”
Haugen returned to the U.S., determined to fight for the lives of children. “Injustice,” he said, “is a specific kind of sin. It occurs when the strong steal from the weak … and God regards sins against children as among the worst.” Haugen founded International Justice Mission, whose prayer warriors infiltrate and collect prosecutable evidence in slave labor camps and dens of international sex traffickers who steal little girls and sell them to brothels for $200. There, they turn 20-30 tricks a day, seven days a week, bringing their owners two dollars a trick.
A tough-minded attorney, Haugen targets law school students who claim to be Christians, and says, “What are you doing for Jesus with the skills you learn here?” From those who respond, Haugen selects “interns” to take on the dangerous assignment of infiltration. Armed with their documentation, International Justice Mission attorneys pressure host governments to arrest and prosecute the perpetrators of crimes against children.
Haugen was introduced to the conference by John Miller, senior adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell, and the director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking Persons. Himself a Christian, Miller said it is “an abomination” that almost one million of the world’s children suffer from the bondage to sex slavery. He said that the International Justice Mission has inspired and assisted the U.S. government toward forging child-protection alliances with governments around the world.
Prayer power
Spearheading The Faces of Children Prayer Summit is First Presbyterian Church of Midland. The church’s minister, Jerry Helton, says that “Faces” was the vision of Margaret Purvis, one of his elders, who had a burden for abused children. “Faces” is a prayer ministry, says Helton. “We have one objective: to call God’s people into prayer for the children. Some people ask, ‘Is prayer all you do? Don’t you have a program or a project?’ And I tell them that nothing will happen if you don’t start with prayer.”
“Faces” has inspired congregations throughout the Presbyterian Church (USA) and across ecumenical lines to establish prayer groups that commit themselves to praying for the world’s abused, neglected, and mistreated children. Sunday School classes, women’s circles, church sessions and boards of deacons, men’s groups and youth organizations are getting down on their knees.
Thousands of prayer warriors have been enlisted in this prayer campaign which has inspired thousands more to support activist organizations like the International Justice Mission, World Relief, Compassion International and others that rescue God’s little ones.
For more information on Faces of Children, contact First Presbyterian Church, 800 West Texas Avenue, Midland, Texas 79701, or visit its Internet address at www.facesofchildren.net.