Faces of Children is an ecumenical prayer ministry under the auspices of First Presbyterian Church of Midland, Texas. Their mission is to initiate ministries of prayer for children in churches, communities, and neighborhoods. In doing so, they seek to provide an opportunity for people of God to join together, learn about children and their needs throughout the world, and celebrate Christ's love (especially as it relates to children).
Invitation to Prayer ... TODAY
Hi Friends,
If you're in Midland this week, we'll be meeting at 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, March 6 - TODAY - for prayer. We meet in the prayer closet at First Presbyterian Church of Midland, Texas. Please join us in lifting up the needs of vulnerable children in our community and around the world!
Next week is Spring Break, so there will be no prayer email or prayer gathering in Midland. Let's take the "break" in our regularly scheduled plan to pray for children on their breaks!
Blessings,
Carrie
Dear Intercessors,
Psalm 120
1-2 I'm in trouble. I cry to God,
desperate for an answer:
"Deliver me from the liars, God!
They smile so sweetly but lie through their teeth."
3-4 Do you know what's next, can you see what's coming,
all you barefaced liars?
Pointed arrows and burning coals
will be your reward.
5-7 I'm doomed to live in Meshech,
cursed with a home in Kedar,
My whole life lived camping
among quarreling neighbors.
I'm all for peace, but the minute
I tell them so, they go to war!
Sometimes the passages of scripture that bring me the most comfort are the most honest ones. It's a reminder that God makes space for me as I wrestle with living in the midst of a world that doesn't make sense. God is near even when we feel doomed to live in Meshech -- a place, according to Eugene Peterson, named to "represent the strange and the hostile. Paraphrased, the cry is, "I live in the midst of hoodlum and wild savages; this world is not my home and I want out."
Headlines and stories like the ones below leave me with very little to say other than "this world is not our home and we want out."
And yet, the sun rises. A daffodil blooms. A man digging through garbage to feed his family smiles. A crying baby is comforted. A child squeals with joy when she discovers the dollar the tooth fairy brought her. New beginnings always happen.
This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday ... a time for lament, repentance; a time to feel all the heaviness of the world and its sin and its separation from God. But it's also the start of something new... it's the beginning of a slow march to Easter morning and all theV new beginnings it represents. Death and New Life. Despair and Hope.
This week, please join me in praying for the children and people impacted by these circumstances... Also, our founder Margaret Purvis and her friends Bob and Ramon Billhimer are in Uganda this week visiting the water well ministry run by the Billhimers. Please pray for their travels and their trip.
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| New York Times Photo by Caitlin O’Hara |
"The stories are many, and yet all too similar. Undocumented women making their way into American border towns have been beaten for disobeying smugglers, impregnated by strangers, coerced into prostitution, shackled to beds and trees and - in at least a handful of cases - bound with duct tape, rope or handcuffs.
The New York Times found dozens of documented cases through interviews with law enforcement officials, prosecutors, federal judges and immigrant advocates around the country, and a review of police reports and court records in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. The review showed more than 100 documented reports of sexual assault of undocumented women along the border in the past two decades, a number that most likely only skims the surface, law enforcement officials and advocates say. In addition, interviews with migrant women and those working with them along the border point to large numbers of cases that are either unreported or unexamined, suggesting that sexual violence has become an inescapable part of the collective migrant journey
President Trump has used the threat faced by migrant women to make his case for a border wall. "One in three women are sexually assaulted on the dangerous trek up through Mexico," he said in January - an estimate that appears to have originated from some limited surveys, one of them by Doctors Without Borders, of women traveling through Mexico. But less understood is that the violence that befalls migrant women happens not just during the perilous journey through Mexico: Much of it happens after women reach the supposed safety of the United States." ... "At least five of the women who were assaulted - in one case, bound with duct tape, raped and stabbed - were attacked not by migrant smugglers, who are often the perpetrators, but by on-duty Border Patrol agents and Customs officers. Experts say the actual number of sexual assaults is almost certainly much higher than those documented by prosecutors and the police, because most attacks are never reported. And such attacks don't end at the border. Women have reported being assaulted in immigration detention facilities, and the federal government over a recent four-year period has received more than 4,500 complaints about the sexual abuse of immigrant children at government-funded detention facilities." Keep reading ...
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| Courtesy Photo |
CHINA // New Day Foster Home's Closure
A place near and dear to my heart and my home from 2008-2011 has officially closed the bulk of its program due to changes in Chinese governmental regulations. From 2000 - 2019, NDFH cared for hundreds of children, providing medical care and ongoing residential care while simultaneously advocating for their adoptions. Ultimately 360 children (pictured to the left) were adopted because of the New Day program... and many of these children had severe medical needs that they wouldn't have survived without ND's intervention. Now all of the current children under New Day's care have been returned to government-run orphanages and the organization is looking at opportunities to develop deeper relationships with these orphanages and perhaps provide on-site partner care. There's much uncertain about the future, and there's much to grieve, especially for the children currently living at ND who had to return to their orphanages and the nannies who worked nearly two decades for the foster home and are now unemployed. It's deeply hard for me to comprehend why God would seemingly allow children to be pawns in a political game.
Please pray for everyone involved with New Day.
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| Reuters Photo by Carlos Jasso |
"It is not uncommon for poor and indigent residents of the world's wealthiest nations to root through dumpsters. But it is rare in those nations for people with full-time jobs to rely on garbage to sustain their families.
Prices in Venezuela are rising more than 2 million percent per year, and the country's minimum wage, worth around $6 per month, buys little more than a tray of eggs.
Many Venezuelans rely on remittances from relatives who have joined an exodus of an estimated 3.4 million people since 2015, according to the United Nations, while others depend on government food handouts.
Opposition leader Juan Guaido, who in January declared himself to be Venezuela's interim president, led an effort last week to bring humanitarian aid into the country, but troops blocked trucks from getting in.
Most Western nations including the United States have recognized Guaido as Venezuela's legitimate president.
"I've had to teach my children to eat everything," said Estefani Quintero, 35, a mother of seven who travels two hours to Caracas from a distant suburb to trawl garbage bags. "Of course it's the government that's at fault for this. We used to eat breakfast lunch and dinner, we even threw away food." Keep reading ...
All the best,
Carrie
Carrie J. McKean
Faces of Children Director
First Presbyterian Church of Midland, Texas
(432) 684-7821 x153
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