Invitation to Prayer ... Tomorrow
Dear Intercessors,
We will meet locally every Wednesday at 11:30 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!
Sincerely,
Carrie McKean
Week Three: Pray for the Helpers
It’s not lost on me that my only recourse was to call the police. At that point, they took over – asking pertinent questions, following up on my tip, and intervening if possible and necessary. In the event that this girl was a victim, there are more professionals able to respond. In our own area, Reflection Ministries is getting closer to opening their doors to serve as a holistic, wrap-around therapeutic home where victims of trafficking can heal and find a new path forward.
September Faces of Children Digest
Prayer is a mighty tool we have to fight a battle against the evil of human trafficking. Yesterday afternoon, I’d been unsure of what direction our prayer focus should be for September. But this experience in the car gave me my answer, and it gave me a few specific prayer burdens I wanted to share with you.
“That was weird,” my 8-year-old daughter Cora said as she stared out her window at the cars zipping past us on the freeway.
We’d been listening to my younger daughter tell a story, and I started to admonish Cora for being so unkind about her sister’s tale. But she didn’t seem to be paying attention to the story at all, so instead of getting onto her, I asked what was weird.
“Oh, when sissy was talking, a car drove past us and the girl in the front seat looked at me as she drove past and held up a little sign to the window that said “Help me.”
Her voice was nonchalant, unaware of all the things said between the lines of her words. She doesn’t know that the freeway we were driving down is a known superhighway for human trafficking cases. She doesn’t know what might befall a young girl holding up a sign that cries for help from passing cars. She doesn’t know how different her life could be... two little girls separated by glass windows and some steel and a few feet, but they might as well live on two separate planets. I pray the sign was a childish prank. But even if it were, the reality is what this other girl represents is a daily reality, hidden in plain sight right beneath our noses.
I asked Cora more questions, trying to identify the car she saw. It had already passed us and she could no longer see it on the road ahead of us. But her memory of the moment was clear. A white sedan. No one except the passenger and driver in the car. The girl sitting in the front seat. A sign subtly flashed from the palm of her hand for only a few seconds before being lowered. I asked her again if she was sure the sign said Help and not Hi. I’m sure. I believed her.
“She was about Hannah’s age, mom.” A teenager.
“And she wasn’t smiling. She looked like this.” Her face grew still and solemn, eyes darting back and forth.
We called the non-emergency line of the police department, and they asked a few more questions and gleaned a bit more information from a little girl’s memory. No, we didn’t get a license plate. The car had 4 doors. The girl was probably Hispanic. They might be close to the airport exits now, I estimated.
The dispatcher said she’d notify officers in the area to be looking for a vehicle that might match the description. By this point, I’d pulled into my own driveway and my girls ran in to the house to get ready for bed. I sat for a moment in my car, shaken by the experience and trying to shift gears as quickly as my daughters had… but finding it impossible to shake the feeling that while my children were bickering about who could use the bathroom sink first, other little girls were being driven to their destruction.
We don’t know how the story ended. I don’t know if officers found the car and could make a traffic stop. I don’t know if the girl was playing a bad joke or if she was deadly serious. But regardless of how the story ended, it reminded me of the need for us to engage in prayer. ...
Blessings,
Carrie
Carrie J. McKean
Faces of Children Director
First Presbyterian Church of Midland, Texas
(432) 684-7821 x153
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