My brother pointed me to this story about a Missouri family who rescues enslaved children from around the world. I love these examples of private charity by American Christians that get completely ignored when the international community denounces American "imperialism" or "selfishness".
Two weeks ago Cope returned from Ghana, where she had financed the rescue of seven children who were working as indentured servants on fishing boats for as little as $20 a year. The youngest of them, a 6-year-old named Mark Kwadwo, had labored in dire conditions under a brutal fisherman who beat him when he failed to get up at midnight to bail out canoes.Working with a small Ghanaian charity, Cope paid $3,600 to free the children and found them a new home in an orphanage near the Ghana capital of Accra. After months and years of privation, the children were dumbstruck by a plentiful breakfast, caregivers said.
Cope's trip to Ghana followed journeys to Vietnam and Cambodia, where she and her husband help finance shelters for needy children and their families, and where the Copes adopted two Vietnamese children.
The little hair salon is a dim memory. Cope is now a fund-raiser and executive of Touch a Life Ministries , an organization she and her husband started to help desperate children in faraway places. By their calculations, the group has spent about $150,000, mainly in Cambodia and Vietnam, on such tasks as financing shelters for children who are abused, handicapped, living on the street or orphaned by AIDS.
This is God's work, and it's just too bad the masters of these enslaved kids get paid for the kids' freedom rather than being tossed into jail.
