By Samson Nangole –
Dear Loving Heavenly Father,
We come to you today in praise and thanksgiving for creating all human beings in your likeness and image. We are all your beloved children and precious in your sight. We come before you today in solidarity with the millions and millions of people who suffer each day from human trafficking. We pray for healing and restoration for those who have been victims of trafficking. We ask that they may be liberated and that you will restore their freedom and dignity.
We pray for all the work of The Salvation Army, including our project here in Kenya, that that you will use our contributions to protect, defend, restore and empower the victims of human trafficking and help stop this evil in our country. May they find comfort in your loving arms and find hope in your name.
We particularly pray a fresh sense of awareness within our communities. May we be so burdened that we are stirred into action. May your church, your Army, be so unsettled and so offended by these injustices that we become active in working with others to end human trafficking. We pray that you would strengthen our resolve and commitment to fight for justice. Help us to be people who can be trusted, people who will take a stand, and people who are ready to speak out. Give us all hearts full of compassion so that people we work with who have been victims of human trafficking may see your love from them reflecting in us. Keep safe the many people and children in our country, many living in extreme poverty, who are vulnerable to the exploitative and manipulative ways of the human traffickers. Help us to grow communities that prevent and protect.
We pray for a change of heart of the perpetrators and organizers of human trafficking. We ask for a miracle, that you would touch the hearts of the men and women who enslave others. We pray that your light will break through their darkness, and they will turn from their ways. Help us all to claim the freedom that is a gift from you. Father, above all, we pray that human trafficking will end and both traffickers and the people they traffic will find their hope in you.
We make our prayers as people of hope.
Amen.
Samson Nangole is project field coordinator for the Simba Anti-Trafficking Project in Eastern Kenya. Samson works with communities, truck drivers and border officials along the Mombasa Highway.