Benin
- Pray for the children of Benin who are trafficked into servitude because their family situations are so desperate. Pray for those who must contribute to the family income because of deep poverty, making them extremely vulnerable to exploitation.
- Pray for girls who are trafficked within Benin for domestic servitude and sexual exploitation and for boys who are trafficked within the country for forced labor as plantation workers, street hawkers, and construction workers. Pray for children trafficked out of Benin who are forced into prostitution, child labor, or illegal adoption.
- Pray for children who are sexually exploited by teachers in return for better grades.
- Pray for more openness about the subject of trafficking children for commercial sexual exploitation—the subject is taboo in Beninese culture. Pray for greater awareness of the problem of child trafficking and just laws that are enforced with consistency. Please pray that safe homes and programs that help with healing will be available for children rescued from this type of modern day slavery.
http://www.ecpat.net/A4A_2005/
- Pray for an end to the tradition of using young, virgin girls as slaves to the temple priests in the tradition of trokosi, or “wives of the deity.” Young girls are brought to a shrine to compensate for a crime committed by their families, sometimes for transgressions committed generations earlier, and must work in the household, clean the shrine, and serve as sex slaves. http://gvnet.com/
childprostitution/Benin.htm
United States
- Please keep twins Micah and Nehemiah, who were born 6 weeks’ premature, held close in prayer. Pray that they will learn to suck and swallow quickly so they won’t have to stay in the hospital for a long time.
- Pray that God will protect 14-year-old Teresa* from a high risk environment in her biological mother’s home. Pray for her safety and that she won’t be abused by the men with whom her mother associates regularly. After scheduled visits with her father and step-mother, Teresa often goes back home to a houseful of men drinking with her mother. Pray for Teresa’s emotional and physical health—she has recently been hospitalized for behavioral problems, possibly stemming from the home environment. *Name changed for confidentiality and/or protection.
- Please lift in prayer the 10-year-old granddaughter of a Michigan woman who allowed her 67-year-old drug dealer to sexually assault the girl in exchange for cocaine or other narcotics. Pray for this child’s physical and emotional healing. Pray for resilience and for her complete recovery from this horrible abuse. Pray for swift justice in this situation. And pray for the grandmother and the predator—that healing would take place in their lives as well. http://www.mlive.com/news/
saginaw/index.ssf/2010/03/ police_woman_traded_ granddaugh.html - Please pray for God’s comforting presence to be with the children and families of the miners killed in the April 5 coal mine explosion in West Virginia. Pray for those who lost fathers, brothers, sons, grandfathers, uncles and friends in one of the deadliest mining accidents in the U.S. in 25 years.
