Pedophile Ring Busted and Important Documentary on Human Trafficking Released
A big breakthrough in the fight against child sex trafficking was recently reported by BBC News. Please see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12762333?OCID=fbwin Let’s be encouraged and continue to pray for the protection and deliverance of children. As a law enforcement official affirms in the article: "We will not allow these offenders to carry on committing these awful crimes against young children. We will not rest until we have identified every offender that has been active in this network and others that might be operating on the internet."
Also, in the realm of film making, check out the documentary from Exodus Cry which is releasing in theaters and across college campuses: Nefarious: Merchant of Souls.
The Cinco de Mayo Prayer Initiative was a HUGE Success!
THANK YOU for your prayers during the last 21 days of concentrated prayer for the border!
Here are just a FEW of the praise reports that came in while we were praying:
• April 15 – Prayer Initiative begins
• April 17 – A Zetas drug gang leader was arrested for the worst mass killings in Mexico’s narcotics war.
• April 16-17 – Mexican security forces arrested 32 people during raids in Tula and Tulancingo, Hidalgo state, including 28 suspected members of Los Zetas.
• April 19 – Weekend snare nets a quarter-million dollars worth of cocaine at the border checkpoint south of San Clemente.
• April 20 – Based on a tip, Mexican police raided a house in Reynosa (Nuevo Leon state) and freed 68 people who had been kidnapped from a bus by cartel gunmen. This is the third rescue of its kind in Reynosa in just two weeks. Sate police in Nuevo Leon also arrested 45 local policemen in the town of Cadereyta. The local cops are charged with corruption and having ties to Los Zetas drug cartel.
• April 21 – Mexican authorities arrested Marco Antonio Gomez, an alleged Zetas drug cartel lawyer who in charged with managing ransom and extortion payments.
• April 26 – Mexico’s Federal Investigative Agency seized weapons and an estimated 7.7 tons of marijuana from a warehouse in the Magana neighborhood of Tijuana. The cache had a street value of more than $10 million on the U.S. market.
• April 28 – 104 bodies were found in hidden graves since April 11. They had been buried for a minimum of one year.
• April 28 – 29 suspected members of Los Zetas were arrested including 10 police officers, who are suspected of participating in an attack on the Tula security coordinator’s office and in firefights in Pachuca and Zempoala, El Universal.
• April 29 – Benjamin Arellano Felix, the reputed leader of the Tijuana cartel from the 1980s until his arrest in 2002, which was one of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels, was extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges, the Mexican Attorney General’s office announced. Felix is one of the highest-profile cartel members extradited under the administration of President Felipe Calderon. (Mexico’s Senate gave a quick nod to an anti-money laundering law targeting the financial structions of the country’s increasingly powerful drug cartels. )
• May 1 – Security forces arrested 26 members of the police force in Tarandacuao, Guanajuato state, for allegedly cooperating with La Familia Michoacana.
• Numerous illegal attempts to cross the border with drugs, weapons, or other ill intent were thwarted at the gate.
Most notably, Juarez, which is known for having the worst crime rate in the world, closed out the month of April with the lowest number of violent deaths in 14 months.
Yuma is classified as being under “operational control”, and the number of immigrants apprehended plummeted from 138,460 in 2005 to 7,116 in 2010 (The Arizona Republic). The smuggling operations that used to run through Yuma now run through Tucson sector. The topography of the Tucson region, environmental regulations, poor radio communication, and federal restrictions on building more towers have prevented agents from being effective. The mountains make illegal activity easy to hide.
Please pray:
• For the drug and human trafficking, gang crimes, and corruption in government and business sectors in Mexico to continue to be found out, brought to justice, and that order, security, and peace will return to the land.
• For the Tucson/Yuma borders to have continued success in stopping the drug/human trafficking.
• For the places of illegal activity to be revealed.
• For wisdom for the authorities and planning engineers to find effective/efficient ways to monitor, secure, and stop and border regions.
Japan Prayer Initiative Report—April 2011
On 11 March 2011 (now often called by the Japanese, "3/11"), a magnitude 9.0 earthquake followed by a tsunami up to 38 meters (124 feet) in height hit Eastern Japan, known as "Tohoku." These two disasters were followed by a crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant which was hit by the earthquake and tsunami and consequently began to emit high levels of radioactive substances. Over 25,000 are dead or missing and over 300,00 people displaced. As of 1 May, the nuclear crisis is yet to be fully resolved.
Generous aid and assistance has come to Japan. As one small part, in March, Dr. Joe Ozawa led a team of intercessors to Iwaki, Fukushima, near the nuclear exclusion zone of the damaged reactor. and with local residents, they "stood in the gap between the living and the dead," (Nu 16). Joining with Korean and Chinese people of prayer, the Japanese intercessors then prayed over strategic points in Tokyo. Dr. Ozawa also taught many seminars on "Tohoku humanitarian emergency response: Counseling and Healing," to volunteers, NGOs/NPOs, university students, church workers, and those who were involved in disaster response.
Please pray for:
1. The love, life, and truth of Jesus Christ (John 10:10 and John 14:6) to be poured out upon the Japanese people.
2. The “deception” over the Japanese regarding “death” (esp. ancestor worship) to be broken and their eyes opened to the truth of “eternal life” through Christ.
3. Dr. Ozawa’s message that humanitarian crisis and disaster response requires a holistic approach (relief work + emotional / relational healing + spiritual development in Christ) go forth like ripples to all those in the nation to whom the Lord wants to hear this message.
4. In His divine mercy, the Lord contain any further nuclear crises and withhold any future catastrophic disasters from Japan.
Thank you.
Iran: Forty-one baptised in one city on Easter Sunday
The church in this city had been wiped out in the early 1900s, and there had been no Christian witness until just a few years ago when a Persian speaking church was planted there. This past Easter Sunday forty-one people were baptized there in a thriving church led by Elam graduates. Thirty-nine of them were from a Muslim background and two were from a nominal Christian one. These two had been led to Christ by an Iranian believer from a Muslim background. During a powerful service, twenty-six Iranians, fourteen Afghans, and one Iraqi shared their testimonies and glorified Christ. Families were baptized together. In one case a grandmother with her daughter and son in law and their two teenage boys were baptized, and in another, an Afghan lady with her five children who are in their twenties. (See also World article above) Praise: God the power of the cross and pray that God would keep these new believers under the shadow of His wing. (Ps.91:1)
