A couple weeks ago I wrote about the rescue of seven children from slavery in Ghana. My brother and my sister-in-law had read about their plight in the NY Times.
Today, there is a follow-up story about it in the Times. Also, they (and my niece) head to Chicago to be on Oprah, a show that is supposed to be aired in March and that they hope will bring attention to the plight of other child slaves in Ghana.
Awesome with a captial “A”
Priceless
Seeing Christians like Tony Dungy and Randy and Pam Cope make the news not because of political agendas or reactionary activity but because of Christ manifesting himself in their daily lives is a beautiful thing to see. Thanks for the article!
I was able to enjoy some quiet time with a good cup of coffee and the paper this morning. A rare treat these days. What a surprise to see that the Fort Worth Star-Telegram had picked up the Times story about your brother and sister-in-law. Who knows what will happen when they get the Oprah exposure! May the name of the Lord be praised!
Thanks, Stephen. I didn’t know the Star-Telegram had picked up that story. I’ll look for a copy in Abilene today.
“To hear him giggle,” she wrote by e-mail, “was priceless.”
reminds me of a verse in a book and a song, “… let the little children come to Me.”
the laughter of children … oh, that is priceless. it saddens me what grown people do to children. why can’t they pick on someone their own size? … they’ll get their’s.
“… they’ll get their’s.”
Thank You, LORD for that promise!!
Thanks for sharing.
I have prayed for years that the Village of Hope would get some national exposure some how some way. I feel like my prayers have been answered through your family. This is truly a priceless story.
Thanks for the link MC! I look forward to watching the Oprah interview.
Fred, Tommy, and many others are doing an amazing work at the Village of Hope.
DU
TAlk about being conflicted!! Oprah is certainly NOT one of my favorite shows to watch. I’ve great concerns about the overwhelming influence she has on in particular, women’s opinions, buying habits, “spiritual” thinking, marital opinions and life styles, etc. However, definitely would want to see your brother and sister-in-law, et al.
Maybe the presence of true believers on her show will have positive impact and dilute some of Oprah’s New Age stuff.
So glad this story is getting exposure! I loved reading how God led your family to Cambodia through a friend in Arkansas. Can you imagine now what wouldn’t have happened if the girl’s soccer team had needed those new uniforms???
Maybe your family will inspire others to try to seek to love and help others, even through grief. Your nephew could not be memorialized any better way! May God continue to bless them in their efforts to help children all over the world!
Thanks for introducing me to the work of your family and to the link to The Village of Hope. I have been in contact with Fred Asare and we are in the process of setting up pen pals with the high risk students that I teach and the children at The Village of Hope. What a journey these people are making. I look forward to the Oprah show so that I can tape it & show it to our students. Thank you for giving us this information.
I read the story in our Tucson paper this morning. I don’t take the paper anymore because I spend so much time reading blogs, but I was subbing today and the teacher had it in her room.Great story. I will be looking forward to Oprah. Let us know when it airs.
I serve on the board of a faith based after school literacy program and boy do I need more courage to go out and raise money. Your sister in law just gave me a jolt. Please let us know when the Oprah show runs.
I love Oprah as well…I’d give the woman a kidney.
Thank God for the national exposure that is coming to this issue. Slavery and human trafficking is a major problem in our day, and one that is largely ignored in the west. It has to stop.
Mike, I’ve been behind on blog reading since the weekend, but picked up the NY Times while getting coffee yesterday and caught the story. Our God is indeed an awesome God, and he has some tremendous servants doing his work. Beautiful.
“In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.” Mt. 5:16 NLT
Can you give the web address again for “Touch a Life”? I had it, but now when I try to go to the site, there’s nothing there. I was really interested in what Randy & Pam Cope were doing.
The Oprah follow-up on the VOH children is supposed to air on Friday, February 9.
Thanks, CK. There is a link to the right on my blog.
February 5, 2007
Building a Memorial to a Son, One Child at a Time
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Seven years ago, Pam Cope owned a hair salon in Neosho, a tiny southwest Missouri town, and her husband, Randy, had just been appointed vice president of a company that ran a string of newspapers there and in neighboring states.
Their lives revolved around their son’s baseball games, their daughter’s dance lessons and trips to places like Walt Disney World.
“My world was very small,” Mrs. Cope said in a telephone interview in late January from Neosho, where she still lives. “I was pretty shallow.”
Few would say that today.
Early last month, Mrs. 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, Mark Kwadwo, 6, had labored in dire conditions under a brutal fisherman who beat him when he did not get up at midnight to bail out canoes.
Working with a small Ghanaian charity, Mrs. Cope paid $3,600 to free the children and found them a new home in an orphanage near Accra, the capital. After years of privation, the children were dumbstruck by the plentiful breakfast served at the orphanage, caregivers there said.
Mrs. 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, with its cozy peach and green decor, is a dim memory. Mrs. 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 reckoning, 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.
Mrs. Cope says that work has brought new meaning to a life that was once far more circumscribed. But her motivation lies elsewhere: by helping children abroad, the Copes sought to create a legacy for their son, Jantsen, who died in June 1999, unexpectedly, of an undetected heart ailment.
Jantsen was an athletic, fun-loving 15-year-old, the first baseman on a local team, excited about the prospect of high school. With his death, “we were instantly transformed into different people,” Mrs. Cope said. “We couldn’t resume normal life. We already knew that.”
It took the Copes about a year to find their new focus. Jantsen’s funeral was the start. In lieu of flowers, the they asked for donations to a memorial fund in his name.
The fund accumulated a surprising $25,000, and the Copes searched for how best to spend it in Neosho, a town of about 11,000. They thought of buying new uniforms for the girls’ soccer team, but discovered that it already had money for that. They considered buying new playground equipment for the parks, but that did not seem to be a crying need either.
“It got to the point it was almost comical,” Mrs. Cope said. “All the doors were closed. That’s when we decided that God had very specific plans for this money and that our money should be spent overseas.”
They finally offered the money to Arkansas friends who were building orphanages in Vietnam and went there to see the work under way. That changed their lives: they adopted two orphaned babies. An additional 45 children are now cared for in shelters with their organization’s support. In Cambodia, they help finance a shelter for families suffering from AIDS-related illness.
Mrs. Cope, 44, and her husband, who is still a publishing company executive, run the organization together. They make a monthly contribution from their income. He keeps track of the accounts. She makes the rounds of churches and service clubs and chooses the projects.
Initially, she found fund-raising stressful. “I would speak to 400 or 500 people, and nobody would give me any money,” she said. Then, she said, she decided she could only try to be a voice for children in crisis, not control the reaction. Now she views the balance sheet with equanimity.
“Money comes from places I never expect, and places I expect to get money from I don’t,” she said. “Part of my message is, you don’t have to have tons of money, but you have to have a willing heart.”
Hers was touched Oct. 29 by the plight of Ghanaian children who were forced to labor up to 14 hours a day for fishermen on Lake Volta. The Copes read an article in The New York Times that day about how the child workers in fishing villages around Kete Krachi were deprived of necessities, schooling and freedom.
The International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental group that fights child trafficking, was planning a long-term rescue project there. Late in January, working with officials from the Ministry of Women and Children in Ghana, it secured the freedom of 25 children, its first group from Kete Krachi.
But Mrs. Cope did not want to wait to see if the International Organization for Migration would come through. Working from her home in November, she teamed up with a Kete Krachi schoolteacher, George Achibra, and a Dutch volunteer, Paul van den Bosch. The men run Pacodep, a small nonprofit group in Ghana. It also aids International Organization for Migration programs.
Mr. Achibra and Mr. van den Bosch negotiated with the employers of seven children, offering to pay for new nets, boat repairs and other needs in exchange for the children’s freedom. The two tracked down the parents of those children. All of the destitute parents agreed in writing that their children should be cared for at a Christian-run orphanage called The Village of Hope, Mr. van den Bosch said.
Four days before Christmas, the children arrived by bus at the orphanage. Caregivers said one girl was so fearful of going hungry that she filled a bag with leftovers from other children’s plates. Few of the children had had any schooling. All now attend school.
When Mrs. Cope visited in January, she found Mark Kwadwo a transformed child — reveling in piggyback rides, spaghetti and his new school uniform.
“To hear him giggle,” she wrote by e-mail, “was priceless.”