Friends, just an encouragement to join-in on IJM’s Global Prayer Gathering this weekend from wherever you are. If you are not one of the nearly 1,000 people joining in person here in the DC Area, you can connect through our live-stream and live-blog presence all throughout the weekend. Hope you’ll join!
We have just about hit max-capacity for this year’s IJM Global Prayer Gathering - if you are still thinking about attending and have questions, please quickly send an email to . We will soon be closing registration and moving to a wait-list.
IJM Field Office Directors from 17 cities world-wide are eagerly preparing to fly to DC next month for this time of prayer and worship with you. We are also grateful to be led this year by IJM friends Sara Groves, Lamont Hiebert (of Ten Shekel Shirt and Love146), and Andy Crouch alongside Gary Haugen, Sharon Cohn Wu, and other IJM staff.
Hope to see you April 9-11 for this indescribable experience of meeting with our God.
Planning to be there? Would love to hear from you in the comments below. Been before? What are you most looking forward to about coming again?
Friends, I am so thrilled to let you know that we have experienced an unprecedented breakthrough in our work in one of our South Asia anti-sex trafficking offices. If you were with us at the Global Prayer Gathering last spring, you will remember spending an evening focused on the work of justice in a particularly dark and violent city. This week we have experienced an important victory in that city and we believe your work of prayer has been a great catalyst. One of the major figures in that local trafficking network, a particularly violent criminal accused of murder, gang rape, and other forms of deadly brutality, has been arrested. This particular arrest has now resulted in significant information about other key trafficking figures and we expect it will lead to the rescue of many, many more victims of commercial sexual exploitation. Again, this breakthrough is completely unprecedented for our work in this city.
Please continue to join us in earnest prayer for this situation and this place.
- Pray for wisdom and integrity for the local officials as they proceed in this case. They have been inspirational partners to us in this past week and we are so grateful for their collaboration.
- Pray for healing for those victims who are now in aftercare and for rescue for those who still await it.
- Pray that the trafficking network would begin to crumble and this city would experience significant transformation.
- And pray that God would change the hearts of those who intend great evil and harm.
Again we would love to offer our team in this city your prayers and words of encouragement through the comments below.
A few news pieces of note today, including global urgencies as well as press coverage of participants from IJM’s GPG and Advocacy day (thanks Ted Haddock (copyright) for the great action shot of Sara and Troy Groves, Susie Larson, and IJM staffers on Capitol Hill):
CM Spin - Sara Groves: “’I’m appreciative that IJM is not only at the forefront of confronting this issue, but that they give us the tools and empowerment to take our advocacy to the next level,’ says Groves. ‘Speaking directly to our leaders from Minnesota about the importance of ending the trafficking of minors gave me renewed hope in our ability to influence real change.’”
Fredricksburg Freelance Star - Six IJM supporters from the University of Mary Washington attended the Global Prayer Gathering and advocated for the Child Protection Act in Washington, D.C. earlier this month.
All Africa.com - The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) yesterday requested the court to give a life sentence to former Cabinet Director in the Rwandan Interior Ministry, Callixte Kalimanzira
CNN - At least 24 people have died and three others have been seriously injured in clashes between local residents and members of an outlawed Kenyan sect, authorities said Tuesday.
Whether you joined us in person, prayed from afar, participated in the LiveBlog, or are simply wondering what the Global Prayer Gathering is, we hope that you’ll enjoy this handful of photos, courtesy of photographers Ted Haddock and Brian Tropiano (copyright IJM) from this powerful time of prayer and worship two weeks ago (March 27-29).
Click “read more” to see the batch. And let us know your thoughts from the weekend, comments on the LiveBlog experience, or anything else that may come to mind related to your experience of joining us in prayer, year-round, for this work. We are very grateful for you.
More photos from GPG 2009…
Whether you were able to join us in person for GPG09 or not, you’ll probably enjoy the fantastic photos our team captured throughout the weekend. Ted Haddock is sorting through the thousands and we’ll be sharing the best shots with you here on the blog next week.
In the meantime, check-out the archives from GPG Live - there are photos embedded in some of the live blogging sessions, and some great raw/unproduced video footage of Lamont, Sara Groves, our VP of Investigations, and other speakers. Let us know what you think! http://www.ijminstitute.org/index.php/gpglive
The Global Prayer Gathering is drawing nigh and our office is buzzing with preparations and excitement. The directors of each field office - Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Peru, Honduras, Bolivia, Guatemala, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Kenya, Zambia, Rwanda, Uganda, even Ecuador (not yet launched) will begin arriving here in DC in just a few days.
Had a fantastic conversation with Sara Groves last night, putting some final details together for her special leadership role on Saturday night of the GPG, and have been loving the plans Lamont has been putting together for worship throughout the weekend.
What are your favorite worship songs (of any artist) these days, and why? What songs by either Sara or Lamont are you particularly inspired by?
P.S.: Are you on Twitter? Would love it if you start tweeting about the GPG using this marker: #GPG09 - whether you’ll be joining us in person or remotely.
It’s been a fascinating expedition across sub-cultures over the past month: as I finished up my conversations at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland I transitioned back to the States and soon found myself in the classical pulpit of American evangelicalism—Moody Church in Chicago. Interesting juxtaposition of contexts:
In both places I noted from many a sense of old worlds passing and new, uncertain futures unfolding (ready or not).
There was also, in both places, an emerging word of conviction that the ancient virtue of “justice” must somehow be at the foundation of any good tomorrow.
The next big stop for me is IJM’s Global Prayer Gathering. I hope many of you will come join me and our leaders from the field, as well as Lamont Hiebert/Ten Shekel Shirt and Sara Groves. I’m so very grateful to all of you who join with us in prayer day by day from locations across the globe - the most recent outpouring of prayer for the rescue operation in South Asia was just staggering. And the upcoming opportunity for us to join together in person at the GPG is, for me, the most powerful homecoming of the eternal mysteries of prayer and the daily, dirt-under-your-fingernails fight for justice in the real world. Come and dig in with us. I doubt you have experienced anything quite like it.
Year after year it can feel harder and harder to connect at Christmastime with the deep mysteries of Christ’s birth, of God’s choice to come to earth, to take on human flesh, to come into our suffering, to meet with us, to bring healing to the nations… The reasons for our heart’s distraction from this beauty are many, but sometimes something as simple as a song written in holy surrender can float by our ears and draw us back to the wonder of Emmanuel - God with us.
This is precisely what I’ve experienced over the past 16 hours since I opened Sara Groves’ new Christmas album - an awakening from the distraction, an invitation into holy wonder. Sara is an artist partner with us (and dedicates the fourth (and title) song on this album to our work).
Sara, thank you for the way you let God use you to draw us to truth, beauty and blazing hope, even in the darkness of injustice and oppression.
International Justice Mission is a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local governments to ensure victim rescue, to prosecute perpetrators and to strengthen the community and civic factors that promote functioning public justice systems.
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