To bring good news to the poor … to proclaim release to the captives …
Luke 4:18

Abuk Bak was twelve years old when Arab militiamen from Northern Sudan raided her village in southern Sudan. Although slavery was abolished in Sudan in 1898, it has returned. Abuk Bak became a slave in 1987.

International Ministries has been active in anti-slavery efforts from its earliest days.

• America’s first Baptist foreign missionary was George Liele, a freedman who sailed to Jamaica in 1782. His ministry to enslaved Jamaicans began thirty-two years before our mission society was organized.

• Lott Carey purchased his own freedom and then pioneered our mission in Africa in 1820. Carey died in Liberia from a tragic gunpowder explosion while preparing a defense against an attacking slave ship.

• When our mission society refused to appoint slaveholders as missionaries in 1844, many southern churches withdrew support and formed their own convention.

• In the 1890s our missionaries were among the first to raise protest against King Leopold of Belgium’s use of slavery in Congo.

• American Baptist missionary Mary Ann Clagget traveled through Siberia in 1919 documenting the locations of some 5,000 Japanese women trafficked into sex slavery.

• The plight of women enslaved in the brothels of Thailand was made public as early as the 1960s by Paul and Elaine Lewis. Lauran Bethell helped form the New Life Center in 1987 to rescue and care for these women.

God is calling American Baptists into the anti-slavery struggle in our day, and our missionaries are leading the way. About one tenth of our missionaries are already active in some aspect of the work against human trafficking and entrapment of people in prostitution. As our missionaries help captives find physical freedom, they also bring the good news of God’s love and freedom for soul, mind and spirit. So we rejoice as a woman set free from prostitution in the Czech Republic tells our missionaries, “Thank you for being here. You are the only ones who see us with God’s eyes.” We praise God for six rescued women in Bangkok who recently declared their faith in Christ through baptism.

Is God calling you to get involved? See www.internationalministries.org for more information on slavery and human trafficking in our world today. Pray that the Holy Spirit will show the ways to fight against this evil. Pray with International Ministries as we seek to appoint more missionaries called by Jesus Christ to bring the good news while working for release of the captives.

Reid S. Trulson