Answered Prayer > Maya Gebala out of Intensive Care

 

This is answered prayer, but there is still much need for more prayer for Maya.

Tumbler Ridge shooting survivor, Maya Gebala, out of intensive care

By Amy Judd  Global News

Posted March 31, 2026 6:36 pm

 Updated March 31, 2026 6:50 pm

 2 min read

Maya Gebala, a survivor of the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting, is out of the intensive care unit.

Her father posted an update on Facebook on Tuesday saying that Monday was a big day for the family.

“We transitioned out of the ICU into a more recovery and rehab-focused unit, and it’s now been 26 hours since Maya’s EVD was removed for the second time,” David Gebala wrote.

An external ventricular drain (EVD) is a temporary neurosurgical catheter placed in the brain’s ventricles to drain cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) or blood, reducing dangerous pressure, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Gebala says that so far, everything is looking positive for Maya as she doesn’t seem to be in as much pain and they are starting to see more energy and colour come back in her complexion.

“She’s still not a fan of the boot for the pressure sore on her heel, doing her best to kick it off whenever she can, but her movements are becoming much more intentional,” Gebala said.

0:33Maya Gebala’s family receives offer from UFC president

He said they are slowly making some progress, but the biggest moment came when the occupational therapist and physiotherapist came into Maya’s room on Tuesday and with their help, Maya was able to sit up on the edge of the bed.

“This was huge for two reasons,” Gebala wrote.

“First, she was using her own muscles to help support herself (with assistance), and second… I was finally able to wrap my arms around my daughter. Really wrap my arms around her and hold her tight.

“I can’t even begin to put into words what that hug felt like. All I wanted in that moment was to lift her up, hold her close, and never let go.”

Maya, 12, has been in the hospital since the Feb. 10 shooting in Tumbler Ridge in which eight people, including the shooter, died.

Five Young Girls Rescued from Online Child-porn

Five girls between 9-12 years old are safe after being rescued this week from a home in a Filipino slum that had been turned into a cybersex trafficking hotspot

Another answered prayer

Girl is so young and small her rescuer has no problem carrying her with one arm

"I am afraid sometimes when there’s a camera in front of me because I know that it’s bad,” Michella* told a social worker who provided support on the rescue operation.

Children were allegedly being sexually abused for the purpose of producing online child pornography. This crime is a quickly growing phenomenon as high speed internet coverage expands globally. 

The Filipino National Bureau of Investigation’s (NBI) anti-trafficking unit called IJM for help with logistics during the operation and taking care of the young girls.

The operation began early the next morning.

The rescue team rushed into a house in a slum area marred by prostitution, theft and drugs. They found girls waving at a camera attached to the computer. Another sex-abuse show was about to begin. But before anything could happen, the girls were rescued.

One girl explained to authorities that she and the other girls had been asked to stand in front of the computer, remove their clothes, and put on a "show” at least five other times. She said she could see the face of "an old American man” on the computer.

Another girl said she had also been put in front of the camera since 2014. Her relatives were two of the three suspects arrested during the operation.

Taguig slums

Most of the children were shy and afraid to share information about what had been going on behind closed doors, in front of a webcam. This is unsurprising given their young age and the trauma they have endured.

The children are now at a temporary shelter where they will receive crisis care. IJM social workers will remain with them and help them transfer to a longer-term aftercare home for survivors of trafficking and abuse.

"This rescue highlights the significant impact that law enforcement agencies can have in combatting the online sexual exploitation of children when they work together,” says IJM Senior Attorney Lisa Guevara-Garcia, commending the joint efforts of the law enforcement agencies.

IJM will track the legal case and help bring charges against the three suspects arrested, and provide ongoing aftercare to the survivors.

Evidence of the abuse and violence was collected during the operation, but building a strong legal case will take time. Lisa adds that today she is more determined than ever to take on this battle knowing that "rescue means these five girls now have the chance to rediscover their childhood, free from fear and abuse.”

*A pseudonym

Girl Found Naked and Half-Dead in the Snow Awakes, Smiling and Asking for Santa

Some really good news for a change:

The six-year-old Alberta girl who was nearly beaten to death on the Paul Band First Nation awoke on Christmas Day and asked for Santa Claus, family members say. 

The girl had been unconscious since she was found lying naked and severely injured on the reserve west of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on Dec 20.

More than 100 people from Paul Band huddled together on Christmas Day near the property where the girl was found to hold a candlelight vigil to pray for her recovery. Members of the girl's family sang through their tears, asking the Creator to watch over her.

Elder Kirby Bird told the group that their prayers were being answered.

“The prayers that you have been doing over these past couple of days has brought the spirit back in [the little girl],” he said.

“Just the other day, when I was there, I could see the beauty in her face and the glow.”

A family member said the girl is still a long way from recovery, but her smile is encouraging.

James Clifford Paul, 21, is charged with kidnapping, sexual assault and attempted murder.

He's set for a court appearance Jan. 7.

We thank God for answered prayer and ask that you keep praying for her physical and emotional recovery.

Man Finds Jesus; Confesses to Child Sex Abuse

A Muskogee, Oklahoma man was arrested Sunday when he showed up at police headquarters, told police he had found Jesus and turned himself in for sexually assaulting a child.

Robert Adam Smith

Robert Adam Smith, 40, was booked into the Muskogee County/City Detention Facility on complaints of abuse/neglect/exploitation or sexual abuse of a child; forcible sodomy; first-degree rape; lewd or indecent proposals or acts to child under 16, said Cpl. Michael Mahan.

“He came to the police department and approached a couple of our officers on the east side of the building in the parking lot and said he wanted to turn himself in,” Mahan said. “He admitted to sexually assaulting a child for the past several years.”

Smith has been cooperating with police.

“He said he found Jesus and said he wanted to confess his sins,” Mahan said.

The Oklahoma Department of Human Services also has been notified.

This could be an answer to prayer; most likely is an answer to someone's prayer. It is testimony to the radical change that comes over a person when Jesus enters their life. It's real! Do you know of anything else that would cause a man to spontaneously confess to being a pedophile?

The Remarkable Story of Gus, Apostle to the Andes

Only once before have I posted the same story on both of my blogs, but this one is well worth it.

Over the past week or so, I have begun to realize that only by major acts of God can child sex abuse be significantly reduced. It is so incredibly prevalent all over the world. 

35 million children, 30 million of them girls, are sexually abused every year globally. Most are repeatedly abused resulting in the total number of child sexual abuses rising into the hundreds of millions, and possibly billions over an 18 year generation.

To my mind, significantly reducing CSA is completely impossible the way we are going about it. But, with God, anything is possible. 

The following story gives me hope that it is possible to do what seems almost impossible. Gus is a friend of mine with a remarkable story of God's leading and provision. Please read and pass it on.

Gus, Apostle to the Andes

La Paz, Bolivia

Gustave Schlamp, was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, in November of 1941, but was raised in the small logging town of Vanderhoof, in central British Columbia, Canada. He remained in Vanderhoof and worked in the forest industry for twenty five years, and another two years in Edson, Alberta.

From those humble beginnings, Gus could never have imagined that he would one day be responsible, in partnership with God, for delivering the Gospel to 7,000,000 people.

Life was good for Gus. He met and married a beautiful woman named Martha, and they began having children.

One Saturday, Gus was in town where he bumped into an acquaintance who was a night watchman at a sawmill. They weren't that acquainted with each other, but they knew each other somewhat and had a casual chat.

Monday morning, while Gus was working in the bush, word came from town that the mill where this man was a watchman burned down, and the night watchman died of a heart attack. He was somewhere in his 50s, but he dropped dead.

This really shook Gus up as he began to question the meaning of life and the meaning of death. His questions soon led him to the Bible where he found the answers and committed his life to Jesus Christ. Gus was 31 when he received the assurance of salvation; he had been married about ten years.

Gus wasn’t long going to Bible College even though he had a wife and children. He graduated from Prairie Bible Institute in beautiful, downtown Three Hills, Alberta, in 1980. He then returned to his first occupation – logging. Soon, child number six was born.

Gus Schlamp and some schoolchildren

Gus’ marital relationship deteriorated over the years to the point of an official divorce in the year 2000, after which he retired. But divorce and retirement left Gus experiencing a very empty life. Also, he didn’t feel that in his case he had a right to start another relationship.

Determined to start life over again, Gus didn’t move down the road, or to another part of B.C., He decided that he was going to do it in another country, Gus investigated Costa Rica. However, he ended up moving to Bolivia where he bought ‘farm’ land consisting of 247 acres of heavy jungle, with a river bordering the north end, and a lake on the south end. He then bought a bulldozer and built seven kms of road to the property.

The first year he lived in a tent under a straw roof, in the yard of the people from whom he bought the land. After the road was built and some clearing done, Gus built his house, shop and garage all under one large metal roof. He then started clearing the jungle and planting rice. He also had some pasture with cattle.

During his time on the farm, Gus attended a Spanish church in a village called Santa Maria 20 km away. But to get there he had to reach the main highway, which meant crossing the river by ferry for the first 2 1⁄2 years before a nice bridge was built.

For about six years, Gus developed his farm quite successfully, but during this time he became rather concerned about the salvation of the many children throughout Bolivia. When he would see children the question that would always come to mind was this: “What opportunity will these children ever have to come to know God and His eternal salvation?”

The Lord developed that question to a very specific call and led Gus into His ministry to bring the Word of God to all the public schools throughout Bolivia.

About the end of those six years, Gus found that had some of the Lord’s funds on hand, tithe money that he hadn’t yet disbursed, and he did not know where to designate it. Then it came to mind that he should purchase some children’s Bible story books and give one to each family in his church. He did.

After that, he felt like the Lord was saying, (that’s fine but there are more children). So he thought maybe he should do this to other churches as well. But then the question came to mind saying, “Gus, why do you only think of the children in church?”.

That question hit fairly hard because Gus felt that the Lord wanted him to do this over all of Bolivia, and that was a much bigger project than he could even imagine. There were so many questions like; where would the material come from, where would the funds come from to purchase the material, how would it get distributed, what material should be distributed?

While thinking on all this the Lord gave him the Bible verse: 1 Thessalonians 5:24 “Faithful is He who calls you who also will do it”. By now you have probably figured out that Gus doesn’t do anything half-way; perhaps that’s why God chose him for this great challenge. So, Gus sold his farm and all that he had and bought a vehicle to transport the material. He also purchased two apartments for rental purposes to generate some income, and he rented a room together with a secure car garage in the city of Santa Cruz.

Then he ordered 500 children’s Bible Story Books from Ohio, USA for $700.  Gus distributed these to schoolchildren and teachers in a town north of Santa Cruz called Rurenabaque where he had done a survey to get an idea of the number of students in schools. Gus was very excited to have completed such a neat project, but the feeling was very short lived.

Unloading a container of booklets

After some time, a friend came from Paraguay with some written material and asked Gus if he could store it in his garage for a while. Two weeks later, the friend asked if Gus had looked at the material yet which he had not, but as he looked at it he knew immediately this was what he was looking for, what he was needing, and it just happened to be in his garage.

This was enough to give him a really good start. Montero was a smaller town North of Santa Cruz where he knew a pastor who was very excited about this mission. He would provide him with a bed for the night and also arrange for either himself or another pastor to go with him for the day as he distributed the booklets. During this process he met up with many pastors, and this is where he met with Rene Estevez Ordonez who has been with this work ever since.

Following up on where the material came from, Gus found that David Klassen from Canada was instrumental in directing the material to Paraguay from World Missionary Press and was more than willing to arrange for us to receive this material as well.

Gus soon realized that his funds would run out and that funds would have to come in from outside sources. Therefore, he felt the need to make himself accountable somehow and, so, developed a board of directors consisting of some Canadians and some Bolivianos.

He also realized that support would likely come from Canada and, so, he also formed a board in Canada consisting of persons who have been in Bolivia and have seen the work first hand. Since then they have become a charitable organization known as Next Generation Ministries Inc. (NGM).

NGM is committed to the following ministries in Bolivia:

Bolivian Board

1. Presenting the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every school, student and teacher.

2. Work together with evangelical pastors to bring this about.

3. Supply each student with the Word of God.

4. Supply each teacher with Bible study booklets.

5. Encourage these helping pastors to follow up on all these students and teachers.

The country schools only go to grade six. This means that every six years they will all be new students. So it would be good to cover Bolivia every three to six years.

What do the materials consist of and how are they produced?

The material is in booklet form and it is mostly Scripture. Actually it is the Bible in condensed form with all the major doctrines of the Gospel. They are printed and shipped for free from WMP (World Missions Press).
 

This is the cover and second page of the booklet.

NGM’s access to Bibles has been very limited, but when they have Bibles or New Testaments they try to leave at least one with each school and, if possible, with each teacher. Their next shipment is going to have 1,250,000 Scripture Booklets.

What has happened as a result of this mission in Bolivia?

Since this mission started in 2005 the gospel has been presented to more than 7,000,000 teachers and students, and will soon exceed 7,000,000. Almost every schoolchild and teacher in Bolivia has received the booklet. Today NGM has workers in Cobija, Trinidad, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, La Paz and Sucre.

Recently the door has opened to Peru, but with our existing mission, we are not able to use funds that are given to NGM for the work in Peru.

NGM has contacted WMP who are contemplating shipping a small container to Lima, Peru, if Gus can coordinate the work there to unload and distribute the material. As of this writing, WMP are still considering the Lima project.

This container of Scripture booklets would be placed into the hands of the Assemblies of God, which is a very large organization in Peru. Gus spoke to a leading pastor in Lima who told him that he has the oversight of 6,000 pastors in Peru. So, it appears that they have all their workers in place and will make good use of the material, with God’s blessing.

Recent events
This summer (2015) Gus made a trip into northern BC and Alberta to secure more funding for the ministry. He spoke in churches and small groups and found many new supporters. However, when Gus returned home (Abbotsford, BC) he realized that he was $1000 short of his target. The next morning a check for $1000 showed up in the mail. God does this kind of stuff all the time with Gus.

His co-workers in Bolivia received a large container of scriptures that was destined for the hard-to-reach northern part of Bolivia. Roads are poor and often impassable in rainy season. They had been given a quote of $3000 for shipping the scriptures by truck to the north. While Gus was raising the money here in Canada, his co-worker in Bolivia found a trucking company that travels to the north every day, and they were willing to deliver the scriptures for $400. Consequently, the ministry can afford to replace a badly needed computer in Bolivia and pay the full-time employees. It's amazing how God provides to those doing His work.

It is just amazing how God can use one humble but determined man to begin and run a work whereby the Gospel reaches 7,000,000 people – perhaps an entire generation of an entire country have the opportunity to receive the assurance of salvation in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Is it any wonder that they call him the Apostle of the Andes.

But Gus would want to make sure you know that this is not a story about him; it’s a story of what God can do, and he would give Him all the glory which is right. But I would like to point out that for God to glorify Himself He needs servants who listen, are willing, have faith, and are courageous. Gus is such a man. God bless him.

If you would like to be a part of this incredible ministry, please visit NGM’s website: www.nextgenerationbolivia.org

 You also have the opportunity to support NGM’s Supplier: www.wmpress.org

400 DarkNet Websites Shut Down by International Cybercrime Teams

Silk Road 2.0 and 400 other sites believed to be selling illegal items including drugs and weapons, and selling child pornography, have been shut down. See also, A Little Light Shines into the Darknet.

The sites operated on the Tor network - a part of the internet unreachable via traditional search engines.

Troels Oerting Head of  EC3
European Cybercrime Centre

The joint operation between 16 European countries and the US saw 17 arrests, including Blake Benthall who is said to be behind Silk Road 2.0.

Experts believe the shutdown represents a breakthrough for fighting cybercrime.

Six Britons were also arrested, including a 20-year-old man from Liverpool, a 19-year-old man from New Waltham, a 30 year-old-man from Cleethorpes and a man and woman, both aged 58, from Aberdovey, Wales.

All were interviewed and bailed according to the National Crime Agency.

Tor, as well as hosting legitimate sites, is home to thousands of illegal marketplaces, trading in drugs, child abuse images as well as sites for extremist groups.

Analysis: Rory Cellan-Jones, technology correspondent

It was the operation last year to take down the drugs marketplace Silk Road which was the first major success in the battle against criminal use of the dark net.

Now this much bigger operation involving global cooperation amongst law enforcement agencies sees that battle taken to a new level, with Silk Road 2.0 amongst 400 sites closed.

It's important to remember that the dark net isn't all about illegal activity. Indeed its best known tool the anonymising browser Tor was created by a US intelligence agency to help its operations and to assist people living under repressive regimes.

Last year, many predicted that shutting one online drugs bazaar - and arresting its alleged owner Ross William Ulbricht - would not make a lot of difference, with plenty more rushing to fill the gap.

Now this much bigger operation may signal that the authorities have developed new techniques to track down the origins of these networks and those behind them.

Still, the number of arrests may be telling - 400 sites closed, but just 17 arrests. That would suggest there is a lot of work still to be done.


Silk Road 2.0 - which launched in October last year - is one of the most notorious and deals in the buying and selling of illegal drugs.

It was resurrected after the original Silk Road site was shut down and its alleged owner arrested.

'Serious organised crime'

The operation also saw the seizure of Bitcoins worth approximately $1m (£632,000).

"Today we have demonstrated that, together, we are able to efficiently remove vital criminal infrastructures that are supporting serious organised crime," said Troels Oerting, head of Europol's European cybercrime centre.

"And we are not 'just' removing these services from the open internet; this time we have also hit services on the dark net using Tor where, for a long time, criminals have considered themselves beyond reach," he added.

The BBC understands that the raid represented both a technological breakthrough - with police using new techniques to track down the physical location of dark net servers - as well as seeing an unprecedented level of international co-operation among law enforcement agencies.

                Sign that appeared on seized sites

The so-called deep web - the anonymous part of the internet - is estimated to be anything up to 500 times the size of the surface web.

Within that experts refer to the dark net - the part of the network which Tor operates on. There are approximately three million Tor users but the number of sites may be smaller.

Prof Alan Woodward a security consultant from the University of Surrey who also advises Europol, said that the shutdown represents a new era in the fight against cybercrime.

"Tor has long been considered beyond the reach of law enforcement. This action proves that it is neither invisible nor untouchable," he said.

But, he added, it did not mean copycat sites would not spring up, or that the police had thrown light on the dark net.


Explainer: What is Tor?

Tor is a special part of the internet that requires software, known as the Tor Browser bundle, to access it.

The name is an acronym for The Onion Router - just as there are many layers to the vegetable, there are many layers of encryption on the network.

It was originally designed by the US Naval Research Laboratory, and continues to receive funding from the US State Department.

It attempts to hide a person's location and identity by sending data across the internet via a very circuitous route involving several "nodes" - which, in this context, means using volunteers' PCs and computer servers as connection points.

Encryption applied at each hop along this route makes it very hard to connect a person to any particular activity.

To the website that ultimately receives the request, it appears as if the data traffic comes from the last computer in the chain - known as an "exit relay" - rather than the person responsible.

Tor hides a user's identity by routing their traffic through a series of other computers
As well as allowing users to visit normal websites anonymously, it can also be used to host hidden sites, which use the .onion suffix.

Tor's users include the military, law enforcement officers and journalists - who use it as a way of communicating with whistle-blowers - as well as members of the public who wish to keep their browser activity secret.

But it has also been associated with illegal activity, allowing people to visit sites offering illegal drugs for sale and access to child abuse images, which do not show up in normal search engine results and would not be available to those who did not know where to look.

Congratulations to the many, many, good people who worked on this project. Who knows how many lives you saved and children you saved from sexual abuse? Now, if the various justice systems will take these 17 cases seriously enough to put the people responsible away for a long time, it might begin to discourage a few others. God bless you; you are an answer to my prayers.

Gang Violence Driving Central Americans To Make Perilous Journey To New Life in US

'Welcome' to Laredo, Texas

Tens of thousands of women and children from Central America are risking robbery, sexual abuse and death as they make the journey to a new life in the US.

Drug gangs have destroyed people's homes in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and victims are fleeing for their lives by foot, bus, car, train, boat, or by any means necessary.

US president Barack Obama has declared this flood of children a "humanitarian crisis".

At an emergency shelter in Laredo, Texas a group of Central Americans - two women and two boys - are clutching their temporary asylum papers.

They have just been released from a white van with no windows, used by the Department of Immigration to transport migrants, and this is their first hour of freedom on American soil.

Days earlier, after crossing the Rio Grande river from Mexico, they were captured by US authorities and have been held in detention until their initial claims can be processed.

Guatemalan immigrant Delmi and her two boys reached Laredo
 after swimming across the Rio Grande river.

A woman - who only wants to be known as Delmi - sorts through piles of donated clothes.

"It's been a month, it's been a month since I had fresh clothes," she said.

She has travelled more than 2,000 kilometres from her home in Guatemala, all with her six-year-old and 20-month-old sons in tow.

The six-year-old cried out "Mama" when he spotted a pair of shoes he would like to keep.

The family heads for the showers where their old clothes will be put in a bin – clothes that were contaminated by the Rio Grande's polluted waters.

Her youngest boy has a rash all across his chest and stomach.

A volunteer helps pack a bag for new arrivals at the Laredo emergency shelter.

"The last part crossing the river is the hardest part, the water wasn't high, but for my children I was scared," said Delmi, with her voice breaking.

"With all my force I kept going, I fell over and got hurt using my body to protect them. We lost all of our things."

Like many others she could no longer risk living with the drug gangs of Guatemala.

"Lots of young people are fleeing from so much violence and nothing will change," she said.

"The gangs threaten to kill the boys unless they join them, they threaten to kill their parents, their sisters.

"The boys will end up being violent as well, that's not what I wanted as a mother."

Delmi is not alone in the risks she has taken.

First shower in weeks: Johanna brushes her hair as she recuperates in the immigrants shelter.

Also getting a fresh start is Johanna, who fled El Salvador just weeks after falling pregnant.

"The father of my child was attacked (by the gangs)," she said.

"They shot him in the shoulder and kept coming to his hairdressing business wanting him to pay them money, that's why we left the country, for our baby as well."

Johanna risked everything riding for hundreds of kilometres on top of a train known as The Beast.

"We made it onto the top of the train to get to Laredo but it didn't stop, my boyfriend got down and when he tried to catch me I fell and hit my stomach," she said.

"I begged God to protect my baby, that was the most important for me and the father was worried, but I didn't bleed thank God [and] eventually the pains went."

Johanna is now three months pregnant and alone because her boyfriend was not as lucky and was held in detention. He may be deported.

Becky Solloa runs Catholic Social Services in Laredo and sees traumatised women and children almost every day.

"A mother had a three-week-old baby and she found herself in neck deep water (crossing the Rio Grande) so she had to swim ... she put it over her head," she said.

"The baby was so flexible that she balanced the baby over her head and she swam across."

Amid these stories of survival there are the tragic tales of deadly border crossings.

"People seeing other people drown is not uncommon," Ms Solloa said.

"A child saw this man fall over the boat and drowned."

She said the trains are equally deadly.

"They worry, 'how can I stop myself from falling off the train? If I relax I can fall off any time'," she said.

"Then there's the hours of walking crossing from Guatemala, crossing mountains, take rafts, tubes to get into Mexico, then walking through the deserts. It's perilous and dangerous."
Ms Solloa said charitable services like her own offer much-needed hope for exhausted immigrants.

"As they come in they're pretty depleted. After a few hours [with us] they see a future, they see a goodness," she said.

"Our volunteers, our staff, things begin to change for them pretty quickly."

Across the Rio Grande

Nuevo Laredo in Mexico is the last stop for many seeking asylum before entering the US.

Drug cartels once fought for its streets but now gangs target immigrants, kidnapping them and ransoming them off to family.

American and Mexican Catholic bishops from 10 border towns have met at a local hotel to discuss the abuse of the migrants.

"They're coming in such large numbers because they have nowhere else to go, they're fleeing," Bishop Mark Seitz, of El Paso in Texas, said.

"They're not just looking for an opportunity to have a bigger house or better car.

"They're leaving without preparation, selling their houses and coming because they feel that if they stay they will die, or be raped ... in their country of origin."
Bishop Seitz said he has seen evidence more than half the women and girls on the journey are sexually abused.

"I've met a large number of children between 12 and 15 who are pregnant by the time they get to the United States," he said.

Gustavo Rodriguez Vega, Bishop of Nuevo Laredo in Mexico,
says "children are treated like criminals"

When the ABC visited Nuevo Laredo, bishops joined locals for a march through the city's streets to a special mass on the banks of the Rio Grande.

It is surreal that across the brown deadly waters is the United States – less than a 50-metre swim.

The US border patrol's air boat patrols up and down the river, while heavily armed agents maintain a vigilant watch.

 Border patrol boat on the Rio Grande River

As the mass began the names of those who most recently died trying to cross the river are read.

There is also anger amongst the clergy at the treatment of those who do make it to the US.

"I think it's a big big crisis, even more in the United States where the children are treated like criminals," Bishop of Nuevo Laredo Gustavo Rodriguez Vega said.

"And all the churches - Catholic and other churches - are working for these children.

"They are innocents. They are going out from their countries because they are menaced to death, they are going out looking for the life, unfortunately they find injustice everywhere."

Bishops lead a mass on the banks of the Rio Grande River in Nuevo Laredo.

Bishop Seitz and his American colleagues have implored Washington to change its attitude.

"The United States has been challenging other countries on refugees, countries like Honduras for instance which is the second most dangerous place in the world to live ... and we don't seem to see that the same rules apply to us," he says.

Mr Obama had flagged that he would bypass Congress and take executive action to change immigration policy.

The reforms could give America's 11 million existing undocumented immigrants expanded relief from deportation and greater access to working legally.

But it became too politicised with this wave of Central Americans seeking asylum.

"If we responded to the need then we could control the border and also care for these people they are not mutually exclusive," Bishop Seitz said.

"When this began I thought that people would see that this is a different reality to the general immigration question which we have to deal with.

"They're fleeing, and they need to be treated differently especially because they're the most vulnerable of people, children and mothers with young children."

Tickets to a new life

Those who survive the perilous border crossing are a beacon for others to follow.

Delmi and her boys have been resting before their next big journey, which begins late at night in the Laredo Texas Greyhound bus terminal.

Johanna also got a ticket.

They have a 48-hour ride ahead of them, and there is no guarantee of a permanent place in the US.

In four weeks they will all have to present to a judge to have their refugee status confirmed, or be deported.

And for every lucky person who makes it this far, there are thousands more along the US border who languish in detention.

This is a very difficult dilemma for American immigration. To open the floodgates means half of Central America would invade the US, including it's gangs. To close it's borders is to ignore the suffering of millions of people at the hands of criminal gangs. That is not what a Christian country does.

So what is the answer? I suggest that the US invest some considerable money and resources into Central America to help the police and military to clean up the streets, and to also invest in job creation and education. I think it would be surprising how little money it would take to turn these countries around and make them livable again.

At some point in this process, some incentives for Central Americans to return home might repatriate many of today's refugees.

It might also help if women and girls in CA knew that the risk of being raped was higher on the journey to the US than it is where they live.

Operation Underground Railroad is Saving Kids from Human Traffickers

Operation Underground Railroad chief executive and founder Tim Ballard walked into the Imperial County Sheriff’s office Thursday night with a young blond woman in tow.

In a meeting room, Ballard, 38, and the young woman sat down. The executive flipped open his laptop. Seated across from Ballard was Imperial County Sheriff’s Sgt. Jimmy Duran. They talked about a few things. About a suspect the sheriffs would arrest the following morning for distributing child pornography. And about the data mining software platform Ballard trained them to use that led to the suspect.

“He brought the technology here that allowed us to make the case. From what I’ve seen, this is a very effective tool for law enforcement. And as a result of using it, we made a good arrest,” Duran said.

As for the young woman who accompanied Ballard to the meeting? Elizabeth Smart, the Salt Lake City teen who was kidnapped from her home in 2002 when she was 14 and spent nine months of living hell as her captors drove her around the country. Smart, now a contributor for ABC news, works closely with the startup.

Ballard calls the software a child protection system (CPS). Incredibly, he and his team had trained the Imperial County Sheriff’s office how to use it the previous week. If they hadn’t, the suspect, who was busted early Friday and charged with possession and distribution of child pornography, would likely have escaped detection.

Ballard, a former CIA veteran and ranking Department of Homeland Security official who ran the agency’s crimes against children unit, is the chief executive for one of the most unusual tech startups you’ve never heard of. Along with social media director Jesse Stay, 28, and operations chief David Barlow, 42, he combs the world with a proprietary CPS data mining software, ferreting out the worst pedophiles and freeing children enslaved by human traffickers.

Laurie Holden - The Walking Dead

A group of people from very different walks of life, including a former CIA agent, two CrossFit instructors, a door-to-door salesman, and an actress who starred in The Walking Dead, teamed up with Colombian authorities to help bust an underage sex trafficking ring, reported ABC News.

Members of Operation Underground Railroad posed as attendees of a bachelor party and arranged to buy underage prostitutes, some as young as 13. While prostitution is legal in Colombia, underage prostitution is not, and those who traffic child sex workers face up to 16 years in prison.

Tim Ballard, founder of the group, told ABC’s Nightline, “I spent 12 years as a special agent, undercover operative for the United States government, doing this, and learned how to do it. The problem was that the vast majority of the kids that we would identify, we couldn’t save. They weren’t US cases.” 

So far, the team has rescued dozens of children and uncovered child trafficking networks in the U.S., Haiti, Nicaragua and now Colombia. Dozens of child sex offenders have been locked up.

The startup was launched last year with $1 million after Ballard left his job with the federal government, seriously turned off by the beauracratic infighting and frequent refusals of his superiors to let him pursue the most heinous of child trafficking cases, many of them abroad but with roots in North America.

“I was being told, many times, ‘no, it is not in the interest of the United States.’ In 95 percent of the cases I was investigating, they said no because the cases couldn’t be tried in U.S. courts. So I left,” Ballard told VentureBeat.

At the heart of OUR is the startup’s data mining platform. The technology acts as a sniffer, which they deploy against networks that child traffickers and pedophiles use to communicate with each other. CPS can monitor communications through ISPs. And through its data mining protocols, Ballard and his team can isolate, and monitor, the most egregious offenders. CPS is open source.

“It’s an extremely important software platform,” Barlow said. “Using it, we’re able to see patterns, find out who the worst offenders are. Once that’s done, we’re able to prioritize who to go after.”

Both Ballard and Barlow declined to be more specific when describing the software platform’s attributes.

If you call OUR a small group of virtual vigilantes, you’d only be half right. The team has trained dozens of police agencies in the U.S. and abroad on how to use the software. When the team virtually locates offenders, they begin their investigation. After making sure the individual or group is their intended target, they head to the airport and fly to that city or country and contact authorities there. They then train them on the use.

“It’s a way to multiply ourselves in other countries so good work can be done,” Barlow said.

When the team, based in Salt Lake City, heads to foreign destinations, they can count on backup and muscle from a number of sources Ballard is friendly with from his days as a spy or his stint at DHS: former special forces operators: SEALS and Green Berets, retired FBI agents, and cops.

“They do it for free. They want to help,” Ballard said.

The team firmly believes in the power of disruptive technology. And they are adapting more of it. Social media director Stay told VentureBeat that they have begun beta testing Google Glass to film raids and takedowns in realtime and simultaneously feed the video, audio, and images to Instagram and other social media platforms. Stay obtained his glass from the Google Glass Explorer program recently.

Ballard with child rescued from a previous operation

Stay has his work cut out for him. The group’s Facebook page only has 35,000 “likes,” too small a number for a group devoted to saving children. Indeed, the startups motto is “We Rescue Children From Sex Slavery. Help Us!” Their website has 128k Likes.

“We will begin using Google Glass to start recording from a first person point of view and then feed the information to social media audiences,” Stay said.

While the OUR team raised a $1 million for the startup, they rely on donations to keep the company going. Details on how to help are listed on their website.

Dangerous pedophiles and those who traffic in children are a serious global problem. The team recently discovered, during an investigation in Haiti, that members of a church group in that impoverished country were selling children for $15,000 a piece and then shipping them by boat to customers in Miami.

Those engaged in the odious behavior now have another reason to look over their shoulders, thanks to OUR.

And they are watching.

“Once you share a file, I know who you are because this is your ISP,” Barlow said.

Back in Imperial County, east of San Diego, the hit on the suspected pedophile’s house went down Friday morning like clockwork. Sheriff’s deputies kicked in the door and a few minutes later marched the suspect out in handcuffs. He was placed into a car and taken to the nearby jail, where he was booked on multiple child pornography counts. The suspect was still being processed late Friday.

For Imperial County Sheriff Sgt. Jimmy Duran, the software was the key factor in the investigation and subsequent arrest. Police had no idea the man even existed because he had a clean record.

“It wasn’t until they brought us the technology that we had a case. And when we did,” Duran said, “we started to work it.”

Tim Ballard, my third 'hero of the week' this week.

"If We Run and They Kill Us, So Be It, But We Have to Run Now"

The link below will take you to a very detailed and riveting account of the lives of some of the Chibok girls who were abducted by Boko Haram.

Sarah A. Topol

It is the best report I have read on the girls so far, revealing what their lives were like just before the abductions, what they went through during the abductions, and how many of them escaped in the first several hours.

Sarah A. Topol spent several days with the girls gleaning details of their ordeals that you've never read before.

Please give it a read:

We Have to Run Now

Escaped Nigerian School Girl Tells Her Story - Is Washington Listening Anymore? Anyone?

Saa, who uses a pseudonym to protect her Christian family back in Nigeria, leaped from her captors' truck and ran through a deep forest to safety. There's now speculation that the remaining girls may be being used as suicide bombers. 

Hudson Institute Conference Center

WASHINGTON — Had the Washington event featuring the first US appearance of one of the Nigerian schoolgirls who escaped the terrorist group Boko Haram taken place months ago – at the height of interest in the fate of about 300 mostly Christian kidnapped girls – more people might have come to hear the soft-spoken girl identified only as "Saa" tell her harrowing tale.

Maybe some members of Congress would have come to vaunt the girl’s bravery and rail against a brutal Islamist extremist group whose rampage across northern Nigeria and cleansing of the area’s Christian communities proceed mostly unchecked.
Maybe Michelle Obama – who memorably made a White House video in which she expressed her “outrage” at the kidnappings and showed her support for the international “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign – would have been on hand to make the introduction. Saa's appearance at the Hudson Institute think tank on Friday marks the first time she has spoken publicly of the details of her capture.

But Washington is now more focused on another Islamist terrorist group carrying out atrocities elsewhere: the Islamic State militant group that controls large swaths of Syria and Iraq, which has shockingly beheaded two Americans on videotape – and which President Obama says constitutes a national security threat.

And so Saa told her story and answered a few questions with little fuss, accompanied only by a moderator and a Nigerian-American human rights lawyer.

Saa's story

When the men arrived just before midnight in the village of Chibok, the awakened schoolgirls first thought it was Nigerian soldiers. When the men ordered the girls out of the hotel where they were residing and to assemble under a tree, Saa called her father, a former Christian pastor.

“He said pray so God will help us,” said Saa, a white scarf obscuring her face. (Concerns about her Christian family being identified are a main reason Saa has chosen to use a pseudonym in public.)

But when the men told the girls not to scream or run or they would be killed, when they demanded to know where the school boys were – the boys lived in other quarters in town – and then when they set the school ablaze, the girls knew it was not the Army, but Boko Haram.

The girls were loaded into trucks, and driven for many hours, Saa said. When they entered a deep forest, with huge trees and dense vegetation on both sides of the road, Saa saw her chance to escape.

“I told my friend, I’m going to jump down, I’d rather die” than stay with these men, she said. Saa and her friend jumped out of the truck, and although the friend injured her leg in the jump, the two managed to get to the cover of the forest, and the truck sped on.

Saa says she was not with Boko Haram long enough – less than 24 hours – to attest to any of the accusations against the group: the rapes, the forced conversions to Islam, the forced marriages and selling of girls like cattle to suitors.

One of four of the escaped schoolgirls who received scholarships to finish up their secondary education in the United States, Saa is now in a small Christian school outside the Washington area where she is completing her aborted senior year.

But she says two experiences from her kidnapping by Boko Haram have stayed with her.

First, she can’t forget the men demanding to know the religion of some of the girls, and how sad she felt when a girl she knew to be Christian told the men she was Muslim.

“I was shocked and feeling so bad,” Saa said. “I was thinking, if they killed us at that time, what was she going to say to the Lord in heaven?”

And then she remembers the man – a shepherd who turned out to be Muslim – who saved Saa and her friend with the injured leg. Reluctant and fearful at first of involving himself, the shepherd finally gave the girls a ride on his motorbike to the closest village and safety.

Five months later, Saa finds herself in the US, but the fate of most of the girls remains unknown. Rumors still circulate of forced marriages and conversions, and the human rights lawyer who shared the dais with Saa shared an even more chilling piece of speculation: that some of the girls are being forced to carry out suicide bombings.

“We have determined that a young girl whose head was recovered in a suicide bombing in a school – that she was a school girl abducted in Chibok,” said Emmanuel Ogebe, who this summer concluded from an investigation he carried out in Nigeria that a rash of suicide bombings by young females had a gruesome link to the mass kidnapping.

Mr. Ogebe, who this week testified on Boko Haram before the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, is impassioned about the impact the terrorist group is having on Nigeria, about what he says is the accelerating “cleansing” of the northern part of the country’s Christians – and about the West’s loss of focus on a group he says is “empowered and inspired by ISIS,” also known as the Islamic State (IS).

Saa, who quietly wept as she concluded her story, offered much simpler answers to audience questions. Asked what message she would have for President Obama if she met him, she said, “If I can speak to him [I would ask] anything he can do just to bring back our girls to us.”

Obama did order military assistance for Nigeria, including a team of experts and surveillance flights to help with locating the girls, but little has come of the effort.

“We don’t know their condition, what is happening to them," Saa said. “Anything they can do to bring back our girls is good.” 

What we can do is pray. God answers prayer, I have seen it so often in the past 32 years. Lots of people praying will make a real difference in these girl's lives. Please pray and convince others to pray as well.

Predatory Pedophile Sentenced to 92 Years in Prison

A Bowie, Maryland, USA  man convicted earlier this year of sexually abusing an 11-year-old boy at a public pool in Maryland was sentenced to six years in prison Friday, authorities said, the third time he’s been sentenced in a child sex-abuse case over the past two years.

Michael David Brochu

Michael David Brochu, 54, will now face 92 years in prison for all three cases spanning between 2011 and 2012, according to the Prince George’s County State’s Attorney’s Office.

The most recent sentencing for Brochu stems back to a 2011 case when a boy said Brochu had abused him in the showers of the Whitehall Pool and Tennis Club, authorities said. In July, a Prince George’s County jury found Brochu guilty of three counts of third-degree sex offenses.

Last year, Brochu was found guilty in two other child sex abuse cases involving his neighbor’s children, and in the early 1980s he was convicted in Howard County of child sex abuse. The judge who had sentenced Brochu in previous cases last year called him a “predatory pedophile.” 

I might have called him something different. Anyway, he's where he should be and will not molest another child. Thank God! This is one of the things we pray for - that if God can't save a pedophile, that He would render him incapable of harming another child. Brochu is finished.

Bowie (Old Town) MD, pop about 55k