Children Held Hostage

On a recent missionary trip to Nigeria, Pastor Adediran Adedeji—Pastor D to his friends—brought along his friend Pastor Warren Beemer. What they discovered in one broken-down orphanage shocked them. A young girl in the filthy, disease-ridden building told Pastor D that she and her six siblings—emaciated, hungry and physically scarred—were from Texas.

"I still remember what I felt then; it was such a shock," says Pastor D, who immediately began asking them questions. The children, ages 8 to 16, were apparently born and raised in Texas, living with their adoptive mother in Houston just one year before. She had taken them to Nigeria and had left them there with a man she barely knew. Their caretakers soon disappeared, and the children were left to fend for themselves.

What started as a humanitarian tour for these pastors became an all out rescue mission. But with no passports, the seven American orphans could not just leave the country with the pastors. The pastors promised they'd work to get the children home.