A total of 33 families had been freed in the Pakistani state of Kasur and seven in Okara . To my chagrin a third have returned to the brick yard’s.
It is very difficult for poor minority Christian’s to find work. We are implementing start up businesses for those whom we have freed.

Here, Gulshan with her two daughters were the first ones freed from the thirteen families of the Roshan brick yard. The girls are now babysat in a home for Christian women while Goshen works in a shoe factory. They live in a room approximately the size of the room they were spending their lives in in the Brickyard. But they are a lot safer and happier now. Gulshan’s husband had fled the brickyard. This is very rare in Pakistan, that a father would ever leave his family.
When a Pastor informed me that Gulshan had a fractured foot from a brick ( they are twice the size of our bricks here in St. Louis ) and that the brick master was still requiring her quota of 500 bricks a day, I couldn’t send the money over for her freedom fast enough. In this video a friend, Rihanna is about to inform Gulshan that she’s going to be free.
Gulshan and her two daughters loading their few possessions onto the donkey cart that will take her away from the bondage of the brick yard.
The second family freed from the Roshan brick yard / After visiting Gulshan and her daughters we traveled to visit the family of Shahzad who are staying presently with Shazad’s mother, who had plenty of room and love. Shahzad is presently driving for a truck company. His wife said they went hungry many a day, and Shahzad said he relented every day for having ever taken a loan from the brick master. The mother was overcome with great joy, and then she began to cry and scream out as we prayed, for it seemed that kind of spirits of grief were driven from her.
The Shahzad family in 100 degree ten hour a day Pakistan summer heat. The mothers can not even take breaks to nurture or teach their children. The only thing the children grow up knowing to do, is making bricks.
The certificate of debt, paid in full in the brick master’s office.
The Shazad family’s eighteen slave years produced only enough food to survive, with barely enough strength to make bricks and purchase their few lifetime possessions that fit on the small donkey cart that will drive them away from the brick yard.
This is a precious video, as the families pray the Lord’s Prayer and the third freed family drives off waving to a handful of the remaining 10 brick yard families. I felt a sense of hope that the other families held hold of now, knowing that I was coming for the rest of them. I sensed an urgency that if I didn’t make it to Pakistan, the rest would never be free.
This is the Sohail family with their possessions on a cart to freedom. I was ‘purchasing’ a family’s freedom every fifteen days prior to coming to Pakistan to remove the rest of the families of the Roshan brick yard in person.
Pastors Shokat and Rihanna informing the Family their coming freedom. Sohail had been in this brickyard ever since he was a boy, 27 years ago.
I had to try and get used to this photo. Here a family enslaved, who would have grown old in this brick yard, burdened with unlawful interest, for a nominal debt Sohail’s father was not even allowed to have buried in the ground with him, but placed upon his son, I was angry at the brick master, until Shokat told me that they were praying for his soul. That Jesus was beginning to soften his heart.
Sohail had asked If he could borrow $200. He had a plan for a successful fruit selling business. I sent over $250, that enabled him to purchase a used rickshaw and motorcycle, and he instantly began selling fruit to many people along the roadside. It was not long before he was able to upgrade to a better rickshaw and motorcycle. He’s now making good money, and better money, than a freed family can make working for someone from the majority. .
My Pakistani interpreter, a Christian who is an educator in a Muslim school tells me that Sohail is making better money than he is, and his wife and four daughters are no longer slaves in 100 degree summer heat or in the winter cold.
This was the fourth individual family’s that we freed from the Rohan brick yard until I arrived in person in August to free the remaining nine. A pastor asked me back in spring of 2020 for a Freedom Merferd. Every brick kiln group of owners have the name of the brick kiln stamped on the brick, so stamped on Merferd’s brick is the word “Freedom”. These siblings were being forced to continue a quota of brick making even after their mother had succumb to the high summer heat. She was laid up in a hospital, with their father at her side. This was a very fortunate family not to lose their mother like other children have.
The sisters and Raul, the brother were born here.
Have Freedom Merferd will travel!
With ma and pa, their own courtyard, their own cow, the father does not have to slave ten hours a day suffering from asthma. Nor the children. The mother healed up after three days of heat stroke, and the father has got a real job!
We had freed four families and there were nine left to free. Here I am presenting the Roshan brick yard’s brick master, Rumzan a large wad of a million 400,000Pakistani RUPPES or $9500 US. It was surreal sitting next to him. A local -store had softened my heart toward this man. I sensed his countenance had changed. Having to let 13 well trained families of slaves go and having, by Pakistani standards, a large sum of money in one’s hand has to change something, but I was also sensing a softening of his soul. He gave us a couple hundred back and I gave him a large bag of M N M’s and my MERFERD graphic novel coloring book.
On Freedom Day, for the remaining 9 families.
On Freedom day, there was a family that had FOUR generations held in the brick yard! And this great grandma is 100 years old.
I can’t get over it… FOUR GENERATIONS in bonded labor in this brick yard. This was the best 13 grand I ever spent. It is the ONLY thirteen grand that I’ve ever spent…. At one time.

An ice cream rickshaw man stopped on the side road next to the brick yard, and we bought all the kids icecream. It was the first time that many of them ever had cream.
We had not yet paid Brick Master Ramzan and families were working right up to the last second.
The day before Freedom Day, I spoke with these three brothers who had been laboring together. Four years earlier their father had died. Ten years before that their mother had fled the brick yard.
It was my last day before returning to the states, and most of the families gathered together for a time of thanksgiving and celebration.
The Sadique family freed
More of the Sadique family working hard at the Roshan brick kiln
The paid receipt of the unjust ransom for the rest of the 13 families freed from illegal bonded labor.