Craig shares with Eileen how he went from a 30 year career as a firefighter to fighting child trafficking. He thought he was going to retire but God rewired him for His glory. Craig lays out how to win this spiritual battle at https://savinggodschildren.com/.
Interview Transcript:
Eileen Tesh (00:16):
Welcome to the show everyone. This is Libby Exponentially. I am Eileen Tesh, and today we’re going to go out to Maryland and talk to Craig Mickel and his mission. This is Anti-Human Trafficking Month and he has a mission called Saving God’s Children. So thank you so much, Craig for joining us today.
Craig Mickel (00:37):
Thank you for the invitation.
Eileen Tesh (00:39):
Absolutely. Well, first could you tell the audience a little bit about yourself, your journey, your career?
Craig Mickel (00:46):
Well, I started out as a fireman in Montgomery County, Maryland, which is the first county right outside Washington DC and I spent 30 years there. I obtained the rank of a captain in there and I guess maybe my heart has always been about trying to help people. And so I retired back in 2013 at a very young age because we had a good retirement system, and then I kind of ran into some of my other guys, you can’t fish all the time, you can’t play golf all the time. And as people were retiring, as I was in the system, I went to a battalion chief. He was like maybe four years retired. And I said, well, how are you doing? What are you doing? He says, well, I’m not retired, I’m rewired. And so this is really where my journey, I was always a believer in a Christian, but my depth in walking with the Lord really grew. After I retired, I really started reading the Bible. I really got into why do I believe what I believe? I just started looking to how I can impact the local community and be a witness for Christ.
Eileen Tesh (01:48):
Beautiful. How did that lead you to the creating this saving God’s children? What led up to it or was that the divine inspiration?
Craig Mickel (02:01):
Well, actually back, I run the Maryland Salt and Light Brigade with Rusty Baker here, part of Coach Day’s, pastor Salt Ministries. That’s why I have this cross hat. If you’ve ever seen Coach Dave, coach Dave live, you’ll see he wears a cross hat. And a year about in September or really August, 2022, I had a very deep spiritual feeling like our country is not in repentance. I mean, we say we’re sorry, but we’re not really repenting. And I got up by four in the morning, I wrote a thing called a Calling to the People, and it was based on this thing where Abraham Lincoln, when America came in the first Civil War back in 1861, well, he was only president for six weeks and Civil War broke out, and the Congress actually wrote this thing and he approved it. It was a proclamation for a day of national prayer, repentance, humiliation, and fasting.
(02:53):
I thought, gee, when’s the last time one of our presidents, when my generation has ever done that, they say, go to church, pray, ask for God to bless America. Well, we need to repent before we get blessed. Anyways, one of the things we came up with is six things that we were asking the Lord to do. One of ’em was human trafficking and lack of empathy for our fellow man’s flight. And the Lord at that time in September 22, Disney owned the Sound of Freedom, the movie, the Sound of Freedom, and they had put it off in the back door. In other words, it wasn’t supposed to see the daylight, but Disney streaming started to go down financially in 2022 because it became woke. And so they started selling these types of things in their garage, and they sold the sound of freedom to Angel Studios.
(03:39):
When Angel Studios bought it. It was basically April of 2023 last year. And they were like, when are you going to try to get this film out? And they were trying to really put it towards the November, December because they didn’t have any movie theaters. They had no PR plant. And then the actor, Jim is easily, he said, you need to get it out as soon as you can. And he wanted it in the theaters July 4th. And I’ve watched some of the interviews from the brothers that own Angel Studios, and it’s like God opened all these doors and they got it in thousands of theaters. It wasn’t supposed to get that. They were hoping to get 2 3, 500 and they got a thousand of them. And what I realized,
Eileen Tesh (04:17):
Can I just interrupt you right there, because it’s hard to believe, but there are people out there that have not heard of this movie Sound of Freedom. So could you give us a quick synopsis of what it’s about?
Craig Mickel (04:31):
Right. Well, the good news is now you can get it on Amazon Prime and you can watch it. What it is is it’s a story that’s based on a person that worked for the Homeland Security and he was arresting pedophiles, traffickers and out of the country. And one of the questions was someone asked him, have you ever saved an individual? And he said, no, I’ve only put the perpetrators away. And it ended up this gentleman’s story to get involved in this. And that’s what this movie was based on, and it was created back around 2016. So it is been completed for several years, but it sat in Hollywood. I mean, just because you produce it doesn’t mean you have a theater to put the movie in. It brings it out into the public domain where it’s okay to talk about it is what I think that movie has done
Eileen Tesh (05:18):
Well, I think more people are talking about it now more than ever, not only because of the movie, but the open borders and Epstein and all the documentation evidence that there 85,000 children missing that have come across the southern border. I mean, everything is in front of people whether they choose to see it or not.
Craig Mickel (05:42):
Right. And one of the principles that God does is he always exposes the sin before he judges it. So those of us that believe in God, we need to be interceding. And so the whole thing about Gettysburg was to intercede for our nation. And what I realized is we were there on September 26th, 2022, which is when this proclamation that Abraham Lincoln did in 1861. That’s why we tied it into his thing. But what’s ironic is the movie actually came out on July 4th, which is when Gettysburg Battle occurred, right? Wow. So I realized that the Lord had his hand, not just on me, but there were 40 other people there that were praying and interceding and thousands read the calling to the People document. And I said, the Lord brought this thing that was owned by Disney, and he got it into the theater 10 months from when we were on the Peace Monument, the very battleground where the whole thing broke open. And of course the war was a lot about slavery too. And so I realized God had his hand of favor on this.
Eileen Tesh (06:50):
And so now you are involved or you have started this mission saving God’s children.
Craig Mickel (06:58):
Well, when the movie came out, my pastor was talking about it. And so I approached him afterwards and I said, pastor, I said, as leaders and stuff like that, people tend to want to follow what needs. I said, I feel very strongly about this. And I didn’t even put the connection together with what we had done at Gettysburg. I said, I’ll buy 30 tickets if you go, and we all go as a group. And he said, yeah, I’m on board with that. And so we all went and we sat together, 30 of us at church, and I’ll send you a picture of it, and I have a picture of us in the lobby. We’re all praying after this. We were emotionally moved, but then after it at church the next day we’re like, well, what do we do about it? And nobody had a plan. And so that’s when God dropped in my spirit. It’s like, well, we need a Walmart, if you will, where you can go and buy groceries and camping equipment. And we need a website that will bring people in so they can learn about the sexual trafficking.
(07:58):
There’s a spiritual component that distinguishes saving God’s children from any other website because this is a spiritual battle first, although it is carried out into flesh. And then I have a thing about getting involved, what that looks like and what the Lord really asked me to do is there are so many good people that are doing great work, but I go and I reference different scriptures. You’ll see it’s very heavy scripture on my website, Elijah in one Kings chapter 19, he went up and he destroyed the prophets of ball on Mount Carmel, but he retreats into his cave and he says, Lord, I’ve been very faithful. There’s no one here. I’m basically worn out. And God gently reminds me, he says, there’s 7,000 people, 7,000 that have not bent their knee towards the ball. And I realized, I said, that’s our problem with this human trafficking. We’re all doing different work, but we’re not connected together. So the whole precipice saving God’s children is for people to learn how bad it is, how they can get involved with some of the resources that are already there. And then I do the spiritual warfare component because I want the church, I want the church leaders to get involved in this because this is a spiritual battle that has to be broken in the spirit realm as well as a physical on the boots ground battle.
Eileen Tesh (09:19):
Do you have firsthand experience with child trafficking?
Craig Mickel (09:24):
No. I’m a newbie. I’m a newcomer. I talked to you, I, I’m not an expert in it, but I’m going to tell you what I’ve learned a lot by doing this. And how do we learn how to walk? Well, we step, we fall, but you know what? We keep stepping and we guess what pretty soon we’re walking without falling over. If your heart, if you watch this movie or just that, I encourage you to do it, but if you don’t, even if you have a heart for this, what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to lay out the platform for you on saving God’s children, how you can get involved. In other words, you come to my website and you’re going to get awareness about how bad it is, what things you can do about it locally, you can make an impact. That’s why if you look at it, one of the key phrases I have is you hold the key to stopping human trafficking.
(10:15):
And so I had this little key chain made up and this is how I helped fund it, and this is the footprint of a child. And you’ll see there’s a cross in there. Well, we all start out with these little footprints. By the grace of God, I was never sex trafficked. But you know what? There’s somebody who is, and I can pray for that person. One of the big things that is brought out in the movie is God’s children aren’t for sale. That’s one of their big quotes, which is actually, and you can see this on the website, I have his store on here, but then it’s Matthew 18, six better a millstone tied around one neck than to stop one of these little ones from me. So when some little child who’s in their 12 or 14 that doesn’t know much about Jesus’s sex traffick, it’s very hard for them to come to the father in their adult years because they’re going to say, well, God, didn’t you love me? Why did all this happened to me?
Eileen Tesh (11:06):
Wow. Well, let’s take a quick break here from our sponsor and come back and talk a little bit more about your website and how people can get involved. And we always do a call to action.
Grant Smith (11:21):
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Eileen Tesh (11:49):
We are back with Craig Mickel from Saving God’s Children. And my other favorite quote from Sound of Freedom is that really resonated with me was when God tells you to do something, you better do it.
Craig Mickel (12:06):
That’s right. And that’s one of the things that, and we have the ability to do it. I look at myself when we were talking about my career. There are a lot of people who are retired in their sixties, fifties, seventies, still very active still. And you know what? They need a purpose. They really do. I mean, you can only do so much golf, so many bridge games or whatever. This is an opportunity to truly make an impact in your local community and do something tangible for the Lord and someone else. One of the scriptures that I use, and every time that you’ll get through the website, you’ll see scripture reference because again, this is spiritual battle, but under getting involved, this is the scripture that I quote, Galatians six two, bear ye one another’s burdens. And so fulfill the law of Christ. And yeah, that’s what we’re supposed to do under my awareness and training.
(13:01):
This is from Job. And remember who Job was, right? I mean, he’s got all the, he says I was a father to the needy and the cause of him that I knew not I searched out. So what we need to do is we need to search out what’s going on with human trafficking, child trafficking, how prevalent it is in our community, what we can do to get involved in it. And two, these victims, this takes years, I mean years of help counseling someone to love over them and show the love of Christ that is the role of the church.
Eileen Tesh (13:36):
Well, that’s a topic for another interview because we don’t see them getting involved. And when I approached our own local sheriff here and said, after seeing the movie, I said, what are we going to do? Maybe we could have a town hall. Maybe you could do some training to make people more aware what to look for. And his response, well, I lean, I don’t want to alarm the people and cause for people to start accusing others and just making judgements on seeing a child with an adult. And I thought, you are kidding me. So what have you been doing with your local sheriffs or the sheriffs around the country with these key chains?
Craig Mickel (14:31):
Well, one of the things that we need to do is we need to bring awareness. First off, most people aren’t what we would call sound of freedom, kidnapped off the street and sex trapped. Most of them are young people who get involved. They meet some adult, and you know what? They get ’em into this. They want to run away from home and they say, Hey, I’ll take care of you. And they’re groomed, and guess what? They turn into sex slaves and their whole demeanor is beat down. They’re totally dependent on this person. They don’t want to go back home, and they’re psychologically basically overtaken by these people almost to a cult status. And that’s the majority of what’s really going on here. We have parents that are pimping out their kids in drugs. So the sheriff, whoever needs, they need to realize it’s not just this part, it’s just everyday people that are doing this.
(15:25):
Then we have this whole total problem of the internet pornography, these kids that are meeting adults that are pedophiles at secret locations and being sexually abused and brought into it, and then that starts their whole life into this type of thing. So it’s a very layered problem, and that’s why when you go and you look on saving Gods children.com, you’re going to see videos that are going to show you what’s going on so you can really get your eyes on it and say, my goodness, it’s worse than you think. And that’s one of the quotes that I use on my website.
Eileen Tesh (16:01):
So if you could give us three action steps, because people feel overwhelmed, obviously our representatives, both state, county, federal, are not talking about it. They’re not speaking up and they’re not taking any action or bringing awareness, if you will. So if somebody goes to your website, what are the three things that you would recommend that they do first to start getting involved?
Craig Mickel (16:29):
Well, first, before you can really go to someone, you need to understand what some of the things are that are going on. And one is watch the videos that I have linked. I have a thing, it’s called Contra Land from Vets for Child Rescue. This is Craig Sawyer. And so he put together this video. You can share that with your politicians or your pastor. The other thing is I’m linking you, and while the website, it just really became active in the last month, I’m populating it with more things. In other words, I’m going through this process with people, and when I come across something, I say, wow, that’s powerful. I put it on the website because it might be powerful for someone else. Like I said, I don’t know all these things, but as I’m learning about it, I’m posting it there for you to do that.
(17:18):
Right? So one is to do that. Two is do you want to be a prayer warrior? My spiritual warfare training from Steve Hempfield, which is free, right? It’s six about 30 minute clips. It teaches you how you can walk in the authority of God, how you can reclaim the land, how you can pray against powers and principalities and powers. We love to quote Ephesians six, we’re not fighting against flesh and blood. So my next question, if I’m not fighting against flesh and blood, who am I fighting against? Well then I better be trained in how to that. So we provide that training resource. Then the getting involved part is as I’m showing people how that looks. Okay, and I’m actually formulating that I’m adding different things. Now, here’s how the Lord does it. If you have a willing heart, the Lord’s going to open up the doors.
(18:07):
About two weeks ago, I went to a Christian Businessman’s luncheon and one of the gentlemen knew I was doing this, and he said, my pastor talked about that, and he’s having a meeting Saturday about it. So here I walk into this church. They have 50 people on a committee. They’re already planning a walk for freedom. They’ve already hooked into some of the human trafficking here in the Hagerstown, Maryland area. And it’s like, okay, well, God’s already putting a plan together. Again, we go back to Elijah in the 7,000. There are people doing things in your local community, and I’m telling you, God’s going to get you involved in it and he’s going to open up the door. You can use saving God’s children as a reference. One of the things that I’m doing right is I’m getting signs. I’m putting them on 20 foot containers.
(18:48):
You can rent these containers, I don’t know if you storage containers to see containers. And guess what? I’m putting them in church parking lots that have saving God’s children on them. So people will come to the website, learn about it, something you can talk about it. And the thing isn’t, oh, do what Craig’s doing. The thing is Craig’s giving you tools so you can do it with God’s gift. You are gifted you viewers. God has given you gifts. You need to embrace ’em. Walk in them and you will see the power of God in them. I promise you, I’ve experienced that myself
Eileen Tesh (19:21):
And maybe just the Holy Spirit, put it on my heart. If you are afraid or paralyzed as far as you don’t think you’re capable or equipped, or as Jesus said, when two or more gathered in my name, find someone else that you can move out with and work with and together it makes you stronger but more confident and let God will take you the rest of the way.
Craig Mickel (19:57):
Well, I saw these for $5 and this is what I recommend for people. This is key chain you can put on your keys. Probably two things you touch every day is your car keys and your phone. But I also hang this off my mirror. So as I’m driving down the road, I sit there, and this is a reminder, Lord, there is someone who’s caught up in human trafficking potentially on this road. Lord, would you send warring angels over there, Matthew 18 sex better, A millstone Lord, sometimes repeating the Lord’s words back to him. It is not that you’re reminding him, it’s you’re reminding yourself absolutely. But you start fighting in the spiritual realm. Any Christian warrior can participate in this. You don’t need to be the one to knock down the doors and connect the bad guys. You don’t need to be driving around at 11 o’clock at night, but you can be a prayer warrior. Can you find two or three of your friends to go over and say, we’re going to go walk on a Saturday morning and we’re going to pray. We’re going to do some prayer walking. You can do that, right? And you can go and opening yourself up to the church and say, maybe we should try our outreach for some of the victims. Were there and how would we do it?
Eileen Tesh (21:02):
And most, I asked you this before we got started or the other day, are we making an impact? I mean, obviously the hundreds of thousands of people coming across the border and people feel so overwhelmed and they’re so busy and worried and every excuse in the book, but do you think we can actually stop this since it’s been around from the beginning of time, I guess?
Craig Mickel (21:31):
Well, I don’t know if we’re ever going to stop it because Jesus said there will always be hungry people until I come back. The point isn’t to look at the end. In other words, don’t try to figure out the Super Bowl like you’re playing in the Super Bowl. Why don’t you go and start practicing on the field and worry about your first game? And if you get your first steps in this, I’m telling you, God, you want to get to the short fuse of God when you start hitting the children. That’s the whole thing of Israel. When they started sacrificing their children to ball and molo, that was the end. God’s judgment was right around the corner. This is how close God’s judgment is to this country. If you want to be on the side where God says, well done, good and faithful servant, when the judgment comes, I would suggest you get visit.
(22:16):
If there are two types of sins that we can have, we can have sins of commission, things that we do, and we can have sins of omission. In other words, remember about when the priests were walking by the Samaritan, two of them walked by and what did God say it was the third one. Now if you’re retired or you have an ability to help with this and you’re not able to do it, that’s a discussion between you and Jesus, not me. But I know one thing. When I have that discussion, I’m going to say, I’m going to stop. And just like Job 29 16 says, I was a father to the needy and the cause of him that I knew not, but I searched it out.
Eileen Tesh (22:56):
Amen. Thank you. Thank you so much. Because there’s so many retirees and people out there that are looking for a purpose. And I know every time I hear you talk, it’s like, okay, we got to do something. I even stopped at a neighbor’s house. He has a big 30 by 50 foot sign in his front yard that said, God’s children are not for sale. And so I had to go ring the doorbell and say, you got to hear about this website.
Craig Mickel (23:23):
Well, all you got to do, Eileen is go to a McDonald’s about nine o’clock during the middle of the week. And you know what? You find a bunch of older people sitting there having coffee together, right? Because they’re looking for company, they’re isolated, they’re all by themselves, and they go to McDonald’s or they go to the local convenience store where you get gas and you can get coffee, and they sit and they talk. We something for ’em to do if they want to join us.
Eileen Tesh (23:47):
Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much. Saving gods children.com.
Craig Mickel (23:51):
That’s
Eileen Tesh (23:52):
It. And if they need you, they can email you. Your contact information is on there.
Craig Mickel (23:57):
Yes. It’s a very professionally done. Again, I know nothing about technology or websites, but I hire people. I told ’em what my vision was. I said, when you hit that screen, I want people to be impacted. And the first thing you’re going to see is Ezekiel 33 33. You are the watchman on the wall. You are the watchman in your community and your family, and it’s up to you to sound the alarm.
Eileen Tesh (24:24):
Thank you so much. I look forward to having you back. God bless you. And anything we can do, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Craig Mickel (24:31):
Thank you, and God bless you too. Thank you,
Eileen Tesh (24:33):
Craig. This program was presented by Blue Water Healthy Living, sponsored by the Grant Smith Health Insurance Agency and produced by GBS Media. Come see Grant Smith for all your health insurance needs throughout the year. You’ll be so glad you did. Get involved, get educated. Go to the website, saving gods children.com. You never know how you may impact one child. God bless you. Thank you for.
