Jantsen’s Gift “… Pam Cope owned a hair salon in Neosho, a tiny southwest Missouri town, and her husband, Randy, had just been appointed vice president of a company that ran a string of newspapers …. Their lives revolved around their son’s baseball games, their daughter’s dance lessons …. ‘My world was very small,’ said Mrs. Cope… ‘I was pretty shallow.”New York Times

On June 16, 1999, her life changed forever. Her fifteen year old son, Jantsen, died suddenly from an undiagnosed heart ailment. Her tribute to her son and her determination –comes alive in Jantsen’s Gift.

Her sadness was overwhelming—until she accepted a friend’s invitation to visit orphanages in Vietnam. Pam found her mission: to change the world– one small step, one child at a time.

“Early last month, Mrs. Cope returned from Ghana, where she had financed the rescue of seven children who were working as indentured servants on fishing boats for as little as $20 a year. … Mark Kwadwo, 6, had labored in dire conditions under a brutal fisherman who beat him when he did not get up at midnight to bail out canoes.Working with a small Ghanaian charity, Mrs. Cope paid $3,600 to free the children and found them a new home in an orphanage near Accra, the capital. After years of privation, the children were dumbstruck by the plentiful breakfast served at the orphanage, caregivers there said.

Mrs. Cope’s trip to Ghana followed journeys to Vietnam and Cambodia, where she and her husband help finance shelters for needy children and their families, and where the Copes adopted two Vietnamese children. The little hair salon, with its cozy peach and green decor, is a dim memory. Mrs. Cope is now a fund-raiser and executive of Touch a Life Ministries, an organization she and her husband started to help desperate children in faraway places.” New York Times