Clements helping change lives across the world
Photo by Jamie Plain
In a brick kiln in Pakistan, a family had spent nearly two decades paying off a debt that began with a $100 loan. Nineteen years later, they still owed $2,100. They couldn’t leave. Their children couldn’t attend school. Every day was spent making mud bricks under a system designed to keep them exactly where they were.
Freedom seemed impossible. Then a U.S.-based humanitarian group, including Owensboro’s Paul Clements, showed up to free them. What Clements encountered in Pakistan was something many Americans assume no longer exists: modern-day slavery.
Since 2024, Clements and his ministry partners have helped free 125 families — more than 700 people — from Pakistan’s brick-yard slavery system. They’ve helped former slaves find housing, jobs and church communities, and they’re now building churches and schools for families beginning life again.
One of those projects carries an unexpected Owensboro connection. A church and school under construction in Pakistan are being built in honor of Army Specialist Brandon Mullins, an Owensboro soldier killed in Afghanistan in 2011.
For Clements, the work has always been about promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ and loving people rather than just projects.
“You see the look in their eyes, and they’re just hopeless,” he said. “They’ve got no chance, they’ve got no shot. They have no opportunities. They’re just trying to survive today.”
Those faces — first during mission trips in the Amazon jungle and later through the work in Pakistan — changed the course of his life.
FINDING PURPOSE IN PERU
Long before he found himself helping free families from slavery on the other side of the world, Clements was simply a Kentucky man with a job, a family, and a growing faith. His introduction to mission work came through his father-in-law, who had spent years serving with Amazon Outreach, a ministry that supports churches, Bible schools, water wells, medical clinics and children’s ministries throughout South America.
In 2011, Clements agreed to make his first trip to Peru, and the experience left him shaken.
By that point, Clements had been a Christian for years. He had given his life to Christ at age 23 and believed he understood what it meant to serve others. But seeing poverty firsthand challenged nearly everything he thought he knew.
“I just cried every night,” he said. “I realized, holy moly, Paul, you’re pitiful. You’re so far from where you should be. Your eyes are open to what the rest of the world has and how much you have.”
The trip altered his perspective in a way that has never left him. While many Americans worry about the next promotion, a bigger house or the next vacation, Clements encountered families whose daily concerns were far more basic. They wondered whether they would have enough food to eat that day. Whether they could find clean water. Whether they could afford medical treatment if someone became sick.
What began as a single mission trip became a calling. Over the next several years, Clements returned repeatedly to South America, helping support church construction, Bible schools, medical clinics, water wells and outreach programs in communities throughout Peru, Brazil and Colombia.
The work was meaningful, but nothing prepared him for Pakistan.
HEARTBREAK AT THE BRICK YARDS
When another missionary returned from Pakistan and urged him to visit, Clements resisted.
“I understand Spanish,” he said. “I speak it a little bit. I’m comfortable with South America.”
Pakistan felt entirely different. The language was unfamiliar. The culture was unfamiliar. The risks were unfamiliar. For months he pushed the idea aside. Eventually, he agreed to go.
In 2024, he stepped into a world unlike anything he had ever experienced. The poverty was staggering. The challenges seemed overwhelming. And then he learned about the brick yards.
Clements said many of the people trapped there start with what appeared to be a manageable loan covering anything from a medical emergency to a family crisis to an unexpected expense. Without social programs or access to traditional financial resources, they borrowed money from wealthy lenders who promised a way out.
Instead, the loans became a trap.
Families are sent to work in brick yards making thousands of mud bricks by hand, Clements said. If quotas aren’t met, penalties are added. If a child becomes sick, the expense is added to the debt. If clothing or food is needed, it is added to the debt. The balances grow faster than they can ever be repaid.
Children often work alongside their parents rather than attending school. Entire families remain trapped for years or even decades.
One couple had borrowed approximately $100 nearly 20 years earlier.
“They worked there 19 years,” Clements said. “Their debt was $2,100 when we freed them.”
Clements and his partners helped relocate the family to another city, helped them secure housing, provided a food cart so they could earn an income, and connected them with a local church that could help them rebuild their lives.
Others in Pakistan suffered even greater abuse. Clements recalled a story of a man who confronted a slave owner after his wife had been assaulted.
“They held him down and they chopped his fingers off,” he said. “His quota didn’t change.”
Clements acknowledged the story is almost impossible to comprehend, yet said it illustrates the brutality of a system that continues to exist in parts of the world today.
UNEXPECTED CHALLENGES OF FREEDOM
As more people were rescued and connected with local congregations, attendance exploded. Some churches became so crowded that people stood outside windows trying to listen to services because there was no room inside.
“They said, ‘We’re packed in here like sardines. ‘We’ve got to do something,’”” Clements recalled.
The solution was obvious: build more churches.
Fundraising began, land was purchased, plans were drawn, and construction started. Then another need emerged.
Many of the rescued families had children who needed an education. Because the church project would eventually serve hundreds of people, local ministry leaders estimated that roughly 150 children would need a school as well.
That’s when the story unexpectedly looped back to Owensboro.
Tommy and Cathy Mullins, whom Clements had known for years through Workman for Christ Cowboy Church, invited Clements and his wife to dinner. They wanted to hear more about the work happening in Pakistan and the projects taking shape there.
During the conversation, Clements described both the church and the need for a school. A few days later, the Mullins family made a gift in memory of their son, Brandon. On Memorial Day, it was announced the school was being named in honor of Brandon.
Today, construction continues on both buildings. The church is expected to serve approximately 450 worshippers, while the school will educate about 150 children. Many of the workers constructing the church and school are people who were once enslaved themselves.
“Here they were slaves, now they’re free, now we’re paying them to build their church and build their school,” Clements said. “It’s an incredible blessing to be a part of.”
For Clements, the project has become one of the most meaningful efforts he has ever been involved in. Part of that stems from the Owensboro connection, part from the lives being changed, and part from the timing.
If construction continues on schedule, a dedication ceremony is expected to take place in August. The date would coincide with the 15th anniversary of Brandon Mullins’ death.
“It was just God setting it all up,” Clements said.
THE WORK IS WORTH THE DANGER
During one trip to northern Pakistan, Clements participated in a conference attended by approximately 900 pastors and church leaders. On the final night, hundreds of people gathered to hear the gospel message.
After the event ended, he and his team left for the airport. About an hour later, Clements said, a Taliban bombing struck a train station one block away from where they had been meeting. Three people who had attended the conference were killed.
“It’s an incredibly dangerous place,” Clements said.
Throughout much of the country, churches rely on armed security. Visitors pass through multiple checkpoints. Hotels employ extensive screening procedures. Threats against Christian communities remain a constant concern.
Yet Clements continues to return.
He doesn’t claim to have all the answers. He doesn’t believe he can solve every problem facing the world. What he can do, however, is help one family at a time.
For him, the memories that linger aren’t the buildings or the fundraising milestones.
They’re the faces: the father who finally walks away from a brick yard after decades of captivity, the mother who no longer has to wonder whether her children will spend their lives trapped by someone else’s debt, the child who gets to attend school for the first time.
For hundreds of people in Pakistan, today looks different than it once did. A debt has been paid. A family has been freed. A church is being built. A school is rising from the ground.
And thousands of miles from Owensboro, hope is taking root where hopelessness once lived.
For more information about how to help Amazon Outreach, you can reach Clements at [email protected]. OL
