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This makes them "a constructive player in the Sudanese peace process," says a U.S. government official familiar with the group.

"They have channels to both sides in the dispute," he says. "They are perceived to have useful contacts with the Bush administration and other Christian groups. I certainly pass on their views to other government officials."

"Don't mess with Midland," says a Washington insider who has worked with the Ministerial Alliance of Midland (the group has joined a coalition of human rights groups in Washington, D.C.). "All four parties to the peace negotiations-the government of Sudan, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, the Kenyan mediator, and the U.S. government-have felt the pressure of the Ministerial Alliance of Midland. It has been remarkable."

The Midlanders, according to this source impressed with their "savvy," have communicated with both the Sudanese government and SPLA leader John Garang at critical moments in the peace talks, telling both sides that if they abandon the peace process Midlanders will cause political fallout for them in the U.S.

"Along with millions of Americans associated with churches, synagogues and human rights groups, we intend to forcefully press our elected representatives, including the President, to bring the sanctions provisions of the Sudan Peace Act into full effect if no peace agreement is reached," they have written to the Sudanese government.

They recently sent the same message to Garang: "If the SPLM leaves itself open to blame for the failure of the peace negotiations, our ability to ensure immediate invocation of the Sudan Peace Act or to take other steps to hold the government of Sudan accountable or to cause the United States to take the side of the SPLM in any resumed military conflict will be enormously, perhaps impossibly compromised." (Garang was scheduled to visit Midland and meet with the Midland Ministerial Alliance in November.)

The Midland group has also influenced the State Department, according to this source. "Their level of commitment has allowed me to say to people at the State Department: 'Listen you guys if you treat Sudan as just another piece of business, if there is anything wanting in your effort, you are going to wake up and find the people of Midland coming en masse to Washington and the President will scratch his head wanting to know why people he knows are demonstrating and maybe even getting arrested in protest. I wouldn't want to be you trying to explain your failure of effort to the president,'" he says.

Every day in Midland Christians gather to pray for "Midland's Rising Son," President Bush. They also frequently engage in fasting. Nina Shea of Freedom House says that a "group of hundred people or so" met in Midland recently to pray for her "at the exact moment I was meeting with Bush" to discuss Sudanese and human rights issues. The Midlanders are "a powerful addition to our human rights coalition," she says. "They can reach Bush on a cultural level many people can't… I think they played a key role in keeping President Bush personally engaged in this."

And perhaps Laura Bush too. Shea says that at a White House event last year she had an opportunity to encourage Bush to press hard for peace in the Sudan. As she spoke to him, Laura Bush entered the conversation, saying that Sudan was in a "horrible" state. Shea heard later that Laura Bush's mother Jenna Welch, who lives in Midland and knows members of the Midland Ministerial Alliance, had attended a speech an exiled Sudanese bishop delivered in Midland.

John Miller, the State Department's director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, traveled to Midland earlier this year. He spoke before friends and members of the Ministerial Alliance of Midland at the downtown Petroleum Club and attended one of its prayer services. "It was the first time this Jew had been in the middle of a prayer session like that," he says. The meeting was "exhilarating." The Midlanders are the "spiritual descendants of the Church abolitionists of the nineteenth century," he says. "The Midland Ministerial Alliance is picking up where they left off." Miller recalls the group meeting with Senator Sam Brownback at the Monocle restaurant in Washington, D.C. for so long Miller had to call it a night.

Brownback recalls the evening. "These are beautiful and quite humble people," he says. "They represent the best of American moral interest." Asked what specific role they played in the Sudan Peace Act he spearheaded in the Senate, he said, "They were consulted on that." He says drafts of the legislation were "discussed with them" to see if "it was something they would support." "I am trying to go down and meet with them in the next few months," he says, calling them a "study in grass-roots faith-based diplomacy."

Deborah Fikes, a self-described "housewife" and "rancher's daughter," serves as the publicity director for the Midland Ministerial Alliance. Asked about the influence of the group, she acknowledges that its concerns are "forwarded to the top leaders in the Government of Sudan," but disclaims any influence on Bush. "We simply mirror the President's passion and determination to use our influence and empowerment to help those being persecuted and victimized around the world," she says.

But does Sudan's Ambassador Ahmed feel like he is speaking to the president through this group? "In a sense, yes," he says. "It helps to talk to people from his village," because "I would say that their relationship with Bush would not be a political one but a religious one." He believes they connect with Bush on a deeper level than most groups, sharing the same roots and faith with him. That "gives them an edge," he says. He also believes they can influence other Christian organizations with whom they are in contact, both domestically and in Sudan. If peace is achieved in the Sudan, the group could play a role in the reconciliation and reconstruction of the country, he says.

IT STANDS TO REASON THAT THE Midland Ministerial Alliance can influence Bush; the city of Midland certainly did. "I would say people -- if they want to understand me -- need to understand Midland, and the attitude of Midland," he told reporters before he became president. "The values Midland holds near to its heart are the same ones I hold near to my heart.…The slogan 'The Sky's The Limit' was meant for everyone, not just a select few. Midlanders believed if you work hard and believe it will happen, anything can happen. That ethic of hard work and outlook of optimism has stayed with me my whole life."

Bush's "first memories" are of Midland, he writes in his autobiography A Charge to Keep. He was two years old when his parents moved to West Texas. He attended Sam Houston elementary school and San Jacinto junior high in Midland -- he recalls having to "brush a fine coating of sand off the desks every morning." It was in Midland that he remembers playing with his sister Robin who died of leukemia. Bush returned to Midland as an oil entrepreneur in the 1970s. He married, started his family, and renewed his Christian faith there.

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