Kansas City, Mo. ? Rep. Emanuel Cleaver held a vigil Monday and prayed for the release of five security contractors seen last week in a video made by their abductors, more than a month after being kidnapped in southern Iraq.

Cleaver, a Methodist minister, organized the vigil for family and friends of John R. Young, 44, of Kansas City, one of four Americans and an Austrian who were abducted Nov. 16 by suspected militiamen who ambushed a supply convoy near the southern border city of Safwan, a Sunni Arab city in a predominantly Shiite area.

About 50 people gathered in a small chapel at the Community Christian Church in Kansas City where Cleaver delivered a sermon and prayed that the men be set free.

“One of the things that I think is appropriate is that we pray for peace,” said Cleaver, D-Mo.

In the video, delivered to The Associated Press on Wednesday, civilian security contractors for the Kuwait-based Crescent Security Group identified themselves as Jon Cote of Buffalo, N.Y.; Paul Johnson Reuben of Buffalo, Minn.; Josh Munns, 23, of Redding, Calif. and Bert Nussbaumer, 25, an Austrian citizen.

Three of the men, including Young, said they were being treated well and all of them appeared to be uninjured on the tape dated Dec. 21 and 22. The men appeared separately in the edited video.

“I’m well, my friends are well, we’ve been treated well,” Young said in the video.

Sharon DeBrabander, Young’s mother, said her son appeared to have lost some weight, but she was happy to see him alive.

She said Young was home just two weeks before being abducted, taking a break from his job in Iraq.

“We pray every day. We all miss him,” DeBrabander said after the vigil.

Young has two children, a 19-year-old son and a 14-year-old daughter, but the family refused to provide additional personal details, fearing his captors might use the information against him.

“When he comes home safe, you can meet him then,” DeBrabander said Monday.

Cleaver said the State Department has been reluctant to give information about the search for the abducted men.

Last week, U.S. Embassy spokesman Lou Fintor said the State Department was working with U.S.-led forces and the Iraqi government to find the security contractors. The U.S. military also has conducted raids in an effort to find the men.

Fintor said they had no information on who may be holding the security contractors or exactly what their demands were.

The kidnappers were not seen or heard in the video.

The Crescent Security Group, which provides security for military, civilian and diplomatic convoys in Iraq, said in a written statement that the video “is the gateway to negotiations between those holding the men and us to secure their release.”