Shortly after their rescue, Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer were invited to the White House by then-President George W. Bush. Of the experience, they stated, "It was really privilege and honor to see the president, to be able to visit the Oval Office, and then to be able to stand with him out in the rose garden." Bush acknowledged to the public that he had spent a significant amount of time worrying about the safety of the aid workers, especially for Curry and Mercer. At the Rose Garden press conference honoring the two, he stated:  Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer made a number of national appearances on television programs such as "Larry King Live" and the "Today Show" encouraging others to become active in foreign missions and aid work. Mercer's mother Deb Oddy, who had opposed her daughter's decision to go to Afghanistan from the beginning, began to publicly denounce the mission in the days that followed the prisoners' release. An interview by Oddy on "Dateline" NBC led to the widespread misconception that Curry and Mercer had gone to Kabul only to evangelize. They responded that that was not the case and later divulged that one of their primary reasons for writing "Prisoners of Hope" was to allow the American public to have an accurate account of what had happened. Additionally, all of the profits from the book's sales went towards helping the Afghan people. Heather Mercer founded Global Hope in 2008, a nonprofit organization that serves in Iraq. While working in Iraq, she married Mohanad, a Kurdish Christian from the region. Ten years after Curry and Mercer's release, the latter was interviewed by Timothy C. Morgan of "Christianity Today". During the interview, she reiterated that she does not regret her decision to go to Afghanistan and stated that everyone involved in the hostage crisis continues their work in relief aid. A "Publishers Weekly" review stated that the book's divided perspective between Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry made it difficult to follow but that the story remained compelling. It concluded, "Especially heartbreaking are the stories of all the Afghan families who were relying on the women for life-saving support and who were abruptly cut off at the time of their arrest. Perhaps most powerful is the honesty with which Mercer discusses her spiritual difficulties in captivity. This is not the story of larger-than-life heroines whose faith never wavers in the face of persecution; readers are allowed glimpses into Mercer's very real despair and the rift it caused in the group of prisoners. This gritty sense of the real life of ordinary, believing Americans keeps the pages turning."