: Bill Wilson
: Whose Child Is This? A Story of Hope and Help for a Generation At Peril
: Metro World Child
: 9780996960168
: 1
: CHF 9.40
:
: Christentum
: English
: 200
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
For me, Metro World Child always goes back to New York City. I'd like to tell you that when I first went there, I had it all figured out: A fire-year plan, a ten-year plan, a strategy for success, and a budget. But I had none of those. In fact, I had no idea how to make the whole thing work - I just knew I had to do something to rescue broken and hurting children. I spent years listening to so-called experts say that what was on my heart couldn't be done - especially in New York City. But I knew that wasn't true. I refused to accept that ministry to inner city kids was impossible anywhere - especially in New York City. Whose Child is This? is the story of a city filled with children who now have hope and a future because I refused to believe that anything was impossible with God... even in New York City.
CHAPTER ONE
THE BLUE PICNIC COOLER
“In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.”
—Albert Einstein, German-born physicist (1879-1955)
When I saw the headline of the final edition of theNew York Daily News, I just froze. The bold type read “WHO IS SHE?”
Beneath those words was a hand-drawn sketch of a young girl with long black hair. Her eyes were dark and haunting; her brow was furrowed.
The only identity was her morgue case number: M91-5935. She weighed only twenty-five pounds, and it was determined that she was four years old. The girl was discovered by construction workers along the highway at the edge of Harlem—her severely decomposed body stuffed in a picnic cooler. She was nude. Her hands and feet were bound with a cord. Her hair was in a ponytail.
“That’s just a stone’s throw from one of our Sidewalk Sunday School locations,” I said to myself as I stared at the front page.
Her life and death were a mystery. They said she had been dead for at least a week. Her tiny body was curled into a fetal position inside a green garbage bag that had been forced into a blue picnic cooler.
New York’s chief of detectives, Joseph Borrelli, knew only one thing for certain. “Her face showed an awful lot of misery and suffering for a person who’s only lived four years,” he said.
Whose child is this? I wondered.
Not a Pretty Picture
The girl was just another statistic to this crime-hardened city, but to me she was much more. At one time she had been a real person who probably liked to play with her dolls and watch cartoons. She was also symbolic of the utter despair