Wilson Whose Child Is This?

A Story of Hope and Help for a Generation At Peril
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9969601-6-8
Verlag: Metro World Child
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wilson, Bill

Leseproben

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 the New 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 that hangs like a thick cloud over our nation’s ghettos. My eyes filled with tears as I put down the paper. She was the reason I had come to this godforsaken city. Day after day, for more than a decade, I had poured every ounce of my life into rescuing such a child. Was there a chance we had somehow reached her? Was she among the more than ten thousand who had come to our Sunday schools the week she was murdered? Lord, I thought, is there something more I could have done? I walked out of my office and stood on the curb at the corner of Evergreen and Grove in the Bushwick/Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, looking around at the grim realities of life in the ghetto. It is not a pretty picture. Looking down the block you see drug-infested brownstones and tenement houses. Rusty skeletons of vandalized cars languish on vacant lots. Garbage is piled high—broken bottles and dirty vials that once held crack scattered in the rubble. From this same spot over the years I have seen dozens of people shot, stabbed and scavenged. Just twenty feet down the street two men were killed—right in front of one of our staff members, who was unable to help the victim. No one was arrested, and not a word of the incident appeared in the city’s newspapers. I am continually amazed by what I see. One New Year’s Eve I looked out my window and saw some young men lying in the street, daring cars to run over them. On the corner I could see the actual fire coming out of the barrels of guns as they were being fired at random. A police helicopter was circling and hovering overhead, shining its searchlight down on the scene of yet another crime. Organized Chaos Directly across the street is Metro Church, the repaired remains of a former Rheingold brewery, where I am the unlikely pastor. I suppose you could call it safe. It’s protected by steel doors, industrial padlocks and coils of razor wire. Today this corner may look like the leftovers from a time in history most people would rather choose to forget, but on Saturday and Sunday it becomes the most exciting place you can imagine. I would not want to be anywhere else. Huge buses—we have more than fifty of them—arrive at almost the same time. Each is jammed with kids who have waited all week to be here. At 9:30 am on Saturday morning the auditorium is empty. But, fifteen minutes later it is filled wall to wall with young people between the ages of three and twelve, ready to soak in everything like sponges. I begin by grabbing the microphone and shouting/singing: “Tell me, whose side are you leaning on?” They sing back the answer at the top of their lungs: “I’m leaning on the Lord’s side!” For the next hour and a half these kids experience a Sunday school that many have described as the only positive thing that these kids have in their lives. Every minute is carefully crafted to present one single concept or truth—through a live band, bigger-than-life cartoon characters, video projectors, skits, games, contests, prizes and a straight-as-an-arrow message. One minute it is sheer bedlam; the next it is so quiet I can whisper and be heard at the top of the farthest bleachers. At 11:30 a.m. the smiling youngsters run to their designated buses and sing their way back to their squalid tenements and high rises. At 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. the same thing happens again. We also have multiple services on Sunday and Sidewalk Sunday Schools, which are the same style of one-hour, fast-paced sessions conducted on weekdays after school from all five boroughs. I still have to pinch myself to believe that this ghetto corner marks one of the world’s largest Sunday schools with a staff of more than 150 full-time workers and more than three hundred volunteers. Guideposts magazine named it Church of the Year. I was also amazed to be invited by President Bush to serve on the National Commission on America’s Urban Families. According to Numbers When you look at the facts in years past, you begin to understand the enormity of the challenge we face. In Brooklyn, South Bronx, Harlem and the areas in which we minister: •   Over 100,000 cars a year are stolen in New York City. •   Unemployment is five times higher than the national average. •   83 percent of high school freshmen will drop out before graduation. •   Between 60 and 70 percent of the population receives welfare. •   New York Family Court recorded more than twenty-four thousand child abuse petitions last year, an increase of more than 700 percent in the past decade. But the escalating problems of children and youth are not limited to New York. They are in cities everywhere. •   In American cities more than 30 percent of the population lives below the official poverty line. •   Children of color are four times more likely than their white peers to be born into a poor family and suffer a lifetime of consequences, ranging from diminished academic standing to increased financial insecurity in a report prepared by the California-based Insight Center for Community Economic Development.1 Minority children are far more likely to be poor. Forty-five percent of blacks and 39 percent of Hispanic children are living below the poverty line. •   One in 50 kids in America is homeless according to a 2009 issue of Time magazine. Roughly three-quarters of homeless children are of elementary school age, and 42 percent are below age six. This is was before the financial and home foreclosure crisis hit full stride!2 •   Nearly one-quarter of homeless children have witnessed violence. It isn’t surprising, then, that nearly half of such children suffer from anxiety and depression. •   On an average day 135,000 students bring guns to U.S. schools. •   There are more than four million teenage alcoholics in our nation. •   Alcohol-related accidents are the leading cause of death among teenagers. It contributes substantially to adolescent motor vehicle crashes, other traumatic injuries, suicide, date rape, and family and school problems.3 •   Every day, on average, 11,318 American youth (12 to 20 years of age) try alcohol for the first time, compared with 6,488 for marijuana; 2,786 for cocaine; and 386 for heroin.4 •   Every year a million teenage girls become pregnant. •   More than 2.5 million adolescents contract a sexually transmitted disease each year.5 •   More than a million young people are regular users of drugs. •   One out of every ten newborns in the U.S. is exposed to one or more illicit drugs in the womb. •   School bullying is getting worse, happening at earlier ages and with more frequency. Cyber bullying statistics named the five worst states to live in to avoid bullies in K-12 were: 1. California, 2. New York, 3. Illinois, 4. Pennsylvania, and 5. Washington. •   More than 23 percent of elementary students reported being bullied one to three...