This story comes from a Sunday school ministry in the part of New York City that has been rated the “most likely place to get killed.” The pastor Bill Wilson himself has been stabbed twice, shot at, and a member of his team killed. But he stays there, and not without controversy, ministers in Jesus’ name to people the rest of the church has largely forgotten. The largest bus ministry in America is not in the suburbs, but in Hell’s Kitchen. Here’s a story in Bill’s words:

“One Puerto Rican lady, after getting saved in church, came to me with an urgent request. She didn’t speak a word of English, so she told me through an interpreter, “I want to do something for God, please.”

“I don’t know what you can do,” I answered.

“Please, let me do something,” she said in Spanish.

“Okay. I’ll put you on a bus. Ride a different bus every week and just love the kids.”

So every week she rode a different bus — we have 50 of them — and loved the children. She would find the worst-looking kid on the bus, put him on her lap and whisper over and over the only words she had learned in English: “I love you. Jesus loves you.”

After several months, she became attached to one little boy in particular. “I don’t want to change buses anymore. I want to stay on this one bus,” she said.

The boy didn’t speak. He came to Sunday school every week with his sister and sat on the woman’s lap, but he never made a sound. And each week she would tell him all the way to Sunday school and all the way home, “I love you and Jesus loves you.”

One day, to her amazement, the little boy turned around and stammered,
“I-I love you, too.” Then he put his arms around her and gave her a big hug.

That was 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon. At 6:30 that night, the boy was found dead in a garbage bag under a fire escape. His mother had beaten him to death and thrown his body in the trash.

“I love you and Jesus loves you.” Those were some of the last words he heard in his short life — from the lips of a Puerto Rican woman who could barely speak English.

You — one person — can make a difference. In Jesus’ name, let yourself get close enough to people who hurt. Feel the pain. See the death. Feel the urgency. Take your stand between the living and the dead.”