USA Thinking Team

It’s been said,“WHERE God builds a church, the devil builds a saloon.” Rosa Gonzales from th USA Thinking Team served drinks in a saloon in Clinton’s Corner also known as Hell’s Kitchen, which is exactly what it sounds like. She earned sixty dollars a week. Tired of men squeezing her thighs, tired of living in Hell’s Kitchen poverty, thoughts of a better job tumbled through her mind. Courage was needed. Discernment was needed. There was a church near Hell’s Kitchen. Pastor Moore, a rodeo riding sort of preacher who loved country music said, “Rosa, you seem to be an honest girl, would you be interested to work for me? A few blocks from “The Kitchen” the old Lamb’s Club is for sale, it’s a theater building with a huge restaurant that can feed five hundred people a day. I need help to manage.”
Many bad things are said about church people; by golly they have flaws like any human. Rosa knew that; even so she found Pastor Moore’s group was thoroughly courageous, willing to sacrifice unselfishness to help others. When it came to helping the poor, church folks have always been the hands and feet of God.
As it turned out, the theater was an six-story building with fifty bedrooms on the fifth and sixth floors. Moore invited young people like Rosa Gonzales to live rent free as long as they volunteered an honest day of labor. Every morning hungry and homeless waited at the theater door for a breakfast of eggs, bread and coffee. Fairly soon every seat in the theater filled with souls starved for words of wisdom. Moore’s mission was locating teenagers trapped in Hell’s Kitchen, clueless kids seeking adventure; especially those who ran away from home with enough money to buy a bus ticket. The Greyhound bus unloaded them at Port Authority Terminal; chic looking pimps awaited with offering of friendship, drinks, drugs and overnights in cheap hotels. Drugged into sleep, teens were handcuffed to the beds, their mouths stuffed with towels to eliminate screaming; then for days thereafter they were fed drugs, beaten and threatened. When the strength to protest broke, they were put on the street as prostitutes. Moore’s volunteers were trained to save them. Even so, no one, not even the pastor, understood why a loving God allowed so much pain and sorrow. When questioned the standard answer was, “We are the hands and feet of God. It’s our job to save the children.” Rosa wasn’t satisfied with this answer, she thought there had to be more to this than hands and feet.
Questioning Paul Moore wasn’t an option, God’s justice is a river with many bends and twists that affect both the rich and the poor. Without attracting attention to herself Rosa sent a prayer upward, God if you are real, please show me. Rosa became a good listener; she grew in humility absorbing street personalities, learning their speech and habit patterns.
One starless night, holding the body of a dying teenager in her arms, Rosa experienced something she’d never before seen. A cloud of effervescent light encircled her in the dark. Rosa felt she was being lifted into this cloud. Through the glowing came a feeling of safety, a sense of wellbeing; the dying girl looked beautiful and as she took a last breath Rosa saw the girl’s spirit rise into the cloud. Rose was being spoken to. Directly after this experience, Walter Hoving, Chairman of Tiffany’s Jewelry Store, donated his Garrison country estate as a recovery place for abused women. The success of Hoving’s House exceeded expectations. (If you need to know, the Hoving House is still active in New York. Information can be found on the web.)