Street Stories - A Ringside Seat To Over 4 Decades Of Taking Jesus To The Streets Of The World

It turned out, Anane’s brother was Officer Uhuru Gonja Houston, (he went by his African name, Uhuru) and he was a Port Authority Policeman in New York City. Witnesses had stated the last time any of them saw Officer Houston, he was at the World Trade Center as it was crumbling to the ground. I was honored to pray for Anane and for her brother, Uhuru. I thought about the hundreds of families who continued rushing daily to nearby hospitals, searching for their loved ones, hoping possibly they had been hurt or lost their memories due to the catastrophic attacks in New York City. They frantically went from hospital to hospital searching for their family members. One of those hospitals closest to the World Trade Center was St. Vincents Hospital. It was a level-one trauma center. Dr. Richard Westfal was the Associate Director of the hospital’s emergency department. Dr. Westfal said the hospital treated a smattering of patients with non-life-threatening injuries as they waited for the desperate onslaught of critically injured patients, gravely injured and brought in by ambulances whose sirens were already wailing down Seventh Avenue. He was quoted later as saying about the aftermath of the attack, “About noontime, it was like someone put a lock on the door of the emergency room. Patients stopped coming,” Dr. Westfal said. “Once those two buildings were down, there was no one else coming in. I remember thinking that’s an eerie sign.”

Grimly, Dr. Westfal concluded, “Either you were OK, or you were dead!” Destruction had come to America.

On Monday, I joined up with several people who had come to New York City to minister and help people.

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