Did you know that one out of every three unborn babies dies through abortion in America?
Since 1996, my husband, Jerry, and I have been involved in an event that changed our lives, the Please Let Me Live Life Chain in the Statesville area. We also served on the board with some other concerned and caring folks to help organize Statesville’s first Crisis Pregnancy Center (1996-2001) in the small buildings behind where the new Civic Center has been built. Since that time, a modern center has opened and helped many young women.
In December 1996, the Rev. Tross Kimmer asked us to research and teach the lesson in his Sunday school class on the third Sunday in January. The lesson was called “The Sanctity of Human Life.” President Ronald Reagan had just signed a bill establishing this observance. What we found through researching many sites on our computer and through the Focus on the Family Ministry of James Dobson just shocked and broke our hearts.
Many churches did this for a while, and a few still do. I guess most Americans do not want to know how unborn children die in abortion clinics.
One man, Bob Pierce, made a statement while serving as a chaplain in the Korean War that has really touched my heart. He wrote these words in the front of his Bible as he saw hundreds of children and their parents killed by the Communists: “Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.”
I saw this man in the late 1950s (when I was a teen) when he brought a large crowd of children from a Korean orphanage to sing on the Ed Sullivan Show. After the war was over, Bob Pierce went back to Korea to work with orphans for close to 10 years. Upon his return to North Carolina, he began Samaritan’s Purse, an organization that helps folks, especially children, all over our world. Franklin Graham took over after Bob’s death from cancer. The shoe boxes collected by Samaritan’s Purse through Operation Christmas Child are filled with many things that bring so much joy to children all over our world.
The Please Let Me Live Life Chain began in 1987 in Yuba City, Calif. Folks who wanted to stand up for the rights of the unborn child believed this event would grow nationwide into a prayer chain as Americans stand in a memorial to these precious babies. More than 1 million folks have taken a stand for that one hour of prayer over the last 28 years on the first Sunday in October in our country and Canada, standing peacefully along a roadside and praying for laws to change in America to protect unborn babies.
This year’s event will be held Oct. 5. Please go to www.lifechain.net and see more information about the areas in North Carolina where it will be held. You may contact us for the exact location in your area or go to ncrtl.org for information about the events taking places in our state.
We are told as citizens of this country that we have these rights: “We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Since 1973, 35 percent of our population is missing; that comes to more than a million babies who have not had these rights. In all the wars fought by our country, the amount is 40 times the soldiers who gave their lives for our country so that freedom might be for all. Does not our God’s heart break when children — born or unborn — die through violence in our country?
Please join us Oct. 5 as we hold signs for one hour of silence in Statesville at Cross Roads Shopping Center on Glen-Way Drive, from 2:15-3:30 p.m. This will be a group from Command Baptist Church (658 Island Ford Road) with Geraldine Houston acting as director. In the Troutman area, Calvary Baptist Church will host this event on the sidewalk going down the Main Street. Please do not park in front of stores opened for business that day.
Bring your lawn chair, bottle of water, umbrella (if it looks like rain) and join us.
Please stand quietly for this one hour.

Linda M. Harmon of Statesville is state director for the 79-plus Life Chains held in North Carolina. For more information, call 704-528-3741 or go to www.lifechain.net.
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