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Tellico Village Community Church is located in Tellico Village, about 20 miles southwest of Knoxville, TN. We are affiliated with The International Council of Community Churches.
Annie's Baptism
Annie Winstead baptized by Dr. John Orr on May 15, 2011
Celebrating the Baptism of
Rogan Matthew Pascarelli
November 28, 2010
Melissa and Justin Pascarelli
with Ava and Rogan
Grandparents Ray and Carol Green Weishaupt
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Our New Sanctuary Project| A Shattered Heart |
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The following essay was written in response to the tragic death of a little two-year old Chinese girl named Wang Yue. Run over by a truck after wandering away from her parents' shop, Yue-Yue lay helplessly in the street as no fewer than 18 persons passed by without helping. The widely viewed YouTube video of this tragedy prompted Rusty Allen to write the article below and create a video slideshow in honor of Yue-Yue. These expressions of compassion were created before word was received of Yue-Yue's death. The video slideshow follows the essay.
Apathy – A Deadly Sin of the Soul We Were Never Told About by Rusty Allen The pain and anguish I have felt over the last few days has been excruciating; my heart is shattered yet It all started when I finally decided to log into Facebook because I received an email that an old classmate needed help with a construction question. After responding to him I decided to look at some of the news articles on Yahoo News. Among the stories was one that caught my eye about a young girl involved in a hit-and-run accident where no one came to her aide. Reading the story, and feeling it was a little exaggerated, I decided to look on YouTube for the referenced video of the incident. I was shocked to find on YouTube a lot of videos of the incident and obviously clicked on the unedited version. What I witnessed was the most heinous act of human kind. This girl, this baby, this little angel unfamiliar to danger, wandered into what she saw as a curious world at 1726 hours (5:26 pm) and paid a horrible price. While her dad was running the family store and her mom was hanging the laundry on the line, little Yue Yue walked off after having been playing with her older brother. She walked into a world of curiosities with little to no understanding of danger. And because so many had lost contact with their consciences, her simple mistake was exponentially made worse. Yue Yue was first struck by a fairly slow-moving van driven by a man talking on his cell phone. After knocking her over and rolling over her with the front tire, he paused and obviously knew he had run over something. According to the driver’s own statements made later, he saw her bleeding and decided since no one was around he would run. To him he considered the monetary cost of the accident; paying the punishment for a dead child was acceptable but paying for hospital fees could be enormous and therefore it was better for him to run. What followed were pedestrians, motorcyclists, and bicyclists who clearly altered their paths of travel from Yue Yue and her growing pool of blood as she was reaching and probably crying for their help. Thank God close circuit television (CCTV) does not record sounds. Sometimes these apathetic by-passers stole another look at her and her suffering before continuing on their way. A second truck comes by and crushes her feet and legs adding to her unfair and incredibly horrifying ordeal. Mercifully a lady spots baby Yue Yue, hears her own conscience (motherly instinct), and rushes to her aid. She finds Yue Yue bleeding from her mouth, nose, and back of the head lying in a pool of her own blood groaning, one eye closed and her eyes filled with tears. She yells for help to no avail and tries to lift her and carry her to safety but she is too “soft” and decides it is safer to drag her from under the arms to against bags of rice on the side of the road and out of the path of traffic. She frantically looks for help with others telling her to “mind her own business” and unwilling to help. Eventually she finds the mother who runs frantically to her child and we see what looks like a limp rag doll being picked up by her before she sprints off to get help for her daughter. For nearly 8 minutes this baby girl suffered like nothing I have ever seen or want to see again. I can’t help but see the similarities between Chen Xianmei and the “good Samaritan” from the Bible, i.e., the one person to come to the aid of the victim being the “lowest” of society. In this case, an illiterate woman who searches for scraps of metal, cloth, or whatever she can to re-sale in one of the richest provinces of China. There are many conflicting reports and snippets of information scattered throughout the internet. Because the pain I feel for this girl and her family, I have made it a personal goal to learn as much about everything surrounding this tragedy as possible. Here I will explain what I can, use my personal experiences in similar markets I visited in my time in Korea, bring to light details others may overlook, and give the best background information I can on Chinese culture as it stands today described by Chinese citizens themselves. First I must mention that the reports are conflicting enough that Yue Yue is either 1) stabilizing with a good outlook, 2) stabilizing with a bleak outlook, 3) somewhat brain dead although sensitive to pain reflexes with no idea of which direction she could go, 4) brain dead with an outlook of surviving only in a vegetative state, 5) brain dead and bodily organs slowly deteriorating, or 6) dead. You can see the information is quite varied and all I can do is hope and pray for the best. Many songs have helped me feel and understand what my troubled heart is trying to express. Josh Groban’s “You Are Loved (Don’t Give Up)”, Storyside B’s “More to This Life”, Michael W.Smith’s “Healing Rain”, among others have helped inspire me to believe this tragedy will not get lost in the pages of history regardless of the lack of media coverage. I understand after all the research I have done that this serious problem is not only secluded only to China. This is a world-wide epidemic that needs to change. Although not prevalent here in the US the way it is in poorer societies of the world, the epidemic of apathy is everywhere. We are lucky in that usually as children we grow up pretending to be heroes. We dress up as Superman, firemen, policemen, soldiers, dream of hitting the game-winning homerun in the bottom of the ninth with 2 outs or game-winning shot with :02 left on the clock. We dream of being heroes. If she dies I will be forever scarred for this little girl. If someone can truly place themselves in her shoes and not start to cry uncontrollably, they need to search their own soul for where they’ve gone wrong. It is horrible enough that we have crimes against children in this world and diseases that steal the life of children from us but to allow the human behavior of apathy to add to that is inhuman. Regardless of culture, we as humans each have a conscience to help us know right from wrong and we need to get familiar with it and start listening to it more. I’m not referring to those people hitch-hiking or those broke-down on the side of the road (which some of us are afraid to approach because of fear of a scam or worse) but those in dire need of help. Anyone who can see a bleeding, dying and desperate person, much less a child, and think only of the monetary cost of death versus hospitalization has lost touch with their conscious totally and is a danger to themselves and civilization. Thoughts: I’m broken and I’m falling apart. If ever there was a time we need God’s love and forgiveness it is now. My worries of the future of America, bills and school grades of my oldest daughter, and ideas for the upcoming holiday season have all but been wiped completely out of my mind. God bless the child who suffers!
CLICK HERE to see a video tribute to Yue-Yue created before her passing. |
still beating. For anyone who knows the story of 2 year old toddler Wang Yue, affectionately called Yue Yue which means “Little Joy”, you can surely understand where I am coming from. If you have seen an unedited version of the video of her painful ordeal as I did on Monday (17 October 2011) I am sure you are hurting as badly as me. The best way I can describe this is I feel closer to knowing what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is than I ever have before. I cry, I feel sick, I cry more, and I can’t get the replaying vision out of my head of that poor girl not only experiencing so much pain but seeing others so unwilling to help, SEEING HER STILL MOVING AND REACHING FOR THOSE WALKING NEAR HER, the puddle of her blood slowly growing, and knowing that she must have been so desperately wanting her mom and dad at that moment.
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