In 1947, Robert Pierce worked for a religious non-profit organization called Youth for Christ. Its mission was to evangelize the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The young evangelist started toward China with only enough money to buy a ticket to Honolulu. On the trip, he met Tena Hoelkedoer, a teacher. She introduced him to a battered and abandoned child named White Jade. Unable to care for the child herself, she asked Pierce, “What are you going to do about her?” Pierce gave the woman his last five dollars and agreed to send the same amount each month to help the woman care for the child.

Pierce eventually made it to China, where thousands made public commitments as followers of Christ during four months of evangelistic rallies. While there Pierce saw widespread hunger. He felt intense compassion for these people.

Pierce later wrote these words in the flyleaf of his Bible:

“Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.”

Dragging a movie camera across Asia – China was soon closed – Pierce showed the resulting pictures to church audiences in North America. He asked for money to help children. He showed their faces and begged Christians to “adopt” one. In 1950 he incorporated this personal crusade as World Vision.

It was said of Robert Pierce,

“He prayed more earnestly and importunely than anyone else I have ever known. It was as though prayer burned within him…he functioned from a broken heart.”

– From a sermon by Rick Ezell, pastor of First Baptist Church, Greer, South Carolina, entitled “Let Your Heart be Troubled”