Crystal Brown

cbrown@weatherforddemocrat.com

Sujo John, evangelist and survivor of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, was the guest speaker Saturday night for the Weatherford Christian School Celebration 2009 Faith Promise Dinner.

This annual banquet is one of the main fundraisers for the local private school that serves about 210 students from pre-k to 12th grade.

Before John spoke, WCS Headmaster Van Gravitt explained to the audience that 80 percent of the school’s budget is covered by tuition and fees, with the remaining 20 percent coming from fundraising events like the banquet, in an attempt to keep tuition as low as possible.

“We need your help, support and partnership more than ever,” he told the audience. “We are striving to equip our children to change the world.”

John then spoke about how the events on Sept. 11, 2001, changed his world.

In February 2001, John and his wife, Mary, moved from India to New York City. Both worked in the World Trade Center Towers — John in the south tower and his wife, four months pregnant, in the north tower.

The morning of the attacks, John was already in his office on the 81st floor when the first hijacked plane crashed into the tower only a few stories above him.

Just moments before he had sent an e-mail to a friend about how empty he felt, that he was not fulfilling the plan God had in store for him and he was questioning his move to America. He asked his friend to pray for him.

Just a few minutes later, debris from the hijacked plane flew into his office.

“Fire raged out in every corner,” John said. “I’m thinking about my wife in the other tower. We start fighting our way out.”

It took over an hour for John to make his way down, and just as he made it to the ground level, the ground began to shake and the tower started to implode behind him.

“For the first time in my life I was confronted with reality of my mortality,” he said. “I said ‘God, if I’m going to die here, where am I going.’ In a moment of fear and openness, God took me back to that moment in my life where someone came and told me about Jesus.”

He told the audience he was introduced to Christianity at age 15 in India, but because of religious persecution, he had been what he called a closet Christian. It was at this point on Sept. 11 that he spoke out about his faith.

He called to God and so did all those crowded around him as the building crumbled. When the building came to a rest, John and one other man were the only ones of the huddled group to survive.

“Their bodies were smashed,” John recalled. “I turned around and one man had survived, an FBI agent. I asked him if he was a Christian, he said he was. We started praying for God to show us the way out safely.”

They saw the red light of an ambulance that had been buried in debris; it directed them out to the street. The FBI agent turned around to go back for more people, John said. He died that day.

“God had mercy and compassion on us that day,” John said. “My wife was late to work by two minutes and her life was spared.”

With only a green card in his wallet, John said he became an American that day. He recalled the outpouring of patriotism and religious openness that poured from people’s hearts. Signs proclaiming “God bless America” and mass groups of people praying to God.

It was then, John left corporate America to follow a new path in life, one that has lead him to reside in Flower Mound. But in the eight years since the attacks, he said America has changed dramatically and “darkness has gone as far as darkness can get in America.”

“We have an incredible endowment from heaven above to take care of the future generation,” he told the audience as he encouraged them to make a contribution to WCS. “Give as if you are saving the next generation of America. It’s time to connect your heart to your pocket.”