John W. Fountain, professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an award winning reporter for the New York Times, grew up on the "mean streets" of North Lawndale in Chicago and wrote the book True Vine: A Young Black Man's Journey of Faith, Hope, and Clarity.

At this link you can read and/or listen to his heart warming story "The God Who Embraced Me" on NPR's This I Believe. He tells of "The God who warmed me when we could see our breath inside our freezing apartment, where the gas was disconnected in the dead of another wind-whipped Chicago winter, and there was no food, little hope and no hot water." It's a beautifully written manifesto that made me cry.