Stealer of Hearts

By Kobina Amissah-Fynn

Imagine being given the opportunity to remodel society in a way to eliminate crime and bring wellbeing and peace of mind to the world's people. What would you have done and what would you have considered as the necessary ingredients for success in such an unusual enterprise?

This was the challenge facing this young girl whose doll was stolen. From this seemingly minor incident, a project gradually takes shape in her mind to rid the world of all thieves. From her very modest but untiring efforts in pursuit of her goal, some surprising lessons are learned and an ambitious plan emerges for laying the foundations of a global divine civilization that will correspond to heaven on planet earth—an earthly paradise for all the world's people.

But then a thief of a different kind appears on the horizon…

A spiritually-inspiring novella.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hope Books
• Release date: Jan 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393365112

Book preview

Stealer of Hearts

Kobina Amissah-Fynn

STEALER OF HEARTS

Copyright © K. Amissah-Fynn 2018

All Rights Reserved

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This is a work of fiction.  While some true-life religious and historical figures are mentioned in the narrative, the book’s characters are nevertheless fictional and the resemblance of any of them to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Other Books by the Author

Nonfiction:

CHRIST AND HIS SECOND COMING: According to the Divine Promise and not the Popular Expectation

THE RAGING SIGNS OF THE TIMES

WHO AM I? The Interrelationships of Body, Soul, Mind, Heart and Spirit

Religious Fiction:

REAWAKENING: A Tale of Death, the Afterlife & a Mission

SO GREAT AN ANNOUNCEMENT

THE NIGHT OF TRANSITION

THE TRIBULATION

Other Fiction:

VERY SHORT FUNNY STORIES, Vol. I

CONTENTS

I. To Rid the World of Thieves

II. On Earth as in Heaven

III. Barriers in the Mind

IV. One Big, Happy Family

V. Flying to the Dizzy Heights

VI. None Too Poor

VII. Common Focus

VIII. Like Lessons in a School

IX. Reaching the Island of Truth

X. A Small Matter of Language

XI. Culture is the Universe

XII. A Necessary Condition

XIII. An Evolving Civilization

XIV. United States of the World

XV. A Real Stealer of Hearts

I. To Rid the World of Thieves

It is April 2015, and Yerda is on her way to New York. She is aboard this flight that took off several hours ago from Accra, the capital of her homeland Ghana. In her hand luggage is an important document entitled: Blueprint for Creating Heaven on Earth. It is a document she hopes to present to an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. In it is a plan for turning the earth into paradise. There is no more important mission in the world than this one—so important, in fact, that one of her teachers even hinted to her just the other day that if she was successful and her proposal was accepted, she could be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and become the youngest Nobel laureate in history. Until it was mentioned, Yerda had no more than a vague notion of what the Nobel Prizes were all about, and could not have cared less in any case. After all, she is not in this for fame or fortune, only for the good of all mankind. Hers is a plan to rid the world of thieves and burglars, no matter in what shape or size they come, or how far advanced they are in the art of stealing. This is the important thing.

An announcement on the airline’s public address system informs passengers that the plane is approaching John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Yerda rushes into the toilet for the last time. She goes there to have a last lingering look at herself in the mirror. This is history-making—that a young African girl, no more than fifteen years of age, should be going alone to New York with a plan to save the entire world! She practises in the mirror how she will present her plan to the Under-Secretary-General, what she will say and the best way to say it for maximum effect. She checks to make sure her plaited hair is tidy and well-arranged on her head, looks herself again in the mirror, and comes out of the toilet feeling like a real girl. Then she returns to her seat, tightens her seat belt in response to the in-flight announcement and the illuminated sign in front of her, and relaxes to await the most important landing in aviation history!

II. On Earth as in Heaven

It was mid-morning on a Saturday seven years earlier, in Ghana’s second city, Kumasi, that it all began. Nine-year-old Naporo was alone in the house when two young men forced open his back window and jumped into his room. Naporo was caught by surprise; he was beside himself with rage.

Hey, where are your manners? he shouted. You’re not supposed to enter people’s homes without their permission... and... and certainly not through the window!

What Naporo got for his troubles was an unwelcome slap and a less-than-gentle push.

Hey, what’s that for? Is that what you learnt at Sunday school? He was very angry.

No, we learnt it at Wednesday school, one of the hoodlums replied.

Wednesday school? Never heard of it in my life. And what did they teach you at Wednesday school?

They taught us how to burgle homes.

Burgle homes? So you’re burglars? That explains it. But look, it’s completely wrong to steal—that’s what we learnt at Sunday school: stealing is wrong.

We learnt at Wednesday school that stealing is fine if you cannot find work. And with that the men began to help themselves to whatever would catch their attention.

Naporo saw them take not only his beautiful toy helicopter, but also his small Lego-built house, his much-loved hand-held game console, his spinning top, as well as his favourite storybooks and put them one after the other into the sack they had brought along with them. He was heartbroken; he was mad; yet he was also helpless.

Then one of the crooks saw a doll on a chair. What’s a doll doing in a boy’s room? he asked, and without waiting for an answer, he took it also and dropped it in the sack.

Just then they heard the noise of people approaching from the front of the house. As the two criminals made their escape through the back window from which they had entered, they shouted to Naporo: Tell your pappy to buy many more things for you so we can come for them the next time we visit.

Soon the rest of the family were home from shopping in the neighbourhood. There was M’ma Saha, Naporo’s mild-mannered m’ma (mama)—tall, slim, a teacher by profession; M’ba Andani, his dependable m’ba (papa)—stout, clean-shaven, bespectacled, a civil servant; and bright little sister, Yerda—a smallish, round-faced seven-year-old, with hair cut low.

Naporo rushed out of the house to meet them and breathlessly told them, before they could even reach the front door, that the doll his sister forgot in his room, when she came there to play earlier that morning, together with a lot of his own things had been stolen by two thugs, about nineteen or twenty years old, who forced their way into his room by jumping through his window. Yerda could not believe her ears. She was as outraged as her parents to hear such shocking news—so outraged, in fact, that the following morning, at the Sunday school, she confided to her Sunday school teacher the theft of her lovely doll.

Her kind teacher said, God created this world beautiful and wants us to live happy, peaceful and fulfilled lives. Sadly, some people don’t see things that way. They want to turn the world upside down and prosper at the expense of others. In the Lord’s Prayer, sweet Jesus asks us to pray: ‘Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.’ That’s what Jesus tells us: to pray that the conditions of heaven may appear on earth; but these bad people not only refuse to say the prayer, they actually try to bring hell on earth.

But teacher, praying is good, that’s why I pray every day... as you told us to. You remember you told us to pray every day?

"Yes, yes, you’re supposed to pray every day because prayer is good for your soul