13 years ago...

13 years ago today (technically yesterday, since it's past midnight), January 12, 1995, was one of the most defining days in the life of my family. We were living in Xela, Guatemala, I was 9 years old, in the third grade. We still traveled every so often back to the village we lived in before, but we did not live there permanently anymore.

My father had traveled to a town about an hour away from Xela for a pastor's meeting. It was around 8:30 p.m. and he was driving home from the meeting on a dark, curvy highway. He came upon a blind curve, and his headlights shone on what looked like a woman wearing a blonde wig trying to flag him down for a ride. He had decided not to stop for anyone after dark, so he didn't. But the next thing he saw was a man on the curb raising a shotgun. The next thing he knew, he was yelling, and didn't know where his right arm was. He contemplated pulling over, but he knew that if he did, he would probably bleed to death. He was driving a Toyota Land Cruiser, and had it in second gear, which allowed him to continue driving the next five kilometers into the small Mayan indian town that is normally closed up by this time of night. He pulled into the only gas station in that town, where there was a man pumping gas. He yelled for help out the window, and the man hopped in the car and shifted gears for my dad, directing him to the basketball court where the Red Cross volunteer basketball team was practicing. They got my dad into the back seat of the car, and drove him, he says, faster than he ever wants to go again in his life, in to Xela. We lived on the outskirts of town, right on the highway, so he was able to tell them where we lived so they could pick up my mom and she could guide them to the hospital. My mom and I had gone to dinner that night with another missionary family, and even though we had gotten home in time for my dad to be home, I had gone to get ice cream and pick up clothes with my friend and her dad, because she was going to spend the night. My friend's mom stayed with my mom at the house, and while we were gone they pulled up and got my mom. Once they arrived at the hospital, our family doctor was there helping a Mormon missionary who had dislocated his shoulder.

When my friend, her dad and I got home, her mom came out of our front door, looked at me and said, "Angela, your dad is going to be ok." and I said, "What happened to him?" She said, "Your dad has been shot, but he will be ok." I was nine years old...so I related being shot with dying. "Is he dead?" I asked. She repeated, "No, he's going to be ok." That night, the other family stayed with me at our house, since they did not have a telephone and they needed to call our mission family and find out how to notify my brother, since he was in Guatemala City at a Soccer tournament.

There are several things about that night that I consider God's way of displaying His love to us in ways that we don't understand. First off, He knew that my dad was going to get shot, and he placed the right people in the right places at the right time in order to get my dad he help that he needed. The man at the gas station, the red cross playing basketball, me not at home when they came to get my mom, and our doctor at the hospital when she was supposed to be on a date. Another thing was that my mother had considered going with him to this meeting, but had decided to stay home with me. Had my mom been in the car with my dad, the gunshot would have gone right through her head. My dad was shot with bird shot, and the main impact was right in the crease of his underarm on his back. If it had gone any higher or lower it would have damaged vital organs, or killed him.

For a month after the incident, our doctor would come to the house and clean out my dad's wound, dead cells, and getting out as many of the lead pellets that she could. He still has 100 of them in his upper torso, since they were only able to remove about 20.

My dad is alive and well today, and lives to tell his story. I can't tell it the way he can, and I've only really heard him tell it once in depth. This entry doesn't do his point of view justice. I can only tell the story from a 9 year old girl's point of view. But from that same point of view, I can say that I am so thankful that my Daddy is still here, God was not finished with him on January 12, 1995, and he's still not done with him in 2008. He is my hero.