After a long day of working in the community helping to tend a small field, which is a story on its own. A sad story about a mother that just up and left five kids to fend for themselves. The oldest son is only 15, and yet he must take care of all of his siblings. The youngest being only a couple years old. Sorry back to the topic at hand. So after this long day of working hard we came to the time that I couldn’t wait for, it was children’s ministry time. YES! I LOVE kids and couldn’t wait to get out there and just have fun. So we walk as a team, along with the two church leaders of the ministry and all the kids for about twenty minutes to a park. This park was absolutely beautiful, the only problem is that it was completely unmaintained for at least the last 20 years. So we all run around and play games with about twelve different kids, I absolutely loved it, playing with kids is one of my strong points. So after playing games and running around for about two hours the girl in charge of the ministry informs us that we are going over to a lake to take the kids for a swim. I was just walking slowly taking in all my surroundings, because I don’t want to lose a minute of any of this. So I am one of the last people to get to the lake, to which everyone is just kind of standing around on the edge of the lake watching the kids as they all run around and splash in the water. I slowly push through the people asking “who’s jumping in?” to which everyone just laughed… I guess they didn’t think I was serious, because when I kicked off my flip flops and took my shirt off I heard kind of a gasp come from behind me. So I waddled on in slowly but surely, the kids seemed to love it. I guess that is where I gained most of the courage to just dive in. So after swimming for a little bit, I was a ways out in the lake. Playing around with some of the older kids, just throwing a Frisbee around. I started to swim back when I finally got to a place that my feet could touch the bottom I was relieved that I had made it back because after swimming around and staying afloat for about a half hour I was exhausted. I was slowly making my way to the shallow water. Then when I was in water that was maybe three and a half feet deep I heard something that pierced my ears. It was the screams of half of the people on the shore. So I quickly look up to see everyone pointing, quickly I traced the end of their fingers to what they were pointing at. Yet I was already moving in that direction. Finally I see what everyone is pointing at. It was one of the little boys with only his forehead sticking out of the water holding his arms up high. At this point I was moving as fast as I could to him. As I was moving closer the bubbles coming up made my heart drop yet it didn’t make me waiver one bit I still moved with reckless abandon to this little boy. I made it there in what seemed like an eternity, which must have only been about 3-4 seconds. As I got to the boys side I was already reaching down for him. As I was reaching my arms down I looked and my eyes locked on a little girl that was under the water. Without even thinking my left arm went down deeper and grabbed her as my right arm grabbed the boy. I pulled them both out of the water to which they both instantly let out a big cough in which they spewed out an unbelievable amount of water. They both continued to cough as I carried them to the shore. The thing that shook me all the way down to my foundation was the look that both of them gave me when I looked into their eyes. It made my heart melt. I found out that the little girl, that is a little older then the boy had seen the little boy drowning and was trying to save him by lifting him up, even though she couldn’t even swim… Talk about self-sacrifice. After all this happened the rest of the kids continued to play so I was still in the water, but my mind was somewhere totally different I couldn’t believe that all of this happened. Finally it was time to get out and go back. In the couple days that followed the two girls from the church that were there told ever local that met me about how I saved the two kids from drowning. It’s crazy because before it happened I would have been proud of a story like that and I would almost brag about it and let my pride take over. Yet now all I can do is thank God that I was in the right place at the right time and thank God that those two little kids still have a life. So none of the kids we brought with drown but there was a piece of me that I left in that lake, and I’m better off without it. The victories that I have I just want to turn back to praise, praise of a God that actually deserves the praise
