Featured Fridays – Woman Brought Back from Cardiac Arrest

This day was not what I expected. When I heard that we were going to a city dump to hand out lunches to people there, I thought it would be tough to see but I had no idea of what was to come. 

To set the scene, we took an hour drive from Zion's Gate into the mountains. We were in a beautiful area and had a chance to stop at a school at the base of the mountains, at the base of the dump. I couldn't see the dump yet but I could quickly see where we were headed because of the hundreds of huge black birds flying above a hill. With the windows rolled down, I could smell what we were coming closer and closer to. I was hoping what I smelled wouldn't get any worse because the stench as we were driving, was making me a bit car sick. As we got to the top of the hill, and drove into the dump, the smell was like nothing I had ever experienced. I had to literally stop thinking about the stench so that I wouldn't gag. As our trucks with food were pulling in, people and dogs came running from all directions…

People covered in dirt, people with masks completely covering their faces, people with a tooth-less smile, people with ragged clothes…..people who are just like us but in a different situation. 

They knew we had food so a huge line formed behind the trucks and they got a plastic cup filled with spaghetti and a bag of water. At this point, all I could do was stand there with my crutches, in shock. This could not be real life.

As I stood there, a couple dump trucks came up the hill to drop of new piles of trash. Trash that you and I wouldnt want anymore. Trash that we don't care about. Trash that is gross and old….trash that the people here live off of. The trucks weren't even done emptying their contents when all the people, all the cows, all the dogs sprinted and crawled to as fast as they could. This was food for them and any recyclables they found was their income. Vultures, crows, cows, dogs, and people all fighting for the same thing. I was told that if a cow dies, the people rip off the meat and eat it raw because cooking it takes too much time and others might get to it first. 

As I watched the chaotic rush for the new trash, I looked to my left and saw a small group of people sitting on a large pile of garbage….they were raising their hands, clutching onto their Bibles, praising God…Praising God in a dump. Wow. That sure put things in perspective. As the group was sitting there, a squad mate and I asked if we could pray for the group. They were so thankful.
My good leg/foot was getting sore because I had been standing on it for a long time and I needed to rest. As I was about to turn and go sit in the back of one of the trucks, God had other plans. I looked at the trash 

pile where the group was worshipping and there was just one woman and her son sitting there. Instead of going and sitting comfortably in the truck, God gave me a push to go sit next to the woman on the trash pile. I brought a translator with me so that I would be able to talk to her. I found out that she is 26, has 5 kids, her husband was killed, she is pregnant, and has no 

place to live except for at the dump. I asked if I could pray for her and she said yes, so I prayed and it got translated to her. I prayed for protection, health for her family, and for comfort. I peeked over and saw that she was crying so I continued to pray. As I continued, she collapsed in my arms. I thought maybe she fainted or something so I kept holding her up and as

ked the translator to get some help. As he did I looked at her stomach to make sure that I could still see her breaths go in and out. More people from my squad gathered and I told them what had happened. One of my squad mates is an EMT so he was checking her pulse and breathing. I was still holding up her limp body and all of a sudden he said that we needed to pray, with much concern in his voice. She was going into cardiac arrest. I looked down again at her stomach again and I couldn't see her breaths anymore. I started to wonder if I was holding a lifeless body in my arms. I looked at her face and saw that she still had wet tears on her face from when we had been praying. I knew that this wasn't goi

ng to be the end. Another squad mate started praying more and more for her heart and tapped it a couple times like a defibrillator would. On the second time the woman came to life again. She was confused a while but was finally able to talk again. We talked and comforted her for a while and at the end, she recommitted her life to Christ. It was beautiful. 

It did'nt hit me until we were back in the truck how amazing this was. God used me, even with a broken foot to sit down with this woman. I am scared to think of what would have happened if no one had been there when that happened. People might have thought she was just sleeping and she could have passed away on the pile of trash where she sat. I am just thankful that I allowed God to push me to sit there in that pile of trash with her. There are so many times where God tries to tell us to do something, but numerous times we don't listen or we don't pay attention. This just shows how important it is to pay attention to who is around us because you never know who is going through a life crisis.