On July 14, 2010, my team and I were robbed in our house by nearly 20 men.
The day started off with house to house evangelism. It was actually a very good day. We got to talk to many people, and one of the ladies we got to pray with was healed from her foot feeling paralyzed and she got up and danced after the prayer! She then accepted Christ as her savior! That was awesome. Later in the day Tyler and Jessi went to a place where a boy had cancer and prayed for him and the rest of us went back to the house. Jillian, Jessica and I did P90X and the others came back while we were doing that. Shortly after P90X was over is when all the commotion happened.
As we went to sit down for dinner we heard a very loud banging in the back of the house. The first bang made us all wonder what was happening. The second time we started to realize we might be in danger. The third time is when they came rushing through the door and we all scattered. At this point it became chaos. We all ran to different rooms and tried to hold our doors closed. I ran to my room and was the only one in there. I quickly got in and tried to pin the door shut. In a matter of seconds they threw a cement block through my door and busted a large hole in the door. At this point I couldn’t do anything to keep them from coming in so I just backed away from the door. 4 guys came in asking for money and threatened to kill me if I didn’t give them money. So I looked for my wallet but it was in my bag in the living. I walked a guy around trying to find my bag and at this point my bag was already taken by someone else. He sat me down and started taking everything. There were about 8 guys inside the house and several outside the house.
A lot goes through your mind during these situations. The biggest questions being am I going to live through this and where is my team at right now? I prayed some hard prayers during this. I have never had to pray for my life like this before. As the guys started to leave, I just saw all of our bags and everything being carried out. Tyler and I were walking around at this point and we started looking for everyone else to see if they were still here. We found everyone and no one was harmed.
Toward the beginning of the race I challenged myself to finish reading the bible from start to finish by the end of the race. The cool thing that happens with this is parts of the bible tend to fall into place in my everyday life. I just happened to start the book of Job after all this happened. In Job, it talks about how he lost everything. His crops, animals, kids, and even his health. It says that God allowed satan to do these things to Job because God knew Job would not forsake Him. We may have lost just about everything to this robbery, but God spared our lives. I think God knew our team was strong enough to get through this and come out better than before. As hard as it is, it is worth it to go through such an experience so we can further the kingdom even more.
At the end of Job, God ended up blessing Job and gave him twice as much as before, and so he died old and full of years. I believe God will be honored in all of this and I believe our team will be bringing the kingdom twice as much as before. I also believe God will provide.
Check out this video of us explaining what happened on the scene:
