God's Protection

I have no doubt that God has big plans for the lives of each of my students. I want to share a story with you all of something that happened a few weeks ago. At our staff meeting that morning I decided to pray for God to protect and keep all of my students and teachers that day. This is a pretty routine prayer for me and I thought fairly little of it as I was saying the words. Later that day I got a phone call from one of the teachers asking me about something and then right before we hung up he asked me if I had heard about the accident. Immediately my heart dropped. I told him I hadn’t and he proceeded to tell me the events that had happened that day.
Our children walk about 30-40 minutes from their homes to school each day. On this day our students were going home instead of coming to the Ed Center so they were walking with some of their friends. Their friends decided to ask a man for a ride home and 5 of my students also got in the car. They told the man to drop them at a certain point on the road. As the man approached that place he showed no indication that he was going to slow down, so the kids started saying, “stop here stop here!” The man’s response was, “tell me a story.” Weird response right? I still have no idea what that is suppose to mean… So, the man continues driving past where he was supposed to drop them. One of my students started getting worried the man had bad intentions so she opened the door and JUMPED out of the car! Can you imagine? The car was probably going about 40 mph and she just jumped out of it! Talk about bravery! After she jumped out, the man stopped, the other kids got out of the car, and the man just drove away – not even checking to see the condition of the girl. Later that day, there were reports on the radio that some kids in town had been abducted. I cannot say for sure that it could have been my kids that the reporter was talking about, but I am so glad that I never have to find out!
Praise the Lord that the girl who jumped out of the car didn’t even have one broken bone! She was pretty beat up. In fact, when I went to visit her the next day I hardly recognized her. She had some pretty deep wounds on her face and arms, but no concussion and not a single broken bone. After a week she was laughing and going about like normal.
Like I said before, there is no way of knowing for sure what would have happened to those children, but I am giving all the credit and glory to the Lord for protecting them that day. I am so thankful that my students have the Holy Spirit and listen to its leading. I am so thankful that we serve a God who protects and cares for us. That we have a God who hears and answers our prayers.
This is only one example of a “close call” I have had with my students. I have had others that almost got hit by a car or have fallen ill. But God continues to protect His children and that is why I have no doubt in my mind that God is going to use the lives of these children in very big ways to spread his kingdom in their community, their country and the world. I feel so honored to be a small part of their lives.

Some of the wonderful future leaders I get to work with!