"The Lord is my shepherd, I’ll walk with Him Alway”.” Mom and I sang the familiar song. She had moved a little so that I could hold her foot. I wanted to know she was still there by me. I knew she was hurt badly. I had seen her face soon after she managed to find the ignition and turn the van off. She was covered in blood and her arm was lying at the wrong angle. My hand was trapped under the van, and I was lying in a fetal position on my knees. I was very scared. A man crawled in through one of the broken windows and crouched next to me.

“Hi, my name is Tom. Everything’s going to be ok. The ambulance is on its way.” Then he started asking questions, but my mind kept wandering. I saw my glasses on the floor next to me.

“Oh, look there are my glasses. I should probably get those before they get broken.” I thought, though for some reason I never picked them up.  I could see the ground outside it was covered in glass. “Cool, I never knew that the window glass is green!” these were all the weird thoughts going through my head. I was very scared! The next things I know I heard the sirens and saw that Tom was gone. Mom was worried about the other kids.

“Are my children OK? How many do you see? “She asked. The man counted and told my mom, but I didn’t hear the answer. They moved my mom away. She was lying on the ground half way in the van and half out of the van, which was blocking one of the ways to get to my hand. I heard my dad! He poked his head in the broken window.

“Are you ok Peanut? They’re going to get you out.” he said. I had been trying to move my hand and it was suddenly turning!

“It’s moving!” I yelled. Then my hand was free and I crawled out towards my dad. He carried me over to a paramedic who poured something on my hand. I didn’t even feel any pain until then. The hand looked horrible. There were hundreds of pieces of glass sticking out of it and I was missing my pinky finger. They rushed me to the stretcher and put me into the ambulance. I wanted to sleep, but this lady kept telling me to open my eyes. I told her I just couldn’t right now. I knew Joshua was in the ambulance with me so I kept trying to talk to him, but he was actually sitting in the front passenger seat. They put an IV in me and gave me Morphine for the pain and gave me oxygen. I also had neck brace on. Then I was at the hospital being wheeled into trauma room 2. It was bright and sunny in that room. It seemed like too big of a room for just one person. I was asked a bunch of medical and personal questions, including where I lived. I told them the church address for some reason and I couldn’t remember what shots I had already.

Every once in a while Josh would pop his head into my room, but he would go away before I could ask him anything. Later I learned that Melody and my mom were close by in the next rooms. I kept feeling a weird cold sensation on my ears so I asked the nurse next to me.

“I think there’s something in my ears”. I said. He checked for me then got a tissue and wiped my face for me.

“Your ears are fine. It’s just tears.”  He answered. I guess I was crying and didn’t even know it. I was there for some time before they told me that I was going to be taken in a helicopter to Nationwide Children’s Hospital, so that I could have surgery on my hand. They wheeled my bed over to mama, who was also in a neck brace, so that I could tell her goodbye.

“Can you come with me please”, I was crying. I didn’t want to go by myself. I was practically begging her. “I don’t want to go”.

“No, you need to stop crying right now! I can’t come with you because there isn’t room. Daddy is with the other kids. Papa will be at the hospital when you get there. I promise.” Then she told me that she loved me. The paramedics wheeled me to the helicopter. It was a very loud trip! When I tried to speak a couple times the nurse on board had to give me his microphone so he could me. As soon as I arrived into the hospital I saw papa. He had come! Papa came and sat next to me while we waited for the Doctor.

“Papa, do you think  that God has something special in my life?” I asked.

“I think that he has something special for everyone.” He answered. The doctor came up and talked to him for a few minutes. “Autumn, they are going to try to get some of the big pieces of glass out of your hand ok?”

“Will it hurt?” I asked.

“Yes, it will probably hurt a lot, but I’m going to be right here beside you.” After that they prepared me for surgery. By then my dad was on his way to the hospital and my mom was in Grant Hospital close by. Maggie, a family friend, came to sit with me too, so the surgeon used her phone to get dad’s permission for the surgery. Then they wheeled me away.

Although this was a very scary thing that happened in our family, there were so many things that we can be thankful for. I know that God was and is in control of our lives every day. Romans 8: says, “For we know that all things work together to good to them that are the called according to his purpose.”

by Autumn De Leon

Recently Autumn wrote this paper for her 11th grade Grammar class. The van accident on October 10, 2008, 5 years ago, was one of those memorable days for our family.  It is one of those times where you KNOW that God was with each one of us...He was there as He still is today.

Cassandra De Leon

Sorry about the delay.....I really did mean to put more pictures up but, well, it didn't happen. Sooo, here I am nineteen days after Christmas posting Christmas pictures:) I also happened to get done with school before 6:00 so I actually have time to do it before choir practice  :)

I got a camera for Christmas!! And I really needed one. Someone who reads our blog gave my mother some money to get me this camera!!  It takes awesome pictures and here's an example....

We went to winter Camp in Wisconsin!!! That was also very fun, but it was freezing in Wisconsin!! Without windchill I think it was around 15 to 20ish below. I don't want to know what it was with windchill.

So here are some pics of our annual cookie making/decorating tradition.

And here are some scant pictures of Christmas morning....,

See I told you, scant.

As I said, we went to winter camp. Well, technically it's called Teen Winter Retreat. It was at Camp Joy in Wisconsin. We went up with Grace Baptist Church in Kettering, Ohio because they had extra seats. There was a girl's van and a boy's van, but there were two boys in the girl's van because there were too many boys for the van.

Even though it was freezing, we still had tons of fun!! The camp had a toboggan run, tubing hill, ice skating, zip line, and a fully equipped gym in which to play laser tag, paintball, volley ball, basketball. Because it was a retreat, there really wasn't all that much competition between teams but the Eskimos won :(

The best part was the preaching. The retreat was only Thursday night through Saturday afternoon, but there were five services. Our speaker was Rand Hummel and he had awesome messages. They included: The Dark Side of the Internet, True Love, The Art of Medieval Warfare, and a couple more. He spends most of his time with teens and you could tell by what he spoke on. 

The trip home was awesome. We listened to music (very, very loud music), we sang through the alphabet, or at least most of it. We tried to figure out a joke and that was the reason for the music. (The youth pastor and his wife couldn't figure it out, so they turned it on until we told them:))
Josh was in the boy's van and he said they sang in six-part harmony. I'm not sure how they did that though. In the girls van we only had three parts: soprano, alto, and high soprano. 

I didn't take a bunch of pictures because #1 it was really cold, and #2 I don't know. But the ones I did take I will post (hopefully) in the next week or so.....but don't get your hopes up:)

CarissaFaith:)