The Day I'll Never Forget

 “He has a gun! He has a gun!” Right after I had finished my freshman year of high school, our family was going to move back to the states for a year. My whole family and a lady who lived with us were sitting in traffic…a very normal thing we did in manila. We were heading to meet my grandparents for lunch. We were going to leave the country the next day. As we sat in traffic around noon, my mom, started to yell…”He has a gun, he has a gun”. She quickly threw her purse under her seat and sat on her rings (She is kind of a ninja in tense situations). All of a sudden, six men were around our car. Three driving motorcycles and three with guns. One of the guys pointed the gun at the driver, the other pointed the gun at the passenger in the front seat and the third guy came to the back door where our whole family was. He pointed the gun at the glass and yelled in tagalog. “Open the door, or I will shoot you.” My dad, who spoke fluent tagalog, was frozen. He didn’t want to let this guy in. The man yelled several more times..then finally he pulled the gun back from the glass and was about to shoot my dad through the glass window..Right then the lady who lived with us yelled… “Pastor…he is really going to shoot you if you don’t open the door.” My dad unlocked the door and the man came inside. He held the gun up to my dad’s head and yelled. “The money! Give me the money!” We were all so scared that we began yelling. He waved the gun at all of us which made us yell even more. Some of us were crying while others of us where praying out loud. My mom grabbed my purse and threw it at the guy with the gun. He took it, grabbed my little sister’s purse and hopped out of the van. The men got on their motorcycles and drove off. We were stunned! We were still afraid that the men would find out that they got a 15 year old’s purse with no real valuables and hardly any money and come back for us. We changed our plans and went to a close guarded neighborhood where some of our missionary friends lived. That day we were all in shock. We were so scared. We didn’t know if this was random or if these guys knew who were where and where we lived.  Someone else took us to our grandparents’ house and left strict instructions to the guard not to allow anyone in the neighborhood who was looking for us. Later that night, we saw on the news that these same guys had robbed more people and had even killed someone else. I realized looking back on this experience, that God protected us. That day I could have seen my dad get shot right in front of me. That day, those men could have taken any of us kids. That day I saw God protect us in more ways than we could possibly know.