The First "Incident"

For nearly the last week, I have been debating as to whether I would include this story on our blog. The one phrase I heard over and over again before we left for Israel was “be safe.” I understand that came out of the mouths of all of the people who love us dearly and truly want us kept from any harm. However, there is only so much you can do to “be safe.” We live each day in the hands of God, trusting that whatever happens, God is ultimately in control. I have hesitated putting this on the blog because we didn’t want you to worry about us (as I know many of you are), but I wanted to honor the fact that you are on this journey with us and I want you to know what our experiences are. Thus, I feel as though I need to share with you an incident that happened last Saturday (September 13 – our 5 year anniversary day) on one my field trips ~ Shallon and Denyon were not on this trip as this was a fieldtrip for one of my classes that Shallon is not taking. Essentially, we (my class and I) were on a field trip that went through the West Bank. We were about two miles from our destination site when two Palestinian boys (ages 13-15) threw two rocks at our bus. Not many of us saw the rocks coming our way. I certainly didn’t as I was looking the other direction. Then all of a sudden it sounded like a gun shot went off. I felt a spray of glass across the back of my neck. It took me a few seconds to gather what had happened. I turned to the two ladies who were sitting next to me and both of them were bleeding. Essentially, one of the rocks went through the glass window of the row I was sitting in. The rock ricocheted off the foreheads of the two women sitting next to me. Both of them suffered significant cuts on their foreheads. Furthermore, the woman immediately next to me saw the rock coming at the bus ... hence, when the window shattered, glass went into her eye. For 40 minutes, I kept pressure on her wounds and she kept her eyes closed, while another classmate kept pressure on the other woman’s wounds. It took the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) about 30 minutes to show up. The ambulance came 10 minutes after that. Both of the women were taken to the best hospital here in Jerusalem. They were treated and released seven hours later. Bless God … both of them are going to be fine and were back in the classroom on Monday. The doctors were able to get all the glass out of the one woman’s eye – she is going to recover just fine. Both of them also received a number of stitches. But needless to say, we were glad it wasn't any worse. Again, these things do happen and they are unforeseen … but they are rare. We do feel very safe most of the time here in Israel. It is an amazing place to be and we are loving every minute of it.