At about 730 that night, we were spread out over the house doing different
things and we heard too loud two loud explosions that from where I was
sitting in the house, it seemed to echo quite a bit and it sounded like,
sounded like thunder. And we're all, we're all sitting around and mom, dad
, mom, mom mentioned to dad that that didn't sound like an ordinary
grenade which we're quite used to to hearing by that by this time.
But all of us noticed and all of us thought it was something different. We
were all woken up about five o'clock by lots of shooting and shelling
grenades and such started about at five o'clock. As I already mentioned,
it was pretty solid. Some of it seemed to be pretty close. We estimated it
to be about a mile away near the UN compound that we were later to
evacuate to and things got more serious shooting was going on near our
house. A grenade went by, I mean, a grenade went off. Three grenades
actually went off right, right around our house. One right below there was
, there was people yelling and chasing somebody telling somebody else to
get in, get in his way, get in his way. And then, and then a grenade went
off and we didn't know what happened after that.
There was shooting during the night, at one time there was a really close
a shooting which sort of had us all sitting up there straight up with our
hair standing on him for a few minutes. But
before lunch, maybe we were singing, we decided, you know, we wanted to
sing some song for we were singing. Must have been fairly loudly. I don't
know. But all of a sudden then there was a great lot of shooting right on
the road right above our house. And I said, you know, if you didn't want
us to sing, all you had to do was ask us, you didn't have to shoot at us.
But so after that, we didn't sing anymore. We were very, very quiet
people.
It was really hard. There seemed to be like a lot of things we should be
doing, but we didn't have the ability to concentrate on anything, but it
was really, really hard to concentrate. And I think now there's a lot of
things, every one of the common phrase that you hear is I wish I had, oh,
why didn't I? And uh really terrified and felt like that I couldn't
continue living in that kind of terror and went into our bathroom and
knelt down beside the bathtub and prayed in us. Or to really touch me so
that I wouldn't be, you know, just in terror and, and your heart just
doesn't even beat. Right. And you're going to wet your pants all the time
and you just can't, you can't live that way. And I really asked the Lord
to help me to be able to put my trust in him and, and to remove me, remove
from me, that sense of, of terror. And he did that and it was, it was a,
it was a real blessing to feel the peace and the way the Lord did answer
that prayer just really, almost immediately. And in the night, about 12
o'clock, well, I didn't know what time it was, but in the night I woke up
with a real, real strong sense of oppression and terror and sort of
shaking in a kind of shock like the way I felt and so scared. And I had no
reason I don't think I dreamed anything and I had no reason to be more
frightened than I was any other time. And I really felt like it was an
attack of Satan that he was really, he was telling me you're not going to
get out of this alive, you're going to die and you're going and just quit
praying, quit believing, you're not going to get out of this alive. And I
really prayed then and asked for Jesus protection from the satanic attack
and, and he and my piece returned and woke up a little bit after that and
he started asking what time it was. I thought I'm going to sit here until
dawn. I thought I could maybe hear some birds chirping and it must be
almost morning. And I'm just going to sit up here until dawn and see, then
Millard woke up. So I asked him what time it was and he looked at his
watch and said it's 1245. And I just wanted to hit him because I didn't
want it to be in the middle of the night. I wanted it to be morning. The
night seemed so long. And also at that time, there, there was, uh there
was some shooting and there was, and as near as we could tell we were
being shot at and, and, and the, the UN guys act like they thought we were
being all being shot at as well and they ran around and got in their
positions and I think returned fire and, but we, we all were sitting out
there in the grass. So we were, everybody said, you know, down, down and
hit the, hit the dirt. So we were all laying as flat as we could, which is
not too flat for some of us. And Sam was laying there too. He was lying
between two cars but he laughed at us. He said he'd never forget the
picture of seeing all these missionary women laying there trying to hide
behind the blade, blade of grass in the yard. But as soon as it slowed
down a little bit while we got up and ran into the house. But then I went
out and sat on the balcony and then the tears began to come and they have
hardly stopped, but sometimes it gets better and what it has been a real
comfort to me and help and, and, and, but I sat there and wept and wept
for
the people we left behind and for the things that I should have done for
them that I didn't do and, and many things that, that, uh, still I are
over painful and, but we're thankful that God is healing and we're
thankful that hopefully, you know, we can learn some lessons. I don't know
how this will affect our lives in many other ways, but I know that it will.
Yeah.
Ok.
Spot.
Cool.
Mhm.
So.