THE beach day... whew

Sunday was a day of rest for the group. We went to church and then left at 11:15 for the beach. I drove a full van for the first time without even one problem!! We arrived, ate lunch, then headed into the water around 1pm. I was the only senior staff there, accompanied by an intern, Stephen (who'd only been here for 3 days), a volunteer translator, and 13 girls (the group). I stayed on the beach with several of the girls to watch our stuff, but was keeping an eye on the group members in the water. None of the swimmers were more than waist deep in the ocean, but a huge wave knocked 7 or 8 of them over and the undertow pulled them out to the breakers. They could not get their footing and the waves kept pounding them. All but 4 people were able to get out on their own - they were worn out from fighting for air, but were okay in a matter of minutes. 3 of them had to be rescued by lifeguards - they both told me later that they truly thought they were going to die. Thanks be to God, at the moment that they were not able to fight the water anymore, the lifeguards reached them! All of them were shaken up badly and one of them was hyperventilating and had swallowed a lot of sea water. She (Sarah) ended up going to a nearby clinic and then to a hospital in San Salvador for over 24 hrs. Back to the story: Once I had all the girls out of the ocean, I had a moment of relief right before I realized that Stephen was missing. We looked up and saw his head WAY out past the big breaker waves. (At this point, he had been struggling on his own for about 10 minutes). Thankfully, lifeguards were already close to him. When they reached him, he had just about given up. Because of the current and waves, they had to stay out there for another 20 minutes holding him up, until finally a boat made it out to them. When they got him to shore he was out of it. He threw up a couple times. He was talking to me, but was still out of it a little. Within a minute, the guys who rescued him placed him in the back of a police pick-up truck to take him to the clinic. I had to make a split second decision to go with him and leave the group in the hands of the volunteer (who had also been stuck in the waves). (I'll add that while all this was taking place, about 200 Salvadorans were crowded around our group, making things more nerve-racking...). To speed up the rest of the story: We got to the clinic, the police went back to get Sarah, brought her to the clinic as well. I had been in communication with Tony, Ness, and Elijah during this whole time, so I had Ness, Anna, and Vlady already on their way to help. Ness and Anna went straight to take charge of the girls left at the beach. Vlady came to the clinic. The doctors at the clinic told me we HAD to get the 2 of them to a hospital, so they put Sarah in an ambulance and I left with her, then Vlady followed in another with Stephen. (Speed up again...) Sarah was held Sunday night and all day Monday for observation mostly (she was dehydrated and extremely exhausted). Stephen was in the hospital until the following Saturday (6 days) mostly for the doctors to monitor his creatinin (don't know how to spell that...) levels in his kidneys and, because he had a lot of water in his lungs, they were monitoring his oxygen saturation levels as well.

That's the story in a large nutshell. I'm so thankful that everyone is okay and thankful, thankful, so thankful for the Wired team that jumped up at my first cry for help and came to the rescue. There's no doubt that God was orchestrating all of what happened on Sunday!