“…teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen.”

“I turned to Jesus when I thought that I was going to die.”

My parents brought us up in the church, but we never paid attention when we were in church. At the age of 18, in October 1961, my family was in a hurricane shelter as     category 5 Hurricane Hattie was approaching Belize City in the country of British    Honduras. My younger brother Burley and I were told to go and stay at our house until 6:00 a.m. the next day to ensure that nobody would break into it. We took our friend Wilson with us. To me, it made no sense to leave a hurricane shelter and go home.

It started raining before we got home; at 7:45 p.m. our electricity went out so we had to use a hurricane lantern.  The house had three bedrooms, so we each used a bedroom and slept in our clothes with our shoes on. I woke up at 2 a.m. The house was shaking and all the windows were blown off. I shouted to Burley and Wilson to get out of bed. We were unable to go through the twisted front door, so we jumped through one of the windows by the verandah and ran downstairs. We got into the street and heard the house crash to the ground, and I shouted, “Thank you, Jesus!”

From our house to the hurricane shelter was about ½ mile, but we were unable to make it there. The wind was blowing at 160 mph with gusts of 225 mph; we were in the hurricane getting battered by the wind and rain for three hours and five minutes until we reached a club, and they let us in.  There were 35 of us in the club, and the building was about to fall. The man who ran the club took a crowbar and broke into the downstairs of a brick building. We had to leave there and go upstairs when the water came. We knocked on the door and a female voice said there was no more room, and I  remembered Mary and Jesus. The woman eventually let us in, and that was how we were saved. The water eventually came up about 13 feet high.

  I remembered Jesus said, “I am with you always.”

Prayer:

 Dear Lord, May we always remember Your words when we need them most.  Amen.

Contributed by Lennox Reid