miracle
Elise Hester: The Big Faith of a Child
By Gorman Woodfin
The 700 Club
CBN.com
– It was like an explosion. An SUV speeding at over 100 miles an hour ripped through the concrete wall of a music store. Rick and Teresa Hester had taken their four-year-old daughter there. Little Elise loved to play the drums.
"I was sitting on the drum set in front of her, and she was on the drum set behind me," her mother, Teresa, recalled.
The vehicle plowed over the drum set where Elise was sitting and went through the wall into the mattress store, next door.
"I started to see maybe just two feet in front of me. There were pieces of debris on the floor. I looked down and all of the drums where we were sitting were taken out," Teresa said. "The first thought that went through my head was, 'Where’s Elise?'"
"Teresa hollered Elise’s name out twice with no response," said Elise's father, Rick. "And, at that point, we just knew she was dead."
"I looked down at the floor to see if I could see her feet sticking up. Since pieces of the ceiling were caved in and pieces of the wall. The light was coming in more, and you could see pieces of the wall on the floor," Teresa said.
"I felt afraid. And honestly, this was so strange that in just a few seconds, I could feel so much emotion," she said. "But wow, it was like reliving the whole thing. I felt like if she was gone, I didn’t want to be here anymore. I remember that - feeling that I didn’t want to be alive if she was not alive."
But to everyone’s surprise and relief, a little figure appeared in the midst of the dust and debris.
"About 15-20 seconds later, she came running from the very back of the store and was saying, 'I’m right here mommy, I’m right here.' And that was the biggest blessing, seeing that child run through there, that you’ve ever had in your life," Teresa said.
Rick and Teresa started to question little Elise. Her story shocked everyone.
"I said, 'Are you okay?' And she said, 'I’m fine.' And I said, 'Well, Elise, how did you get off the drums?'" Teresa said. "'You were right there on them.' And she said, 'Well, Jesus picked me up and moved me, Mom.' She said that when He picked her up, He picked her up with one hand. And she said, 'He has really big hands, mommy, and it felt like I was in water.'"
Since then, her story hasn’t changed.
"He kissed me on my right cheek. Jesus is bigger than the whole world," little Elise now says.
The local paper reported that a medical condition may have been the cause of the driver losing control of the car. Amazingly, he went to the hospital with minor injuries.
Store clerk, Steve Totten, is still amazed at what he saw that day.
"Yeah, the last I saw her, she was sitting at the drum set. It happened so fast. We thought she had gotten covered up by the debris," Steve said. "It’s just a miracle that nobody got hurt or killed. And to know that she was okay, that made me feel a whole lot better. We really thought she was covered up in all that stuff."
Rick and Teresa believe that God truly protected their little girl that rainy, summer afternoon.
"I think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when they were in the fiery furnace, and they came out with not even the smell of smoke," Teresa said. "She was so protected that she didn’t even have the fear from the accident that we had."
"It’s the most miraculous thing I’ve ever seen in my life. If I never see another miracle as long as I live, I mean, I can actually say I saw one that day," Rick said.
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