AMAZING STORY
Surviving a Fall at 70 MPH
By Rob Hull
The 700 Club
CBN.com-Lance Even recalls when tragedy struck his family, “I heard his head hit the pavement. And I heard the hollow sound. I just could not think of any scenario that my son would be alive.”
Lance and Angella Even were driving their family home from an evening church service when Angella got an eerie feeling and asked the kids to check their seatbelts. Suddenly the passenger side back door of their minivan slid open. Their 13 year-old son Kenny wasn’t fastened in.
Angella recalls, “I heard the noise of the interstate so I turned around to look.”
“When a van door opens it’s like a parachute” says Lance, “and I just saw Kenny whipping around being catapulted out of the vehicle. I slammed on the breaks and a semi truck hit us. Everything went into slow motion at that point.”
Angella says, “About half a mile away from where the body fell we came to a stop. And when I got to him, he was just laying in a fetal position. There was a pool of blood he was laying in.”
Texts and calls were sent out almost immediately to pray for Kenny. Friends quickly arrived from their church nearby. Lance ran down the road to his son. “By the time I ran up and got to where Kenny was, my pastor was there holding my son, covered in my son’s blood, praying for him. From that moment we never were alone.”
Pastor Tony McAfee remembers, “I put both arms around him and held him. Part of his face was gone and there was a hole in side of his cheek, the upper part of his cheek.”
Angella says, “Very quickly the realization set in that this is bigger than we can handle. That’s when I started to really cry out to God. And I said, ‘God, we really, really need You.’”
Kenny flat lined several times while emergency crews prepared him for life flight to the hospital. Once there, he was placed on life support and not expected to live.
Doctor Manisha Thakur, their family doctor recalls Kenny’s condition, “He was not breathing on his own. His heart was not beating. His brain was expanding with the pressure inside the brain increasing. His heart, everything was supported. He coded. At the time of admission, the prognosis was extremely poor.”
But Angella says, “Part of me did not want to believe what the doctor has to say. ‘No’ is not ‘No’ until God says it is final. I said, ‘Doc, I just want you to know that I’ve seen blind eyes see, deaf ears hear, I’ve watched the lame walk, and tonight you and I are about to see God raise my son up from the dead. And I put my faith upon the word of God that He’s going to raise my son up. We just need to wait this moment out.’”
From the first day we said we’re going to fast and we’re going to pray for Kenny,” says Lance. Angella adds, “And we continued to pray and pray.”
That night Kenny’s twin sister Kimberly told her dad about a vision she had weeks before the accident. “She says ‘Dad, I saw all this.’” Kimberly Even says, “I had a dream. Well, it was more of a nightmare. Kenny fell out of the van, and then he suddenly just started walking.”
Lance says, “God was just showing us that He was in control. He spoke this in a dream to Kenny’s twin sister for our encouragement.”
“I guess just hearing that ‘My son is going to walk again,’ gave them enough reassurance to keep praying.” says Kimberly.
Lance says, “We weren’t looking at the physical. We were standing on what God had said through his thirteen year-old sister, that Kenny was going to be alright.”
Church members stood with the family in round-the-clock prayer and believed for Kenny’s healing. But for now Kenny remained in a coma.
Angella remembers, “Medically it was starting to take impact on me that possibly he is not in there. But inside of my heart and in my spirit my faith believed another thing; that God is going to raise him up. And I said, ‘God, for Thou art the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for You? You know how much I loved him.’ I said, ‘My life will not be the same if he is not here. Can You breathe life back into my son’s body?’”
Five days after the accident, Kenny showed no signs of improvement; Angella held Kenny’s hand and talked to him. Then she says the miraculous happened.
“He squeezed my hand and it was a moment of excitement and I just said, ‘You squeezed my hand!’ And I put my hand again into Kenny’s hand and I said, ‘Kenny, if that was you that squeezed my hand, would you please do it again?’ And he gently, gently, very faint, a slight move. And it was a moment of victory! My son is alive! He is in there. God is beginning to do something.”
Lance says, “The doctors did not believe and every time something would happen, a squeeze of the hand or something they’d say ‘Oh that was just a reflex.’ But we knew better, because it was in conjunction to what we were doing. We knew God could raise the dead. We knew God could heal the sick.”
The miracles continued to come. A few days later, Kenny opened his eyes. Lance recalls, “It was a wonderful thing to see him look at me and open his eyes for a moment. I talked to him, his eyebrows got real big like, ‘Yes, I understand you.’ And we kept telling him, ‘You are getting better. Trust God. Kenny, you need to be praying. You need to be seeking the Lord. You need to be calling on God’s healing. You’ve been in an accident.’ and he would squeeze our hand like he would know, ‘Yes, I am praying.’”
Kenny progressively regained consciousness. Now, questions remained regarding the extent of brain damage Kenny had sustained, until one afternoon Angella gave Kenny her laptop. He logged into Facebook and sent a message to a friend. Kenny was back.
Angella remembers the moment, “God had restored him fully. He had raised him up from the dead. He had given him back his memory. The devil couldn’t steal that from him.”
Kenny recalls, “The very next thing I remember is just waking up in the hospital thinking I was in someone’s room. At the time I was just was looking around wondering ‘How did I get here?’ Mom looked up at me just amazed that I was actually talking. I was like, ‘Mom all I’m doing is talking. I do this everyday.’ And she looked up at me, ‘You’re still the same Kenny,’ and rubbed my head.”
To the amazement of the doctors, thirty-two days after the accident Kenny walked out of the hospital on his own two feet, healed.
Doctor Manisha Thakur their family doctor remembers, “From where we saw him in the ER and the ICU to where he is now, if this is not a miracle I don’t know what would be.”
“When Kenny was leaving the hospital they all stood and applauded as he walked away,” says Angella.
Kenny’s family encourages others to put their trust in Jesus and never stop praying. Lance says, “God answers prayer and wonderful to be there and to see it in such a dynamic way.”
Angella says, “I got to see Jesus face to face and experience the resurrection power of Jesus Christ.”
Lance says, “I’ve come to a new plateau, a new era in my life of knowing God even more.”
Kenny says, “You just have to stay with God. You have to keep believing. He will watch after you and watch over you.”
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