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AG-NEWS: Wednesday, April 21, 1999
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** Columbine High School student living testimony of
divine protection
(Terry Lawson's mother shares how God answered her
faithful prayers)
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** COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT LIVING TESTIMONY OF
DIVINE PROTECTION
Alana Lawson will never forget the most harrowing 20 minutes from
Tuesday, April 20, 1999. Her son, Aaron, had just called the
house to report a shooting at Columbine High School in suburban
Denver, Colo. Aaron was safely away from the school, but his
brother, Terry, was in the cafeteria.
"My husband, Steve, is a federal officer," Alana remembers. "He
went to see if he could find Terry. I turned on the TV. My first
reaction was to do something to find him. I wanted to go down and
hunt for him. But I knew that would probably impede things. One
of us needed to stay home in case he called. It was about 20
minutes before I spotted him walking across one of the TV
cameras. I'll tell you, that 20 minutes of not knowing was
probably one of the worst things I've ever experienced."
Even in the middle of not knowing, Alana never lost a deeper
sense of peace. "If it had not been for the grace of God," she
says, "I probably would have lost it. But I knew that we had pled
the blood of Jesus over our children from birth, and I just said
a real quick prayer that God would protect him and his friends."
Her prayers for Terry were answered. When he came home later in
the afternoon, she couldn't hug him enough.
"His first reaction was, 'Mom, I'm OK.' But my first reaction was
to hold on for life."
Yet, intermixed with her joy for her son were other emotions.
"I was so relieved, but yet I was still grieving because I knew
that there were going to be a lot of people that were hurt and I
knew that my children had lost their innocence. This was a time
when they should be carefree and be enjoying life. They were
going to be robbed of that. There was an exhilaration of knowing
my children were okay, but yet the dread of the things that were
to come."
Terry's experience in the cafeteria proved the value of his
mother's prayers. He is still too shaken from the experience
to want to talk about it.
"He told me he was in the cafeteria when he heard what sounded
like firecrackers at first," Alana says. "He said he knew when he
heard it that it wasn't fireworks, that it was gunshots."
Someone had come running into the cafeteria screaming about the
shooting outside and telling everyone to get down. Students
jumped under tables. Terry remembered thinking, "This is stupid.
If they come in here, we're dead."
"When he stood up," Alana says, "he looked out the window and
Dylan [one of the suspects] was standing there. And he turned and
he looked right at Terry through the glass. He was less than 10
feet away from him."
The young man turned and looked at Terry, then lifted either a
shotgun or rifle he was carrying. He looked at Terry, then shook
his head, and turned around and shot several other students who
were running away.
Terry told the other students in the cafeteria that they needed
to get out of there. They left the building and ran down the
street to a neighboring house. Steve Lawson found his son there.
Terry will never forget how close he came to death. He will never
forget the other students he saw shot. The young man who was shot
twice in the leg while running away. Another student shot in the
back. A girl who was hit.
"He saw it all in a matter of seconds," Alana says. "It was a
pretty harrowing experience for him and it will take him a long
time to get over it. I told him God has a purpose for why he was
saved and he has a definite purpose in life."
God's purposes are the focus for Terry's pastor, the Rev. Ken
Summers of Dakota Ridge Assembly of God. Summers visited with
Terry last night.
"This isn't just a time of embracing and loving and hugging each
other and saying that we're going to make it," Summers points
out, "but to see people really turning to the Lord through this
situation. And just realizing that while we live in a day where
incredible revival is taking place, that there is a tremendous
tide of evil and spiritual darkness that is at work. My heart as
a pastor is for our youth especially to understand the
confrontation between spiritual light and spiritual darkness.
This is not a time to trifle, but it's a time to trust God and
choose who you're going to trust and where you're going to find
the strength of your life."
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48th General Council
(http://www.ag.org/48th-general-council/)
August 10 - 13, 1999
Orlando, Florida
"Serving Our Generation"
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2000 Celebration
August 8 - 10, 2000
Indianapolis, Indiana
"All Together, At One Time, In One Place"
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