Dan Woolley can thank an iPhone App for helping him survive the Haiti earthquake. He was in his hotel room relaxing when the earthquake destroyed the hotel and caused him to be stuck underground. He got into a nearby elevator to protect himself and tried to stop the bleeding in his leg and head. He found an iPhone App that had advice for treating excessive wounds and used that information to limit his bleeding.
However, he was still trapped underneath the collapsed hotel. After a couple days of waiting in the elevator, he was not sure if he would be rescued. So, he wrote a goodbye letter to his family. His note told them,
“…Don’t be upset at God. He always provides for His children even in hard times. I’m still praying that God will get me out, but He may not. But, even so, He will always take care of you…”
Eventually, Dan Woolley was rescued after being trapped for about 60 hours.
The words that Dan uses in his goodbye letter to his family can become a very effective prayer. Dan was doing everything he could think of to use his thoughts, prayers and actions to try to get rescued, while still remaining committed to having a deep faith and trust that God would take care of of things.
Some people describe this mindset as surrendering. Surrendering does not mean giving up. It means that we do everything we can think of to try to improve our situation, but know that if we have truly done our best, then we can surrender the outcome over to a Higher Power, accept the result and trust that in doing so we are somehow serving a Higher Purpose, even if we don’t understand quite how.
Besides donating my own money to Haiti, I will continue to pray for them. Lifting everything up to Heaven for them.
If you can help Haiti please do so. Any little donation will help.