Wednesday, December 12, 2007

shooting

I'm going to just paste an email I sent out to friends and family:


Hey everyone, so I'm sure you all have heard of the recent tragedy here at YWAM Denver. I want you all to hear from me personally. Early Sunday morning around 12:30, a gunman entered our base and shot 4 staff. I was coming home from a concert in downtown Denver, just pulling into our parking lot when I (along with two other guys) heard the shots. We didn't know what they were at first, then seconds later saw the gunman running out of the building towards the lake behind our base. He got away before we could get out of the car and see who he was. At this point, though, we still didn't know what was going on. Then a student ran out towards us and was yelling and obviously distressed, but we still couldn't make sense of what she was saying. Then a staff member opened the door the gunman had just run from and she was yelling, "Somebody call 911! Call Peter! Go get Peter! Call 911!" Then I looked towards the door and I saw Tiffany (staff member who was shot and later died) lying near the door and I saw the blood. Then it became real.

Anthony (staff member intending to drop us off at the base) told us to get back in the car, so we did and we drove to Peter Warren's house. Peter is our base director. We told Peter and his family and a few minutes later left to go back to the base. By this time, police were all over the place. An officer had a pistol pointed at us and yelled at us to stay back. So we left and headed to Anthony's house, all the while in absolute shock. It was unreal. I was shaking like crazy. I have never experienced such terror in my life. The minute we arrived at Anthony's house, we got a call to go back to the Safeway parking lot by our base to talk to police. So we did that, sat there for a few hours, eventually got on a bus and headed to the police station.

We were at the police station all night. I was considered an eye-witness and I was interviewed for an hour or so. It was at 4 a.m. or something like that and it seemed like forever. I got no sleep that night and around 11 a.m. we got on a bus to go up to Eagle Rock, which is YWAM Denver's second campus, located about 40 minutes up into the mountains. We stayed up there until this afternoon (Tuesday), because until yesterday it was unknown whether YWAM's shooting and New Life Church's shooting was linked and whether the YWAM shooter was still on the loose.

This afternoon we moved back into our base. Tiffany and Phil's memorial service is tomorrow morning (Wednesday) at Faith Bible Chapel - right by our YWAM campus. Peter and others continue to declare that this is going to be a celebration of their lives, because we know that they have never been more alive than they are right now. I did not know either of them too personally, although I have talked with them multiple times.

Personally, I've experienced waves of pain, sadness, anger, confusion, depression, fear, shock, and just plain numbness. But I'm not lying when I say that I've never been more thankful to be alive. I ask 'why' a lot, and we may never know the answer to some things life and why things happen, but I do know this - God is good. God is faithful. God is love. And God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is the one constant in life. Wow, all I can say is my life is not my own. It is Christ's alone. And to be honest, I've never been more excited in my life to just.... live. And to live for Christ alone. There's nothing better.

And that's what I'm learning through this experience.

I can't tell you how much it means to me and how much it means to us as the YWAM Denver community to hear from all of you and the prayers and support from you. Let me tell you, when you pray for us, it's doing stuff. I can already see it, even though it's been just a couple days since the event. I'm so excited to see how God is glorified through the aftermath of this tragedy.

Our team still plans to leave Thursday for Argentina. Please continue to pray for us as far as our outreach and also just for healing and the families of the victims and just this community.

The past couple days, everyone asks everyone how they're doing. Yesterday when someone asked me that I said, "I'm ok. I'm alive. And if I wasn't... I'd be even better." That's the hope we have in Christ.

I love you all.

Chris

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