You Better Run, Run, Run, Faster Than My Bullet

Well, Britney tells me that I have to write this blog. I usually try to avoid telling this story. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because that's the only story anyone ever wanted to hear when I got home from my mission. Maybe it's because I think it makes me look like I'm bragging or something. Or maybe deep down I really do want to tell it, but I'm waiting for it to come up naturally to increase the shock factor. I don't know, but here it is.

Now before I get started, let me just say that Western Guatemala is a very beautiful and peaceful place.


I love the people there. I love the culture. I love the things that I learned and the growth that I experienced while I was there. When people serve missions in Mexico, they get mugged. But that doesn't happen in the Quetzaltenango, Guatemala mission, despite what you may think. Things like what I am about to tell you never happen. Well, almost never.

The place is San Antonio, Suchitepequez, Guatemala. The date is May 17th, 2008 (my 21st birthday). It was at about 4:00pm on a Saturday, about 20 months into my mission. Early that afternoon, my companion, Dan Perry (the guy in the orange), and I had had a baptism, and we were now on the way to our first appointment for the day.


We walked into a little neighborhood called El Beneficio (sorry, my pictures of this place got erased when our computer crashed), and as we walked down the street, we noticed a group of kids playing American football. American football. In 20 months, I had not seen this. So we stopped and threw a few passes and then went on our way. Shortly after leaving the children, I heard three loud bangs, and at the same time, I felt a huge blow to my right shoulder. It was like something invisible had hit me harder than anything I had ever felt before. It hit me from the front and knocked me backwards onto my knees. I quickly stood back up, thinking to myself "that was weird." Elder Perry looked back at me and asked what had happened. I said "I don't know", but because I was now feeling a slight burning sensation, and Guatemalans are fanatical about shooting off fireworks, and because of the loud bangs, I said that I thought I had been hit with a firework. I asked if I was bleeding or anything, and he said no, as if I were a retard or something. As we continued on our way, we noticed that all of the kids were now running to their parents who were telling them to get out of the street. We were both very confused, and Elder Perry asked me if I knew what was going on, and I said that I didn't. I was now starting to notice that my arm was a little numb, and I couldn't really move it too well. Elder Perry then looked back at me (he was walking in front of me, which was strange because we usually went side-by-side), and with a very surprised look on his face said, "Oh wait, you are bleeding...a lot."

I looked down at my right shoulder and saw my white shirt fill up with blood.

(This is a shadow box of my bloody stump of a shirt that Britney made me for my birthday this year.)

It was crazy. Elder Perry was now frantic, and asked over and over again "What happened? What happened?" and as it gradually began to dawn on me what exactly had occurred, I responded, "Uh, I think I got shot."

Now, this takes a long time to tell, but keep in mind that it had all happened in about a 15 second time frame. The investigators' house that we were going to was now just a few yards away, and we had no cell phone or anything, so we decided to head over and call an ambulance from their house. As we approached the house, I noticed that one of the investigators was at the front window with the most horrified look on her face that I had ever seen. The investigators quickly let us into their home. They told us to have a seat on the couch, but I didn't want to bleed all over it, so I told them to just bring me a chair. In all honesty, I felt fine. They brought one over, I sat down, and then they called an ambulance. While we waited, they offered me a glass of water, which I accepted, and then one of the men there started to take off my backpack in an effort to see if there was anything that he could do. As soon as he had removed the strap from my right shoulder, blood started to shoot out from the wound like a fountain, so he quickly replaced the strap and said "Es grave, es muy grave." Elder Perry was relatively new in the mission and hadn't yet fully gotten a handle on Spanish, so he asked "What does that mean? What does that mean?" and I told him, "He says it's bad, Elder."

The thoughts that were going through my head were kind of interesting. I made a conscious effort to stay calm and control my breathing. I thought that if I did that I would lose less blood, which may be true: I don't really know. I still felt alright, so I didn't really think that I was going to die or anything. But at the same time, I was wondering "what if this is my end?" I wondered if the baptism that morning had had any cleansing effect on me. I thought about how I would never be able to eat a good home-made hamburger again. I thought about my parents and all the blessings they would get for my service (pretty cheeky, huh?).

I was suddenly shaken out of my thoughts by a man who was trying to convince my companion to go down the street and see if they could find out what happened. Poor Elder Perry was terrified, and he told the man that he wasn't allowed to leave his companion, which was true, but it was also a really convenient reason not to go with the guy. Not that I blame him at all. I don't know what he thought he would accomplish by doing that.

Anyway, a few moments later, a neighbor offered to take me to the hospital rather than wait for the ambulance, and we accepted the ride. So I climbed into the cab of his pickup truck, Elder Perry got in back, and off we went. Now, the nearest hospital was in a place called Mazatenango, normally about 30 minutes away from San Antonio. We got there in 20. This is Guatemala, mind you, and the streets are all full of winds and bumps. My right arm was dead, and I was using my left arm to put pressure on the wound, so I had nothing to hold myself up with as we sped 100 mph down the twisty roads. I think that the guy driving us was scared that I was passing out or something because I kept falling over. I remember him holding me up with one hand and steering with the other. In spite of his fear, I think that overall he was having a lot of fun, though.

We got to the public hospital, which was pretty third-world, but I was quickly attended to by a nurse. He carefully removed my backpack and my shirt, and to my surprise, the bleeding had pretty much stopped. I remember seeing just a single trickle and then nothing.


He put in an IV and cleaned the wound. A doctor the saw me and ordered some X-rays. After looking at the X-rays and examining the wound, he decided not to remove the bullet, which I wasn't happy with, but I was told that it wouldn't do me any harm and that an operation would be risky because the bullet had passed so close to a main artery in my shoulder area (I don't know what it is called). Meanwhile, Elder Perry had managed to get a hold of my zone leaders, who had called the bishop of their ward, and he came to the hospital, and luckily for me, he had me transferred to a private hospital.

After filling out the necessary paper work, I was wheeled out to the bishop's car, and to my surprise, half of the San Antonio ward was outside the hospital. This was a little embarrassing because I didn't have a shirt on, but it was also pretty overwhelming to see how much support I had.

The private hospital was very nice. It was like a hospital in the States, only smaller. I met with the doctor there who confirmed that an operation would be dangerous, but said that the bullet should be removed. The surgeon, however, would not be there until Monday (this was Saturday), so I ended up sleeping with the bullet inside of me for two nights. I could feel it. It was like sleeping on a small rock.

Anyway, my parents. The zone leaders called the mission president, who called Salt Lake, who called my stake president, who called my parents. So my parents had some fifth-hand information. But they called me, and I talked to my dad first. We just kind of joked around about the whole thing, which was cool. But my mom would have none of that. She told me to come home, and when I said no, she threatened to get on the next plane to Guatemala and drag me home. She didn't really mean it: she was just scared. But yeah, that was a crazy conversation.

Monday came. Anesthesia was fun. They took the bullet out from the back (it was a 9mm), so I have a complete tunnel.

I woke up during the operation while they were stitching me up. I know because I felt them tugging really hard, but there was no pain, and I quickly went back to sleep. Now, the stitches were the worst part of the whole ordeal because the wound was itchy for the next two years while my body slowly forced the stitches out. But anyway, the next time I woke up, I was being wheeled back to my room, and the nurses asked me what I wanted for lunch, and I, in my intoxicated state, thought that they were trying to trip me up with my Spanish, so I answered in the clearest Spanish that I could muster that some lasagna sounded good. They laughed and told me that they would get me some lasagna, and then I fell asleep again. When I woke up, on my plate I found black beans and boiled plantains. Those little punks.

While I was in the hospital, the members brought Elder Perry McDonald's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for four days, and I got to eat the hospital food. I would rarely finish it because I wasn't really hungry because I was just laying there all day. However, I did get a McFlurry once, and of course the nurse walked in while I was eating it. She gave me a look like "Oh, so this is why you're not eating all of your food." Oh well.

I stayed in the hospital until Tuesday afternoon, at which point I was released back to my area. And that was it. During the four days that I was in the hospital, I received visits from my mission president and his wife, who brought me cheesecake (notice the placement of the cake...the hospital clothes were a little small, and needless to say, I wasn't always covered).

I was also visited by a member of the area presidency, several missionaries, and just about every member in the stake. They all brought Gatorade, which I thought was interesting. I stayed in the area for another two weeks (until the end of the transfer) and then I was transferred to another area, which was disappointing because we were having a lot of success in San Antonio. But that's that. That's the story. So there it is.



Oh, so people often ask me if I saw who did it. But that particular street comes to an end, and then there's a bunch of trees and foliage at the end of it, and there are a few houses down in that area, and that's where the shot came from. I didn't see who did it at all. Apparently the police got to the scene after I had left for the hospital but said that they couldn't search it because it was private property. So my mission president threatened to call the American embassy, and they pretended to be more engaged, but they never really did anything. The neighbors say that there's a guy who lives down there who likes to "test" his firearms when he's drunk. The bullet has a big groove in the side, like it ricocheted off of something. So, as best as I can tell, this guy was drunk, shot off his gun three times, not actually aiming for me, one of the shots ricocheted off of something and hit me.

It's really actually amazing for several reasons. One, by the time the bullet got to me, it was moving relatively slowly, so it didn't go all the way through. This was good, because otherwise I would have been bleeding from two ends, and I hear that exit wounds are usually worse than entrance wounds. Two, the bullet passed directly through my backpack strap, which was good because the weight from my backpack automatically put pressure on the wound. I often say that that backpack, as hideous as it is, saved my life. But here's the cool thing about the backpack: it wasn't mine. I borrowed it from another missionary when I was brand new to the mission because I didn't have anything to carry my stuff in. I eventually bought a bag of my own, and I tried to give the backpack back to the Elder, but for various reasons, he would always refuse to take it.
Not that he didn't want it back: I just happened to keep trying to give it to him at inconvenient times. Also, I almost always just used a messenger bag while proselyting, but because we had had a baptism that day, I had more stuff to carry, so I used the backpack. Crazy, right? Three, the bullet hit in the perfect spot. Britney laughs at me for saying this, but really, if you're gonna get shot, this is the place to do it. A centimeter higher and it would have messed up my artery and/or shattered my shoulder. A centimeter lower and it would have penetrated my lung. But it didn't. In fact, it did almost no damage to me at all, as evidenced by the fact that I was out of the hospital in four days. Missionaries have died in the mission field before, but they are relatively few, and Heavenly Father has His reasons for that. But I also know that He truly watches over and protects missionaries. This experience was nothing short of miraculous as far as I'm concerned.