Our friends' son was just declared brain dead after a skateboard accident.

Please pray for Nelson and Charlotte as they will be disconnecting Vincent in the next 24 hours from the life support. He was skateboarding with friends and fell and hit his head. Less than 24 hours later, his brain shows no function. He's their only child and only 19.

 

Tom, they are believers as is Vincent. But Nelson, the dad, is really struggling. He's like a man desperately grasping for anything that might change the outcome in this and he is frantic. He's losing his focus on God right now and I actually had to hold his face and get him to tell me God's character as he's seen through his life and then ask him when he answered if God has changed since Vince fell. I think it helped a little. I know that just having been through a health crisis with my own daughter has taught me a LOT about God in the midst of the storm.

So it seems Vince was on a longboard (a very long skateboard) and the back wheels went off the pavement when he was turning and he went over backwards, hitting his head on the pavement. He immediately stopped breathing and hasn't breathed on his own since. I was told it took the ambulance guys an hour to clean the ambulance from the blood.

So they will do more tests tomorrow and will confirm that he's brain dead or not.

PLEASE pray for Charlotte and especially Nelson. They need to be absolutely bathed in prayer right now.

 

Just got home after another long day at the hospital. The parents decided to go with Vince's wishes and disconnect him and donate his organs but then there was a lot of family and friends trying to convince dad to allow God to do a miracle and not do this. Unfortunately, this drove a wedge between mom and dad because they had already made the decision. After much crying, prayer and counsel, dad understood that his boy is no longer in that body and it's now deteriorating. He made the decision to sign the papers - much to the anger of the rest of the family (extended family). But it's done and mom and dad are united - and Vince's wishes will be fulfilled. They know if God is planning to do a miracle, he still will do it but that's exactly what it would take - a miracle. They will harvest the organs tomorrow.

 

We had a beautiful memorial service last night for Vince. There were about 800 people there and many made decisions for Christ. I found out from the transplant coordinator (who actually attended his first funeral for a patient) that 5 people had their lives saved through his donation. Praise God. Now to pray that those people each are saved spiritually as well.

Thank you for the prayers. Please continue to lift up Charlotte and Nelson as they have to deal with the whole aftermath of this - the going home to a place where they have very little support and where they need to unpack Vince's things (as I said earlier, they just moved three weeks ago from NY to Louisiana).

 

Here's a pic of Vince and his mom