“Inspirational” “moving” “riveting story”
John Yoak was born in 1928 to a large, poor, coal miner’s family just one year before America’s Great Depression hit. He spent most of his childhood living in a coal patch town not far from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of America’s largest industrialized cities at the time. Despite his family’s poverty, John was a happy, healthy, active boy until tragedy struck when he was only six-years-old.
While walking to school one morning during one of Western Pennsylvania‘s worst winters on record, John was run over by a loaded coal truck. An accident he should not have survived. After spending a year and a half in the hospital and enduring multiple procedures, surgeries, and set-backs, he was sent home without further therapy and a final prognosis that “he would never walk again.“ But can the quiet, determined will of a child prove them wrong?
He had no thoughts of proving anything. When he returned home, he was an eight-year-old boy who simply longed to be out running around with his friends and siblings like every other kid.
His story inspires us to believe it is possible not only to survive but to thrive, no matter what we are confronted with in this life.
Working on it:
Come away to the garden
A practical guide to planting a personal retreat garden, from start to finish, and how that process correlates to the way God works in our lives.