What Can I Do?

Last Sunday, we all recoiled in horror as we heard about another mass shooting IN A CHURCH. Earlier this week, I received an email from a friend who lives in the same county where the shooting occurred.  She told me how the pastors in the surrounding area (county) were called to come and make themselves available for the folks who were grieving.  A county changed forever. A small town changed forever. Families changed FOREVER.

What can I do?  I'm just a woman in Alabama.  I can pray for all of those folks. I can even pray for the family of the shooter.

What can I do? I can also be prepared.

This week, our church staff received CPR training and Stop the Bleed training.  I'm going to be honest - I DID NOT WANT TO ATTEND but I'm so glad I did.  As I told my sister this morning, I can do CPR if I had to do so.  I can put a tourniquet on a wound.  I can stuff gauze into a wound to stop the bleeding.  These are all skills that I hope I never ever ever ever have to use but I can if I need to do so.

I had no idea that the area has to be secure before EMS can enter the premises . . .y'all . . .that could be four hours.  In four hours, we might be able to save someone's life using the skills we learned.

That is me in the far left bottom corner of the picture.

Eleanor was practicing her CPR.  I practiced

after her.  Our young fireman told us if we were actually

performing CPR on a human to expect to hear

the sound of breaking ribs . . .and to keep doing

CPR - don't stop.

I went to the bathroom and to get a dadgum

diet pepsi and missed the photo op!

The guy in the blue scrubs was my instructor in the

Stop the Bleed portion and he was really

good and gave us some

advice about what to do in certain

situations.

We are ordering tourniquet kits for the church and we know how to use them.  We have AED's strategically placed throughout the church and we know how to use them. 

I can do something!

p.s. I "borrowed" these pictures from our Trinity UMC facebook page