Son's 20-Foot Fall Leaves Family Desperate for A Miracle

January 4, 2009, is a day that Levi and his family will never forget. Levi’s parents were at this church for a meeting.

Levi’s dad, Bruce tells how it started. “He said ‘Daddy, can I have the keys to the high school room?’ I gave him the keys and all the kids went up there to play foosball and Ping-Pong and just hang out. The kids on the inside were keeping the door shut. They was pushing and laughing, you know how kids do.

They had locked Levi and some other kids out. But Levi had a plan. He had the master key, and decided to get to the high school room by going through several closets.

Bruce continues, “But when he went into that closet that was there, and he stepped into there and it was dark.”

There was no flooring by the AC unit, and Levi fell straight through - 20 feet into the sanctuary below.

Levi’s sister, Kelsey took action. “I ran in there, helped him get up, then called the ambulance from there.”

The ambulance was on its way. Levi looked relatively normal, but internally, something felt wrong.

Vicki Alsup, Levi’s mom says, “He was in quite a bit of pain. So we asked him, ‘Son, where are you hurting?’ He kept pointing to his stomach area, his upper stomach area.”

Bruce adds, “Just by the look in his face, and I just knew within myself something bad had happened.”

The EMTs took him to the hospital in Gainesville, Georgia, for x-rays and cat scans.

Vicki wanted to ride with Levi. “They wouldn’t allow me in the back of the ambulance with him. I had to sit in the front. I could see him every now and then turning him on his side. And I just felt so helpless.”

At the hospital, the doctor talked with Bruce. “The main doctor, the trauma surgeon there came there and said we’ve got to get your son out of the hospital. I didn’t get that and said, ‘What do you mean you have to get him out of the hospital?’ He said, ‘We can’t help your son here.’”

Levi was lifeflighted to Grady Memorial in Atlanta. Bruce describes what unfolded there. “Dr. Nicholas sat down beside us and he said that he’d been at Grady for 25 years. He said he never seen something like this happen. He told me, ‘Your son Levi - his stomach burst open like a balloon.’”

“And he said, ‘This is very serious. He’s going to have a lot of problems and a long road.’ He said, ‘If we can keep Levi alive… he said if we can keep him alive for the first 24 hours, we’ll worry about the next day when it gets here.’”

After his surgery, Levi was unconscious, hanging on, day by day. A week later he still hadn’t improved, and Dr. Nicholas pulled the parents aside.

Bruce tells how the situation developed. “He told me my son’s organs were dying. He said, ‘If we don’t get this fixed, he said he won’t live to see tomorrow.’ Dr. Nicholas pulled back the sheet and he showed me. And Levi’s stomach was open. The only thing they had on him was cellophane, like a clear cellophane. It was on him, and all you could see was just black.”

Vicki saw the grim sight. “You couldn’t see anything really, what was any internal organs.”

Dr. Nicholas explained to Levi’s parents what they were seeing. Bruce says, “It was losing oxygen and blood flow, is what he explained to me. He said, ‘If we can’t stop this’ he said, ‘there’s nothing I can do.’”

Levi’s parents, and their friends, had been praying from the beginning. “We all got on our knees, everybody that was in there.” Bruce says, “We started asking the Lord to help us, to guide the doctors and to help us understand what we’re– what we’re getting into.”

Vicki was praying too. “We need a miracle. (I) called everybody I could think of. We just hit our knees praying, asking God for that miracle to happen.”

When we went back to the room that night I opened the Bible to Isaiah 53, the 5th verse. And I read that Scripture, that one verse for hours. Where it says, ‘by His blood, by His stripes we are healed.’”

The next morning, the doctor had another report. Bruce explains what happened next. He grabbed the sheet and pulled it back and he looked at me and looked back at Levi. He said, ‘I don't know what you all are doing, or Who you got in touch with,’ he said, ‘but keep it up.’”

“I looked down and I could see Levi’s intestines, his organs, his liver, everything was pink and bloody red. It was flowing like a –oh man, it was –it was one of those moments that I could’ve just shouted. I gave Dr. Nicholas a hug. He thought I was going crazy. But I couldn’t help it. I had to hug somebody.”

Vicki was grateful. “So we got our miracle. We got our healing. From that point on, things turned around.”

Later, after Levi woke up, he says he had a visitor in his room. “And I seen this face appeared to me, and it was God. I knew it was. And I couldn’t really talk or nothing. He just looked at me; He said, ‘Son, you’re going to be okay.’”

Dr. Moore took care of Levi after he got back from Grady. “He had a rupture of the spleen. He could’ve bled to death by the time he got to the hospital. He had a rupture of the stomach. That could lead to life threatening infections. Fractures here and there. So there was a lot of miracles going on."

And how does Levi feel about all those people who prayed for him? “I feel loved. And I just appreciate it every day, because I wouldn’t be here without their prayers. And I wouldn’t be here without God.”