He Shall Give His Angels Charge

Don’t underestimate the littlest ones among us.  They are capable of some pretty amazing feats, to be sure.

Have you heard the story out of Rock Port, Missouri recently of the 3-year-old who saved his brother and father from catastrophe involving a (very deep) well?  It was the evening of May 10, 2021, and Brandon Leseberg, a farmer and cattle man, finished working the cows and called his sons to his side.  They were heading in for the day.  Louie, six, and Everett, three, met him at the gate and he began to close it.  The boys stopped to drink from a water spigot nearby, something they’d done many times before.

In the course of shutting the gate, Brandon began to turn, and noticed that Louie was not in view.  Just a couple of seconds had gone by.  “Where’s Louie?” he asked Everett.  Everett pointed to a 6-year-old sized hole in a (rotten, as it turns out) board covering the family’s well.  Brandon heard a splash while he stood there and some gasping from 70 feet beneath him.  He jumped without giving it any thought at all, enlarging the hole somewhat.

About half-way down, feeling impressed to do so, he reached out to one side and discovered a pipe running down the wall to the well motor.  He grabbed on; he certainly didn’t want to land on Louie.  It stopped his descent.

However, he was yet a distance from his screaming, flailing son, so in three separate releases of the pole and subsequent grabbings on again, he lowered himself until he reached the boy.  The pipe near the bottom was too slippery to hang on to at all, being around the waterline and wet and gunky as it was.  They definitely would not be able to climb it out.  He hoisted Louie up onto his chest.

From 70 feet down, Brandon called up to Everett.  Did I mention that Everett is THREE?  He told him he’d have to be a big boy and run to the road.  He was to stay out of the road and stand by the mailbox until someone came by.  “You’re going to have to save us,” Brandon told him.

And that’s what Everett did.

The first folks by were a couple from a neighboring farm.  They stopped at the sight of Everett’s tiny self waving for their attention.  The 911 call, made from the edge of the well a few minutes later, is really quite a wonder to listen to.  While 911 was still on, the neighbor woman called another neighbor.  That neighbor grabbed a barn rope, not knowing its exact length or the depth of Brandon’s well.  He prayed it would be long enough.  He called his teen-aged son to come and they rushed to the scene.  Their arrival can clearly be heard on the 911 call.

The removal of Everett from the well is a marvel of a story.  Unexpectedly heavy for a 6-year-old, the rescuers discovered that he’d been entangled in the pump works, which they lifted right along with him.  But they got him up and out.  It can all be heard on the emergency call.

Now it was Brandon’s turn, and two more men stopped to help at about the time his ascent began.  It took all five of them to drag him up from the depths.  As he cleared the lip of the hole and emerged into full daylight, he saw the emergency vehicles entering his property.  But Everett, and the neighbors, had already achieved the rescue.

Brandon, Louie, and the neighbors are all quick to give credit where credit is due.  From an article I ran across:  ” ‘What did we do?  Did we pray a lot?’ Brandon asked Louie, as Louie shook his head yes.  ‘You asked me who was going to save us?  Who saved us?’ Brandon asked. ‘God,’ answers Louie.  ‘And were there angels all around us? Had to be,’ says Brandon.”

” ‘Well, I think the hero is probably Everett,’ says Dan.  ‘Sending him out to the highway to stop somebody for help.  What would be going through a dad’s mind as you have your son in the well?  How are you going to get help out of there?  And what a trooper to go out there to the road for help.  He’s the hero here.  Not us.  We’re just neighbors to help any time anyone needs anything.’ “

There were no serious injuries to either Brandon or Louie.  And Everett did exactly what he was asked to do without any harm coming to him either.  Brandon considers it all to have been a miracle.  ” . . . there’s too many good things that happened that day that you can’t mark that as luck or coincidence. . . .  We have angels looking after us,” he says.  “God was up there.  There must be something special He wants to do with these boys is all I know.”

I’ll bet he’s right.  And wouldn’t you love to know what that something special is?  Maybe someday we’ll find out.  I fervently hope so.

And He shall give His angels charge . . .