text: # Inspired by Recent Events &#x200B; When John Michael David was walking down the hall and out on the the concrete driveway of his two story home he looked back at his wife Cathy Marie and his two little daughters Esther Marie and Judith Mae following behind him. Outside on the front steps John Michael knelt down in front his two little daughters. They each ran in to an open arm and he curled them around, pulling them in close for a long embrace. He kissed the tops of their heads. John Michael stood up to face his wife. Cathy Marie's eyes were already swollen red and puffy from their last night together. They had laid together, wrapped in each other's arms, reminiscing about the day they'd met and the day the girls were born. &#x200B; "You girls go inside. Daddy will see you both real soon." John Michael said. &#x200B; Two more quick kisses and the girls turned away and ran through the open door down the hall in to the living room. Cathy Marie stepped down to John Michael's level and wrapped her arms around him. &#x200B; "I am going to miss you so much John Michael. Do you really have to go?" Cathy Marie said. &#x200B; "You know I do Cathy. These people need me. They need the Word." said John Michael as he embraced Cathy Marie. "I'll call you every step of the way until the last one." &#x200B; "I'll keep you in my prayers, and so will the girls. Every night at 7:30 our time, you'll know we're thinking about you." &#x200B; "Every moment from now until my return, I will be thinking only of you and the girls." John Michael said. &#x200B; 38 hours later, after a night in a suite on the South American coast, John Michael walked the unpaved streets of Moheca in search of someone willing to pilot him as close to the island of Zaheca as possible. No one would take him up on the offer. He would have to spend another night in Moheca. &#x200B; That night he slipped out of his room and stopped in at a few bars on a tip from some of the locals. On his third he found a man and his son seated at the bar. He approached and took a seat next to them. He asked if they were fishermen and both nodded. He asked if they would take him to Zaheca. They were reluctant until John Michael pulled a wad of cash out of the inner pocket of his vest. The father and son looked at each other and made a few head motions. The elder turned toward John Michael and reached out his hand. John Michael took it and they shook. &#x200B; "Tonight." &#x200B; The father looked at John Michael, then at the cash. &#x200B; "All for you if tonight." &#x200B; The son elbowed his father in the ribs. &#x200B; Less than an hour later the three men were in a small fishing boat with an outboard motor cutting through the bay. After they had been traveling for nearly an hour, in the farthest distance, a speck of daylight could be seen, and about a half mile out, the dark outline of Zaheca. The father cut the engines and told John Michael they could take him no further. When pressured the father conceded that the law prohibits getting any nearer to the island, it is forbidden, and that he had heard stories of people getting too close being shot at with bows and arrows. John Michael, knowing ahead of time this was the case, had hitched a seafaring kayak to the fishing boat. The father and son helped John Michael load his pack and provisions in to the kayak. He told them as he boarded that if they returned for him the next day he would pay them again. &#x200B; John Michael detached from the dinghy and began to row towards the dark and looming island before him. Within a few hours he had reached the shore. He got out of his kayak and drug it up the sandy banks and parked it on the shore. The sun was up and the water was cold. He threw his pack up on to the sand and walked up and down the beach for a moment stretching his legs. He returned to his pack. He put his hands around his mouth and hollered in to the line of trees about 40 feet from the shore. &#x200B; "My name is John Michael and I am here in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!" &#x200B; No sooner had the words left his lips when an arrow tipped in a barbed iron arrowhead hit him in the shoulder. Then another in the leg. John Michael looked down at the shafts of arrows buried deep in his flesh and fell to his knees. He gazed in to the bluest sky and considered a verse, forgetting now from where in the Gospel it came: **Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing**. With tears in his eyes he lifted his arms to the sky and as the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth...arrows hit his body, the last thing he would ever see as he fell to his side in the sand, were the dark, naked bodies of the Zahecans emerging from the treeline.