Blind Faith on Everest • followHIM Favorites • June 15-21 • Come, Follow Me

Hank Smith· Host0:00

[gentle music] Welcome to Follow Him Favorites. John and I share a single story to go with each week's Come Follow Me lesson. Are you ready for a modern David and Goliath story, John?

John Bytheway· Host0:11

Oh, I'm braced. Go.

Hank Smith· Host0:13

You are going to love this. [laughs] Erik Weihenmayer, that's just a great last name, when he was in elementary school, found out that he had a degenerative eye disease, and sadly, tragically, he is going to be blind in the next few years. Sure enough, by the time he entered high school, he was completely blind, but he had worked really hard. His mother had helped him. He was able to stay in a mainstream school, was able to continue his life because they had worked hard practicing for this. He didn't love that, by the way. He didn't love practicing to be blind, but his mom was really set that he could fight through this and keep going and have a wonderful, successful life. Sadly, John, even more tragically, after he goes blind, his mother is killed in an accident. He has had some really, really hard times. A few months after that, he was reading a newsletter in braille about a group of blind students who were going to begin to rock climb, kind of an intro to rock climbing class. He said, "This sounds insane." [laughs] "Who would be dumb enough to take blind kids rock climbing?" So he signed up. What is there for a teenage boy, right? [laughs] Besides, "Hey, that sounds insane."