Written by Michael and Kim Vizza
My wife and I had come home from our mid-week service on Thursday evening, February 26th, 2009, followed shortly by our pastor, Daniel Malek, to enjoy a small dinner and fellowship in our modest home in Lakeland, FL. The three of us sat casually in the living room as we often do, eating from atop folding wooden TV-trays, and sharing the good food and fellowship we had recently grown accustomed to. Finishing our leisurely meal around 9:30pm, we cleared the plates and I moved the trays away from the couch and lounger, leaning them against the living room wall instead of walking them the few extra steps back to the closet where they normally reside.
Our home is relatively small but new, and new to us especially – quite a blessing to us in itself. We love the breezy and cool weather common in central Florida just before spring, and this night was no exception. The windows were open, the sliding glass door wide, the blinds pulled up. Our home is situated on a corner, and since the development is new, there is open space across the street, and our backyard, and that of the house behind us, is still wide open with no trees or fences to block the flow of air. Our spiritual discussions and the enjoyment of fellowship seemed to be particularly suited to the cool, breezy night, flowing from subject to subject, with the encouragement and enthusiasm at how the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives seeming to fill the room at times. We all sensed that the Holy Spirit was unifying and leading our time together.
I was sitting at the end of the couch, facing the sliding glass doors. Around 11:30pm, I noticed the lights of a car on the next block as it pulled up and stopped abruptly. From my vantage point I could not see the whole car, but the part that was sticking out from behind the neighboring house. The brake lights dimmed, and the car moved off quickly. Thinking little of it, I remained engaged in our conversation, wishing to be undistracted from this precious time of fellowship with my wife and our pastor. Moments later I noticed the same lights stopping abruptly on the next block again. I brushed it off to being a pizza guy trying to find a house, or some other incidental occurrence; again, wishing to remain focused on the time together that I knew would be drawing to a close soon.
Within a minute, I noticed a dark shadow and a few small white “patches” floating around outside the darkened screen of the sliding glass door. “That’s odd.” I thought, as I sat up on the couch and leaned toward the window trying to decipher what I was seeing. Was it a large dog? A trash bag? There appeared to be what at first looked like remnants of tissue or “fuzz” that were being blown by the breeze in front of the window. But then they moved back-and-forth…together! What happened next took only moments, a few minutes from start to finish, but with the sudden onslaught of thoughts, time suddenly came to a screeching halt.
The realization that someone was outside of our window took me by surprise. In the few months of being in our new home and out of an apartment we’d previously occupied for three years, we’d known only the pleasure of life together in a safe, peaceful environment. We’d met new, kind neighbors, and were enjoying dreaming of the possibilities afforded by our new home. The ability to invite others over for food and fellowship, just like this evening, was growing on us, as we strove to prepare ourselves to “entertain strangers”, as Hebrews 13:2 encourages. Immediately, I knew this was not a good situation and my thoughts and my body went alert. Being focused on the screen door, I could not say anything fast enough to warn my wife on the couch next to me, or the pastor whose chair faces with its back to that door.
A hand and arm came through the screen, slicing it from top to bottom in one swift motion. Realizing that we were physically powerless to stop our home from being invaded, with thoughts and heart racing, adrenalin pumping, and a mix of indignation and fury ignited, I immediately jumped up from the couch and toward the window, shouting “NO! IN JESUS NAME!” and throwing through the cut screen the only thing at hand…the pillow my arm had been leaning on. The figure outside the window disappeared, backing up into the shadow of night. I took two steps toward the other room in an instinctive race toward the phone, but then realized that I knew nothing of the invaders, and that I would leave my wife and pastor sitting in the living room stunned and alone. That thought occurred during the two steps I was taking, so I turned my head quickly to see what was happening…four young men, armed with pistols, some in masks but all in black clothing, had piled through the window like a football team breaking through the paper banner at the start of a big game.
I immediately stopped, realizing that I would be unsuccessful reaching the phone, and suddenly yearning to protect my wife as all of this transpired. The “ringleader”, who stopped in the living room among us, yelled for us to get down. I squatted behind the arm of our other couch, hands slightly raised, and trying to unscramble the flood of thoughts and feelings that were bombarding me. The “ringleader”, nearly standing over me, pointed his pistol in my direction and squeezed off a shot. It grazed my hip, entering and exiting my pants just below the belt at the side seam. I felt a slight sting, like a bee sting or burn, but could tell that no major damage was done.
At this moment, as I looked around to assess the situation, I noticed a sense of peace, as though someone had thrown a warm blanket over my shoulders. In the midst of the noise and shouting, with intruders running around, my racing thoughts cleared, my heart slowed, and any trace of fear vanished. Oh, thank God for His amazing grace!
As it turned out, my pastor, seeing me jump up and throw the pillow, jumped up from his chair and as he turned around, grabbed a heavy candlestick from the coffee table, throwing it toward the door without looking. My wife, sitting sideways on the couch, pulled her knees up to her chest and pulled the woven blanket from the couch up and over her head. As the intruders rushed in, one of them pistol-whipped the pastor for his aggressive action, hitting him several times in the nose and mouth with a pistol butt, thus knocking him to the floor next to the couch where my wife still sat motionless. Though bruised and sore, his lips and nose were miraculously not cut, broken, or bloodied.
I was brought back to awareness with a sudden, blunt “thump” to the top of my head. The “ringleader” was pistol-whipping me in the head, and telling me to sit down. Without realizing what I was doing, I began moving in a crouched position back toward the couch where my wife was sitting, rather than sitting down on the floor. This apparently didn’t sit well with the “ringleader”, and he hit me several more times in the head with his pistol butt, just missing the base of my skull with one blow. I instinctively put my hand up to stop another of the blows. That blow to the back of my hand resulted in a fractured pinky. I did make it to the couch, however, and sat down near my wife.
All this time, I was interacting with the “ringleader”, answering his questions about our safe (which we didn’t have) and money (which we didn’t have), and trying to maintain some sense of control in the situation. I was looking over at the pastor, who was laying on his side on the floor while another of the intruders crouched over him making threats with his gun and yelling at him. My heart was heavy with a feeling of responsibility toward the pastor, and a sense of distress at not being able to stop the aggression toward him. The intruder who huddled over him noticed that I was watching their activity, and yelled at me, asking what I was looking at. The “ringleader”, recognizing the situation, blind-sided me with a pistol blow to the face, the bottom of his gun hitting the outer corner of my glasses and my eyebrow, splaying my glasses and splitting the skin wide open, which started a flow of blood.
The “ringleader” began to shout “Let’s go!” several times to the three other assailants. I bent over on the couch, mostly so I wouldn’t bleed on the couch or the carpet, to let the blood fall on my pants. Within a second or so of bending over, another shot rang out just over my head, ringing my ears. The four scurried out the way they came, and we could hear the get-away car buzz off quickly. It was all over.
I immediately jumped up and ran for the phone, and we began checking on each other to find out if we were all okay. The sense of peace and safety had never left us, we all were very aware of God’s presence with us through the whole ordeal.
As we began to unfold the story, my wife described how she had pulled the blanket over her head and began to pray silently. This is a small miracle in itself, as my wife is the type who will normally scream in alarm, loudly, at a bug or other surprise. That she had the peace to remain calm and motionless while hearing the tumult around her is a smaller testimony within the bigger one. But she was also praying. She first prayed that the Lord would make her invisible. This sounds odd, but my wife and I had just been talking about missionary Brother Andrew’s prayers to make “seeing eyes blind”, a prayer she echoed under the blanket. The miracle, we were told by the detectives later, was that they must not have seen her because aggressors will usually intimidate a woman to threaten the husband or get additional information. Praise the Lord for hiding her under his wings!
Additionally, she was taking spiritual authority over the situation, asking the Holy Spirit to arrest the intruders and force them to leave. It was immediately after this prayer that the “ringleader” shouted “Let’s go!” The Bible tells us that God is on OUR side, and no doubt, the Holy Spirit was responding to her faithful prayers.
Our pastor then showed us where the last bullet had impacted, missing him by mere inches as he lay on the floor. We were stunned. The bullet hit the bottom of the two TVtrays, splintering the wood and disappearing into another room. Praise God for his protection! As we had the opportunity to review the trajectory of that bullet later with the detectives, the glorious hand of God became even more evident. The bullet had been fired from just behind my head. If I had not bent over when I did, it would have hit me in the head. The bullet passed just over my head and narrowly missed my wife on the couch, still under the blanket. The bullet grazed the pillow she was leaning on, inches from her side, passing through the arm of the leather sofa, and proceeding on toward the trays next to where the pastor was laying. It actually missed all three of us by only inches, and we praise our God for his goodness toward us in keeping us safe!
All in all, the intruders got away with $85 in cash, a wallet, some keys, and a couple of old cell phones. The Lord protected my wife’s wallet which contained our cash, my laptop computer and expensive Blackberry phone for work, and other more valuable possessions that would have otherwise been easily accessible. My head was stitched up, and my pinky and side bandaged. Although sore and upset, we were all relatively unhurt. One of the detectives, a believer, told the pastor that we should have “a praise service” in church on Sunday to celebrate, as we should all be dead. We did just that, and we have been proclaiming the goodness of God in this situation ever since
