With the Olympics rolling along full force, now is the perfect time to read this amazing story. But even if the Olympics weren't on, now would still be the perfect time to read this book. It's that good.
Running For My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games by Lopez Lomong is a story of hope, determination, support and dreams. Most people have heard of the Lost Boys of Sudan, the children separated from their families during Sudan's long and violently bloody civil war. But how many of us stop to think of where these boys have ended up as they have grown into men?
This story tells the tale of one of those boys. Lopez, also known as Lopepe (his Sudanese name) and Joseph (his name given at his baptism), was taken from his family and wrenched from his mother's arms by rebel soldiers when he was just six years old. He was able to escape from the soldiers' camp and ran for three days and nights with three other boys. While running to what they thought was home, they were actually running straight towards the Kenyan border.
Lopez spent the next ten years in a refugee camp and through a set of circumstances he attributes solely to God, he was able to come to the US at age sixteen. Through another set of circumstances, which he again gives God the glory for, he becomes a runner who is good enough to run collegiate races and eventually turn pro. Lopez ran in the 2008 Olympic games and competed again in 2012 in London. This book tells of all of the remarkable twists and turns his life took as he grew from a little boy torn from the only home he's ever known to a pro athlete on the other side of the world whose greatest dream is to give back to his home country.
Read this book. You will learn something, you will be challenged in your faith and you will want to cheer your heart out for a remarkable young man who was once a Lost Boy.
