charcter sketch essay

Matt Cleary

1/14/11

Greens

Mrs. Zurkowski

90 Minutes in Heaven

The book I read was called 90 minutes in heaven. The author was the character himself. His name is Don Piper. He lived in Texas. For the duration of this book he seems to be in his 20s. Maybe even his 30s. Before his horrific car accident, he was beginning to become for involved and a full member of his church group because he loved church. Don Piper realizes how precious life is and what he has to do to improve his chances of going to heaven.

                In January of 1989, he is leaving his office. He is traveling to his church for a church service on a day with nasty weather. When he was driving over a 2 lane bridge that he said “this should really be a multiple lane bridge”, he got into a car accident with 3 other people. What happened was a man driving an 18 wheeler making deliveries was from jail and it was his community service. He swirved into the wrong lane and scraped  2 cars.(the drivers of these cars had minor injuries and didn’t have to go to the hospital). Then the 18 wheeler ran into him and crushed his car. “Because of the truck’s speed the accident report states that the truck was going 110 mph at the time of impact”. This statement means that the truck was going about 60 and he was going about 50. That would be equal to someone going 110 and someone else going 0 mph.

                After the car crash Don went up to heaven he saw all of his friends and relatives that have died in his past. They were all waiting at the gates of heaven when Don got there. They were not surprised when he came. They all just came around and started hugging and greeting each other. “One person who came to greet me was Mike Wood.” Mike was Don’s childhood friend who invited him to Sunday school and helped get him interested in the church. Mike died when they were in high school. After about an hour of them greeting people they entered the gates of heaven. “People always ask me did you walk, float, fly in there? How did you move”. Don didn’t know. He didn’t pay attention to that because he was too amazed at the sight.

                After these events Mike realized how important life was and how important it was to be involved with the church and go to heaven to be with god forever. He started changing his life a lot. One way he did it was quit his old job and got a job with the church. The rest of his life he tried to shape up his like so it was fit to go up to heaven with god. He went around sharing his story with the world. It is kind of like what the people are doing for Rachel’s Challenge.

                In the end, this story about this man’s life who had an encounter with heaven and it fixed his life. This teaches you that you have one chance to get your life right and it is so easy to screw up that you shouldn’t waste it. Through his own journey he is trying to say and show you how hard and tiring it was to change his life around. He is also saying how much fun the church is. I learned that this life is nothing but a test and you want to Ace it. The reward for Acing it would be getting to go up to heaven with god, but if you fail this test you live the rest of your life In hell with the devil. Don piper learns what he has to do to go to heaven because of precious life.