Maggie

I couldn't stop staring at the TV screen. The story was really scaring me, and the little girl...it was awful. She was in a place that was completely foreign to me. I had never seen anything like it. The landscape was beautiful, but everything else just seemed horrible. My dad had just put a DVD into the player. It was only four minutes long, but they were four minutes of the most powerful images I had ever seen, and it was the most powerful story I had ever heard. Pictures of the little girl and her life flooded our family room, like Africa was pulled right into our house through the television. I could see it. I could almost touch it. I could definitely feel it. Minute by minute, my life was being changed forever.

The little girl's name was Maggie. She and I were both nine years old when we met through the TV screen, but she had already experienced a lifetime of tragedy. She lives in Zambia, and she had lost the most important people in her life- her mother, her father, her aunts and uncles, her grandparents... even her little brother. They had all died of AIDS.

Today's blog contains an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Austin's new book Take Your Best Shot which will be released September 15th from Thomas Nelson. To pre-order the book, click here