Saturday Book Review

Hello and good morning! I am doing my first book review today: Running For My Life, By Lopez Lomong.

Imagine sitting outside at church in the sweltering sun of Sudan. Suddenly, men rip you from your mother's arms, load you onto a truck with other kids, and cart you off hundreds of miles away without food and water to a small hut. They cram you inside and there's no explanation what so ever. That's what happened to "Lopepe", a six year old boy from Sudan. This biography details his life from when he was kidnapped to be trained as a soldier in the horrible wars raging around them to his career as an Olympic Athlete. That's a big change.

Lopepe Lomong eventually arrived at a Kenyan refugee camp after running for days to get there. Life was extremely sad, difficult, and depressing. Boys died from malaria and other diseases all the time. The boys barely had enough food to survive, and they ate rich people's garbage on Tuesdays as a "treat". But the one thing that kept them all going? Soccer. They played soccer all day, every day. However, with hundreds and hundreds of boys at camp all wanting to play, they created a system to even it out. Every boy had to run the perimeter of the camp- almost 30 kilometers, or 18 miles- and the faster you ran it, the sooner you got to play soccer. The refugees hardly even blinked at this. Every boy ran the 30 kilometers so he could play soccer for the day. Lopepe found the running freeing, feeling that he could forget his worries as he ran.

After years of staying in the refugee camp, assuming his parents were dead and that he would stay there forever, an amazing opportunity arrived at camp: Writer an autobiography of your life for a foriegn missions man, and you could potentially be picked to go live in America.

Lopepe couldn't believe it. He had dreamed of going to America all his life, the Land of Opportunity, where no one ate garbage and they played with actual soccer balls. He painstakingly wrote an English story of his life, pouring his heart into it, and waited.

Wait, what happened? I'm not going to spoil anymore, but I am going to tell you what I think. This book is truly amazing. As a runner, just the thought of running 18 miles makes me lightheaded. This boy went through hardships we can't even imagine, and yet he trusted God all the way through and accomplished great things. I loved this book because it was faith-based, included soccer and running, and you feel so drawn to Lopepe, even though most of us could never relate to his trials. There honestly wasn't much I didn't like, and I wold give this book and 8/10.

I hope this gives all of you avid readers a book to enjoy! Have a wonderful Saturday, and God bless!