Act of Faith is based on a true story about the miracle that befell the teenager who appeared dead: John Smith today
Act of Faith is a true story film about teenager John Smith, a young man from St. Charles, Missouri. Like all boys his age, John — adopted by his parents Joyce and Brian when he was a child — attended middle school and played sports until tragedy changed his life. On January 19, 2015, then 14-year-old John and two of his friends were having fun on the frozen lake in St. Louise. They were joking and taking photos as the ice broke under their feet and they fell into the freezing water. One boy managed to get out, and another was quickly rescued. John, on the other hand, fell into a trap and sank to the bottom of the lake. “Back then, we all knew that the possibility that the three of us died was very real,” John said. While John’s two friends managed to get out, he didn’t. Her cries of “I don’t want to die” could be heard from the lake’s jetty. He was apparently already dead when diver Tommy Shine found him. He remained submerged for more than 20 minutes and after 15 minutes, John Smith was finally pulled to the surface by first responders and taken to nearby St Joseph Hospital West. His body was cold and lifeless, and doctors attempted CPR for 43 minutes. But all without success. John’s body temperature was 31 degrees, so the team tried to warm his body hoping his system would react. With no sign of recovery, Dr. Kent Sutterer that there was nothing further to do. Before announcing the time of death, he was informed that Joyce, John’s adoptive mother, had arrived. The doctor decided to give her the chance to see her son and bid him one last goodbye, leading her to believe that John was “alive” and not dead. He would announce the time of death at a later date. “It’s the call every parent dreads,” Joyce told the Gospel Herald. Joyce and Brian Smith adopted John from Guatemala when he was five months old. Brian volunteered in the country to build schools when he asked his wife to consider adoption. The couple had grown children but welcomed John with open arms, he was their son.
When she arrived at the hospital, Joyce Smith walked over and saw John’s grey, lifeless body and felt how cold his feet were. “After I went to her room, I put my hands on her feet, and they were cold and gray, and I realized she was gone,” Joyce said. When she was invited to John’s bedside, she found things were worse than she had imagined. He remembered the scriptures he had heard in church all his life that said the Holy Spirit would raise Jesus from the dead. With nothing to lose, thinking he was speaking softly but actually speaking loud enough for the entire ER to hear, he prayed and said, “I believe in a God who can work miracles! Holy Spirit, I need you to come immediately and give life to my son. At that moment, as Joyce prayed for her son, the heart monitor came alive. John Smith lived. A hospital nurse said: “The moment you were praying, something in John’s body moved with such force that it pushed me back – and suddenly I felt the pulse.” The true story of John Smith that inspired the film “Act of Faith” continues with the boy’s mother telling in numerous interviews that the doctors gave him a 1% chance of making it overnight. If he made it, he would be a vegetable for the rest of his life. He was flown to Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center in St. Louis, Missouri, where it was not believed he would make it through the night. dr Jeremy Garrett, a pediatric critical care physician and world-renowned expert on hypothermia and drowning, had determined that if John survived, he would have such neurological impairment that he would not be able to regain normalcy in his life.
Act of Faith John and Joyce today
Sixteen days later, John proved everyone wrong when he emerged from Cardinal Glennon completely healed, with no trace of neurological or physical damage apart from the scars on his body from trying to get out of the freezing water. In an unprecedented breakthrough, John Smith not only fully recovered from his encounter with death, but he did so with extraordinary speed. Just three weeks after his lifeless body was taken to the hospital, John walked out the door on his legs. He had to undergo several weeks of outpatient therapy before being released, but it was a recovery doctors had never seen before. Medical experts have since theorized that it was the extremely cold temperature of the water that redistributed John’s blood flow and kept his organs functioning, but the Smith family believes something else was at play: a genuine divine miracle. That’s what Joyce wrote in her book about the accident, The Impossible, and what the film Act of Faith is about. “I’ve always believed that God does what he says because I’ve seen him all my life,” Joyce said in an interview. “But that’s like the Oscar of faith. The moment I needed God, He was there immediately. And when John’s heartbeat returned, I thought, ‘Thank you, Lord, for being so merciful to me.’ The incredible true story was adapted into a movie called Act of Faith, starring Chrissy Metz, Topher Grace and Marcel Ruiz.