Joines finds blessings in injury By COBY LaRUE Staff With a painful-looking restraining device holding her head immobile and a cast helping repair a fractured arm, many people might think Cassandra Joines doesn't have much to be thankful for. However, Joines would be inclined to disagree. The Alleghany native was injured on March 6 on a missionary trip to Belize, a small country in Central America. Joines and 20 others from Bryan College in Dayton, Tenn. were on the trip trying to help spread the Gospel to the under-developed nation. "We were there trying to teach the kids about God," Joines said. "We were working with missionaries in Belize who also went to Bryan." Several local churches and individuals helped sponsor the trip. On the third day of the trip, the group's sponsor decided to take the youths out to visit an ancient Mayan ruin, known as Altun Ha, about an hour's drive off the main road in the jungle. "The missionaries we were working with took us there as kind of a field trip," she said. On the site was a particularly large and ancient tree covered with vines, which the group took turns climbing to get a better view of the area, Joines said.

"One guy had climbed up the tree and was talking about it having a hollow place in it like a recliner," she said. "I remember telling the guys what a wonderful tree it was."

But when she moved over on a limb to let a fellow student climb up into the tree, she slipped and fell about 30 feet to the ground.

"He asked me to move over so he would have room to come up. Somehow I lost my footing," she said. "I don't remember actually falling."

Joines said she came to with some of her fellow missionaries standing over her and trying to wake her. "I was just laying on the ground and trying to wake up," she said. One of the others later told her that she stopped breathing when she fell.

"They were asking me what hurt, if I could breathe OK and told me not to move anything," she said. "One of the guys there was studying to be an athletic trainer and he tried to keep everything stable."

Cassandra Joines pauses for a photo with her mother, Opal, outside the family home in Glade Creek. On her restraint, friends in college installed two rearview mirors and a horn and fuzzy dice. The rearview mirrors are especially helpful, she said, since she can't turn her head.
 
 

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