Walking into the Mall of America with her 5-year-old son Landen, Kari Hoffmann remembers feeling strange. She prayed quietly for protection. Moments later, a stranger approached Landen and threw him over the third-story balcony. The 5-year-old fell nearly 40 feet, suffering broken arms, a broken leg, and a fractured skull. Miraculously, he survived.  

“Listening to him breathing with the machine’s beeping was the best sound I’ve ever heard in my life,” his mom said. “Because that meant he was alive.”  

Now, several years later, Kari and Landen are sharing their story. That day, 24-year-old Emmanuel Aranda showed up at the mall, he said, “looking for someone to kill.” Despite what he did to her son, Kari wants people to know she has forgiven him. As she told ABC’s Eva Pilgrim, “I don’t believe that forgiveness is a feeling. I think it’s a decision that you have to make.”  

The secular world doesn’t have a box for answered prayer or forgiveness. The Hoffman family does. Thank God.