On Friday (Dec. 22), Zulya Schmidt, the wife of the street preacher Hans Schmidt who was shot in the head on Nov. 15 while preaching on a street corner not far from their church, shared a photo of him awake in his hospital bed holding his 3-month-old baby boy.
“In the blink of an eye our lives were changed,” Zulya posted. “You are a living miracle. Every day I am amazed 😊 Seeing you hold our baby boy once again 🥹😭 waving at our baby girl 🥹. You have a long way to go, but God will carry us through💕.”
Zulya concluded her post by thanking everyone who has been praying for husband and their family and asked, “Please continue to pray!! ❤️🩹”
During an interview with CBN News’ Billy Hallowell, Zulya shared that God has not only provided peace through the situation but that she believes that the prayers from people, many of whom she doesn’t even know, are the reason she’s been unwavering in her faith during the situation.
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Zulya recalled the moment Hans was shot while he was street preaching. “He’s been doing that for over a year, and usually he street preaches for 30 minutes before every evening service for our church. That day, he just ended street preaching early, and I thought that was odd.”
She was sitting in their vehicle with their children when he started loading the speaker system he uses while preaching. When he got behind the wheel to drive, Zulya said she was unaware of what had happened. As they were driving back to the church, Zulya said she saw her husband was bleeding and thought that someone had thrown a bottle at him.
Zulya asked if he was okay, but he proceeded to go to the church and unload the sound equipment. “He’s about to get our daughter down, and I’m not like, no, you can’t. You’re all bloody. We need to go home and get you cleaned up,” she recalled.
It was at that moment Zulya’s brother showed up at the church and convinced them that Hans needed to go to the hospital. As her brother drove him to the hospital, Hans began to vomit. By the time they arrived at the emergency room, Hans started to have seizures and became unresponsive.
It wasn’t until doctors performed a CT scan that they realized Hans had been shot in the head.
The situation went from “maybe he needs some stitches to this is way worse than it seemed it was,” Zulya said. “I just felt sick to my stomach once I realized it was a gunshot wound…it was hard.”
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Zulya provided insight into the emotional rollercoaster she has been on since that Wednesday night on Nov. 15. She shared that many doctors and surgeons weren’t sure whether Hans would survive and said she overheard detectives say they would “know more after the autopsy.”
“We are hopeful and we are praying for a supernatural recovery, but there’s so much unknown still,” Zulya told Hallowell. “But everyday we have been able to witness a miracle from that first night were we saw blood just coming out of his ears and stuff…Now here we are a little over a month [and] the progress he has made is just amazing.”
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Hans understands some of what happened to him, but they aren’t sure just how much he remembers “because he is unable to communicate at the moment,” she said.
To Zulya’s knowledge, the police still don’t have any leads as to who shot her husband. “I don’t even care,” she said. “I don’t have the energy to really worry about that. Yes, I wish that person wasn’t on the street. That would bring me some comfort and peace. But at the same time, it’s like the harm as already been done.”
