It was the day after Christmas and Jordan Bilyeu, 17, sat on a beach absorbed in a good book. For the last couple of days, Jordan had been vacationing on his grandparents' sailboat off of Thailand and decided to hang out by himself on nearby Phi Phi Island. His grandparents sailed off and he was left to read.

At the end of a paragraph, he glanced up to look at the ocean. It wasn't there. It simply seemed to have "disappeared" as if it had been sucked away. Just then, a huge wall of water—a tsunami—raced toward the beach.

The massive wave crashed on shore and the raging current jerked Jordan under water. Objects smashed into him and his legs were tangled in debris. As he gasped for breath and choked in mouthfuls of water, he desperately prayed: God, please help me! Don't let me die!

Just when he was certain he'd drown, his head poked out of the tossing waves. Desperately, he grasped onto the very tip of a palm tree. "All I could see was water," he said. "I knew if I let go, I'd be washed away into the ocean." He prayed: Oh God, please give me strength to hold on.

When Jordan noticed the water was moving toward land and not out to sea, he released his grip on the tree and floated on a propane tank until he drifted toward a hotel. Hands stretched down through a broken window and pulled him to safety. Once inside, his rescuers bandaged one of his fingers because it had been severed at the tip. But he soon forgot his own pain and started helping others.

"As soon as I could, I ran to the window to see if there were more survivors," Jordan said. "In two hours, we rescued 13 people." When the waters receded, Jordan's grandparents landed on Phi Phi Island and found the group searching for victims on the shore. They joined Jordan in locating and aiding victims throughout the night.

The December 26, 2004, tsunami, caused by an enormous earthquake, killed almost 300,000 people in several countries and islands across southern Asia and eastern Africa. Of more than 200 people on the Phi Phi Island beach that day, Jordan was one of only two known survivors.

"I'm thankful to be alive," Jordan says. "But I'm even more thankful that God used me to help others. God changed my life. I don't take anything for granted anymore."

Jordan's always been active in his youth group in Oregon, but his faith has new meaning now. "I want all that God has for me. He not only saved me from my sins, he saved me during the tsunami. I owe my life to him and I'll go wherever he wants me to go—even into the face of another storm."

Read more from 'It Happened to Me'

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