He was perhaps the most engaging and interested person I've met during this project. We were at the QuikTrip in Park City. He was driving a maroon Buick, or something like that, and I asked if I could pray for him. "Certainly," he said. The guy was probably in his 50s, with a shock of white hair. I asked if he had 10 seconds for a quick prayer right then. That's when he surprised me: "That's a short prayer," he said.
I agreed, so I asked whether he had anything specific I could pray about for him. He thought about it for a moment and then said his Achilles had been bothering him. I'd seen him limping out of the convenience store earlier. He'd injured it playing tennis and it was visibly swollen. He wasn't sure what kind of treatment it would need. So we prayed about it.
Then we chatted for a few minutes. "I've never in all my life had anyone pray for me at a filling station before," he said. He told me about his church, a Pentecostal church down south. He said it offered some programs that he really liked. He asked about my project and why I decided to do it. I told him about the calling I'd received and the constant prompting of the Holy Spirit. "I think good things are going to happen to you on this project," he said. And then he asked me how long I'd been doing it -- "How many days?"
I told him 330 (I miscounted, obviously). (And I about choked those words out. It's so amazing to me how far God has brought me in this project.) He seemed surprised I'd been at it so long: "I bet some really incredible things have happened during that time." I agreed that they had. At the very least, I told him, God had moved me. He'd taught me what it means to be obedient and disciplined in serving him in a self-sacrificing way.
We parted then. But John Smith said that he believes all things happen for a reason, that our meeting had a purpose. Again, I couldn't agree more.
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