The story of how my teammate Tommy and I became friends with R is one of those stories that reminds me that God uses all sorts of means to lead you to where He wants you to be. It started with Tommy and I prayer walking one afternoon, praying that God would bring us someone with whom we would be able to build a relationship and get to share the gospel.

Instead, God brought us two junior-high-aged kids. We began to talk with them and about 5 minutes into the most intense game of charades I’ve ever been apart of, two more kids joined our group. Then two more. And then three more. It quickly became a conversational flurry of hand motions, broken English and laughter. As usual, most of the laughter was at the expense of Tommy and I.

As I was explaining to the group how to properly pronounce my name for the fifth time (we settled on Jerry), Tommy was handed a cell phone with someone on the other line. Apparently the kids had called an older friend who they knew spoke more English than they did. The guy on the phone introduced himself, in rough English, and asked some basic questions about who we were. He then asked Tommy if we knew God. “Yeah, we know Him,” Tommy answered. The guy must have been pleased with this answer because he then asked us to meet him for coffee the following day.

We arrived at the café the next day and quickly realized that although he had inquired about God, he wasn’t very interested in talking about him. As the coffee date was winding down he received a cal. He told us not to leave yet and that a friend of his wanted to meet us.

Five minutes later, R walked in. We did not know it at that moment, but God was directly answering our prayer from the day before. We proceeded to spend the next three hours talking and sharing the gospel with R, helping him in satisfying his self proclaimed quest to “find absolute truth wherever I can.” By the end of the summer, R was 100 pages into reading the bible.

Although R is not yet a believer, and although I had to leave him at the end of this summer, I trust that Father used me in R’s life where needed and that Father will continue to draw R to himself. I hope in Christ for the day when the beautiful friendship Father brought us with R becomes a relationship between three partakers of His grace and mercy.