Beth DeWyn, a participant, writes about her group's encounter with "Scooby", a guy who seemed to have had every bad thing happen to him. Scooby lived only 2 blocks away from the church that they visited multiple times everyday, but they wouldn't have known he was there had not God led them to him!
In order to prepare for our mission trip to Rogersville, TN the twenty one of us got together several times. We learned about the four basic service areas in which we would be spending our time. And, we watched short dvd presentations about different things including “listening prayers”. We were informed that this was something that A.I.M. would be stretching us to do while in TN.
On day four of six I spent the morning at a Habitat For Humanity home. After eating my sack lunch and grabbing a much needed shower, myself and three others from my group were driving to church to meet with 2 of the reps from A.I.M. There we spent some time in prayer and did a listening prayer, asking God to show us what or who He wanted us to minister to that afternoon. It was our turn to do a “Random Act of Kindness”. This had myself and the 3 that I was with a bit un-nerved. We had spent time in prayer and had seen some things that God had shown us throughout the week – or had we? We confessed to one another that we weren’t sure this whole “listening prayer” thing really worked. Did we really see the things we thought we had seen during prayer time or were we just imagining them? We shared a few things that were on our list – – – things that were blue in color, 3 bottles of water, a flat tire, 4 numbers, a tall tree without leaves that could not be cut down and another tree that was cut in pieces at it’s base. Unsure of what we were to do we just started driving in a direction we had not yet been.
Soon after leaving the church Scott pulled up to a stop sign. “Right or left?” he asked. Mel and I both felt we should go left. . . Ian agreed. Shortly after Scott did so we spotted a man in a wheelchair trying to get his mail out of his mailbox by the road in the rain. After pulling up alongside the road we nominated Scott to go and talk with the man. We felt if we all got out it may be a bit overwhelming. Scott did so. Several minutes passed and Scott had gone up the ramp onto the man’s porch. Then he was in the house. It was then that the 3 of us felt we should go and check on him. As we approached the porch Scott and the man came back out. Scott introduced us to his new friend, “Scooby”. Scooby had not eaten in 3 days. He had just gotten back from wheeling over to his neighbor to ask for a tomato sandwich when we pulled up. His neighbor had declined his request and Scooby was very hungry. His house was in disarray and he was living without running water or electricity. He pointed out the buckets that he was catching the rain water in. He would drink and wash with this water.
Scooby was tearful as he was embarrassed to be seen living in these conditions. The house had been his parents. They were both gone now and the house was his. He was disappointed in himself that things had turned out as they did.
He had lost his lower right leg to a spider bite 3 years ago.
He had been in the hospital a couple of months ago to have stents put in his heart.
When he was discharged and returned home he found his house had been broken into and someone has stolen his wheelchair, his checkbook and several other items that he depended on.
His checking account was overdrawn before he could put a stop on the checks.
He was without a phone, water, electricity, money, food and hope.
We shared with Scooby that we were on a mission trip and that we had set out that afternoon to do a “random act of kindness” and felt that God had led us to him in a very clear way. We offered to get him some food – he only wanted a tomato sandwich. A neighbor had brought over a power strip and an extension cord so Scooby could plug in a fan or other items if he needed to. He had a refrigerator but it was not plugged in. Through a lot of talking and tears we got his blessing to go and get him some food.
The four of us left with the promise of returning soon. We went to a nearby store. We noticed that the carts and the store buildings were blue (listening prayer). We entered and got him some basic necessities (including 3 gallons of drinking water as had been seen in our listening prayer) as well as a hot meal to go from the deli counter. Upon returning to his house we asked his permission to put the things away. Scott and Ian visited with Scooby on his porch while Mel and I went into his kitchen. It was obvious that some clean up needed to happen. We did as much as possible without running water. We found some canned goods in a cupboard and asked Scooby if he was able to use these. He replied that he couldn’t get into his kitchen with his wheelchair and that he didn’t have a can opener. Scooby agreed to let us move his canned goods and other food we had bought into the living room on a shelving unit where he could get to it easily. On the top shelf was a well used Bible.
To be continued in Part II……
Wow! God is so good! Thank you for sharing this and for your obedience to God. This seems to be only the beginning of a big ripple effect blessing! God bless you all richly!