My wife and I just got back last Saturday from Covington, LA after serving with a great team from Gateway Church. It was a blessing serving alongside a team of people who love Jesus, love our home owners and we ready for anything thrown at them. We are thankful for teams like this.
One of the homes we were serving had man named Johnny, he is his late 40’s was mentally handicapped and had a speech impediment. As sit here in Morehead City and reflect on my time serving this home and my time with Johnny, I realized that Johnny taught some things that I didnt realize until now.
Johnny lived in a trailer behind the home we were working on but Johnny was always there to greet us when we showed up and loved to be a part of our prayer times. As we went about our day of serving the homeowner, Mr.Willie, Johnny would just sit outside and wait for one of us to come outside. He would proceed to talk to us and help us as much as he could.
One afternoon, we were finishing up on the site and we were packing up to head back to the warehouse. Johnny was there talking to us and we told him we had to leave but he kept saying “walk, walk!” We told Johnny we couldn’t do it that afternoon but we would do it the next day. “Walk” meant prayer walk to him and he wanted to go on a prayer walk. Johnny knew all his neighbors and loved his neighbors and wanted to pray for them. We were at the last place where we were going to pray and Brett, one of our adjunct staff, asked Johnny to pray. Johnny with his speech impendiment, thanked Jesus for the things we had done for Mr.Wille, prayed for his neighbors, and pointed to the sky, thanking Jesus! Could we understand everything he said, Nope, but Jesus can and that’s really who all are prayers are for. This afternoon, Johnny taught me that we should never be too busy to pray.
So, the next day, we went for a “walk” while waited for some materials. This walk was to his special place in the woods. We followed this man into the woods not sure where we were going but we stuck with him and we arrived at this little pond. This pond was old, quite mucky and not real pretty but Johnny, said “watch, watch!”. He started to throw bread into this mucky, old pond and all of a sudden, hundreds of little bitty fish emerged and starting eating the bread. Johnny was so excited, he was pointing, and saying “look, look”. He was so excited to see these little fish that most people would not find interesting at all. As I stood next him, his excitement was infectious, I started to get excited with him. This morning Johnny taught me to enjoy the little things in life.