Normally, I would arrive at the church around 8:00 a.m. on Sunday morning.  I would park at the southeast corner of the large building and then cut through the youth room—a large multi-purpose  room connected to the south end of the church and then exit through the northwest corner of the youth room, head to the garage and get the van.  This route took me straight through the far south part of the church and left me nowhere near a telephone.  The plan was to get the church van out of the garage, warm it up, head out and begin picking up 10-15 youth for Sunday School and be back at the church by 9:30.

On this particular morning however, I diverted from my path and went the long way around , through the building.  I don’t really know why I did that.  I’d never done it before.  Nobody was there.  I guess I just decided I needed the exercise.  In reality, I probably had an ADD moment and forgot how to get to the church van.  In any event, just as I was passing the Sunday School office (a small covey hole with a desk, a file cabinet . . . . and a phone), the telephone began to ring.

I stopped and answered the phone, realizing that no one should be at the church and therefore, no one should be calling it.  I identified myself and heard a whimpering, young female voice on the other end of the line.  The young lady explained that her father had brought her down from Albuquerque (250 miles away) on Friday and moved her into a dorm for the fall semester of college.  Just before her father went back to Albuquerque, he had taken her to a used car lot and purchased a car for her to navigate around town.  Since it was still a few days before school was scheduled to start, the young lady had only met one or two people and she was unable to get hold of them.

She had woke up hungry and excited on this beautiful Sunday morning and decided to go get some breakfast.  On the way, she stopped to get gasoline for her new car.  But once filled, the car wouldn’t start.  In our small town of Portales back in the mid-eighties, there were no repair shops open on Sundays, so she called her dad.  The family had rarely ever attended church and her dad was apparently operating under the false assumption that churches were filled with off-duty mechanics at 8:00 on Sunday mornings, and they must be just sitting around waiting for an opportunity to rescue a damsel in distress.  With this erroneous thinking in place, dad told daughter to get a phone book and call a local church for help.  After all, that’s what the church is there for, he assured her.

As it turned out, there were no off-duty mechanics in our church when she called.  I’m not sure there were ever any in our congregation.  What she got, was an off-duty idiot playing the role of a youth minister.  I had no idea what to do, so I simply told her I’d be right there.  I got the directions and the church van and headed to the convenience store where she was waiting.

I know a little amount about cars, but I’ve never been great at diagnosing their problems.  I can take a car apart and put it back together, but to actually fix one . . . .  well, that’s another story altogether.  When I drove up, I found the young lady with her red, puffy eyes, still sitting next to the gas pump.  She was just beside herself and still so upset, she was trembling.  I asked her to pop the hood and when she couldn’t figure it out, I got in and tried to help.  It turns out that the car was an English model and was very different from anything I’d ever seen.  By the time I figured out how to open the hood, she had already filled me in on her story.

I walked to the front of the car and raised the hood.  To my horror, I didn’t recognize anything under the hood.  I assumed there was engine in there somewhere, but it didn’t look anything at all like any motor I’d ever seen.  I glanced around the hood and looked into the eyes of this eighteen year old lady who had now placed what was left of her hope for humanity in me.  I knew I was about to let her down and have no idea what possessed me to do what I did next, but I just jumped in with both feet and did one of the many things that makes me think that I am so adorable.

With no idea what to do to fix the car or make it start—it would crank, but it wouldn’t fire off—I placed my left hand on what I think was a strange looking air breather and held my right hand in the air.  With my open palm stretched toward heaven, I cried out:

“Umnighbegamedilliwhoopum!” I have no idea what that was supposed to mean—it was simply garbledy-goop to me and in my moment of uselessness, I guess I decided to go down in flames.  I leaned around the hood and saw that the young lady’s eyes were about to bug out of her head and said in my best redneck accent, “try it now!”

She never took her eyes off of me or even blinked, but she reached for the key and turned it.  The car instantly roared to life.  If it were possible, she appeared to be even more shocked than she had been a moment before.  I shut the hood and walked up to her, handed her a card from our church and told her we would be serving donuts and coffee/juice in about an hour to the handful of other college and career kids that would undoubtedly be there.  I invited her to come and then turned, got in the van and drove away.  She still hadn’t blinked and I just acted like I did that sort of thing all the time.

Now, some of my Assembly of God friends (and others), may actually do that kind of thing from time to time, but I’m a dumb Baptist and had never experienced anything like that.  I still have no idea what happened, except for this:  God used a used car that had malfunctioned to set a series of strange circumstances in play.  Whether I yielded to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, or was just placed in the right place at the right time, I’m not sure.

What I am sure about is that once I answered the phone, I had a choice to make.  Either I could  try to rescue this young lady, or admit I knew nothing about cars and was too busy to get involved, leaving her to look elsewhere for help.

When I arrived back at the church with a van full of youth, someone met me at the door to tell me that the young lady was there and had asked for me.  I went and found her in the college department where she was already getting to know a couple of other students.  She jumped up and came to give me my long overdue hug and then broke into tears again.  I just chuckled and told her the Lord had something special in store for her.

Little did I realize that in a few short weeks, she would invite Jesus into her life as her Lord and Savior and a few years later, would surrender to serving Christ as a missionary.  She became a vital part of our college and career group and our lives, before leaving to follow God out into the world of missions a few years later.  When I think about this story, it still gives me goose bumps to think that because I didn’t know anything, God was able to show Himself to her (and maybe me too) in a very special way, and I wasn’t able to take any credit at all for it!   It would have been so easy (and even logical) for me to have said “no” to God at any point along the way.  I wonder what it would be like if we could learn to better follow the prodding of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.