The following story is written by an East-West stateside missionary.
Recently, I’ve served with the Diaspora team here in Dallas. If you’re not familiar with their ministry, they go door-to-door searching for persons of peace in hopes of sharing the gospel.
One Saturday I knocked on a door in an apartment complex we were visiting. A call came from inside, “Come in!” I stepped across the threshold and there sat an older man—a single-leg amputee—who looked to be in bad overall health.
I shared with him that we were out meeting people and seeing if there was any way we could care for them and that one of the ways we did that was through prayer.
I also shared my short, 15-second testimony of how Jesus had saved me and asked him if he had a story like that. He responded that he had never been much of a churchgoer and that he had heard the gospel many times, but never “dove deep into it.” His body language showed he didn’t want me to stay very long.
He looked as if he was searching for an end to the conversation and said that he was about to take a nap right before I came in. During our brief interaction, he kept wincing from leg pain.
I shared Romans 10:9 with him in the hopes that he would trust Christ on his own. Turning to leave, I asked him if I could pray for him. Earlier he explained that he had lost his leg due to diabetes, so he asked that I pray he wouldn’t lose the other leg. So I prayed for this, opened the door to leave and asked if I could visit him again. He said, “sure.”
I left feeling sad and burdened that someone so old and in such bad shape would be so closed off to the gospel. I thought about how he might not have much longer to live.