God’s 26

This is a true story reported by an Overseas Missionary Fellowship missionary at his home church.

While serving at a small field hospital in Africa, I traveled every two weeks through the jungle to a nearby city for supplies. This requires camping overnight halfway. On one of these trips, I saw two men fighting in the city. One was seriously hurt, so I treated him and witnessed to him about the Lord Jesus Christ. I then returned home without incident.

Upon arriving in the city several weeks later, I was approached by the man I had treated earlier. He told me he had known that I carried money and medicine. He said, “Some friends and I followed you into the jungle knowing you would camp over night. We waited for you to go asleep and planned to kill you and take your money and drugs. Just as we were about to move into your campsite, we saw that you were surrounded by 26 armed guards.”

I laughed at this and said, “I was certainly all alone out in the jungle campsite.”

The young man pressed the point, “No sir, I was not the only one to see the guards. My five friends also saw them, and we all counted them. It was because of those guards that we were afraid and left you alone.”

At this point of the church presentation in Michigan, one of the men in the church stood up and interrupted the missionary. He asked, “Can you tell me the exact date when this happened?” The missionary thought for awhile and recalled the date.

The man in the congregation then gave his side of the story. He stated, “On that night in Africa it was day here. I was preparing to play golf. As I put my bags in the car, I felt the Lord leading me to pray for you. In fact, the urging was so great that I called men of this church together to pray for you. Will all of those men who met to pray please stand?”

The men who had met that day to pray together stood - there were 26 of them!