William in the Trailer Court

William in the Trailer Court

If you help somebody even with a small thing such as a bag of groceries, something amazing happens. They are willing to listen to you about the Lord. That is what happened when we met William in the trailer court.

This Saturday morning men from the Phoenix Dream Center delivered to the church small bags of groceries that they had gathered from supermarkets. These weren’t always in the best condition since they were outdated items pulled from the stores’ shelves, but they did help and they opened doors.

We took a number of bags, got into my truck and prayed for direction on where to go. I was impressed that we should go to Sunnyslope, where we had lived for a while when times were tough for us. People from the church had brought us food at that time. So it was right for us to pay it forward now.

We drove around for a while praying for direction. We came upon a small, dilapidated trailer court on 8^th Street. We knocked on a few doors with no results. It then occurred to me to talk to the manager.

I asked him if he knew of anyone in the court who needed food. He said, “Go see the guy in Number 8.”

So we knocked on Number 8 and William came to the door. Yes, he did need some food. He was happy to get it and invited us in. Now we had the chance to talk to him about the Lord and present the gospel to him. He readily believed and prayed to receive Christ.

The next Saturday we dropped by to see how he was doing and invite him to church. Since he was unable to go to church on his own, I told him that we had a bus that could come by to pick him up. I think we gave him another bag of groceries at this time, but I don’t remember for sure.

After a few weeks of giving out more groceries in the area, we happened to drive by on William’s street. Suddenly, the Holy Spirit strongly told me, “You must go see William!”

We did and soon found out why. William answered the door and said, “I was trying to get ahold of you but I didn’t know how to do it! I really need food!” On his table was a small peanut butter jar that had been scraped clean. There was nothing in his refrigerator but a huge, inedible cabbage!

We had no food with us, so we left and went to the nearby Fry’s and bought him a load of easy-to-prepare food and brought it back to him.

About a week later we brought him another food bag from the Dream Center, but the trailer door was padlocked. “Well,” I thought, “I guess we caught him when he was out.” We left the food in front of the door.

The next week we stopped by and again found the door padlocked. I went and talked to the manager, who said “Oh, William. He passed away and they found him that way in his bathtub.”

So the Lord in His kindness was not going to let His new believer die without what he needed for the rest of his earthly life. And my wife and I had the privilege of being involved in snatching a soul away from the flames of hell just in time.

In this pandemic many people don’t have enough money both to pay their bills and to buy food. If we let the gospel accompany our gifts of food, let’s see what the Lord will do.