“Yeah, but Masterchief is much cooler,” Barny’s eyes bulged like his brain was trying to make a point.

            “Still, Tom Clancy’s stuff is more realistic,” I said with my finger on the Bible.

            “Realistic!” Barny said, “Mexico attacks America, a group of rough and tough elite soldiers calling themselves, “Rainbows,” and some sixty year old elder with a deep voice busts up hundreds without breaking a hip?  Yeah, that’s realistic.”

            “O.K.,” I touch his shoulder and check his heart rate as the nurses look into the room, “You’re right, Halo is a much better game than Clancy’s.  Wish you could play.”

            “Me too.”

            “Well,” I opened my Bible to Jeremiah 29:11, “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.’”  It was the word “future” that made me cry.

            Barny isn’t a real person any more than that farmer in Jesus’ parable who tosses seeds on the path, on the rocks, and in the weeds is, but like the soils, he is the embodiment of all who have ever heard or shared God’s message with this sinful man.  Throughout the course of this book, I would like to tell you our story and allow you to witness what this verse means to me, “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the Gospel of God but also our lives as well” (1Thes 2:8).

            I met “Barney” when I first entered military service in the Fall of 1992 and found myself shanghaied by the government to the faraway land of Fort Benning, Georgia.  He was my bunkmate, which meant he slept on the bed above me while I lounged underneath his shadow in more ways than one.  You see, I had first heard about Christ only a few weeks before while sitting in the home of Pastor Raz, a supplanted Puerto Rican who still considered Spanish his primary language.  Together, we listened to Hurricane Andrew tear through downtown Homestead, Florida in the safety of his living room with his wife and three children and my mother and sister keeping us company. 

            “Miguel,” he shook me from my sleep the morning after Andrew finished his business, “You come with me?” 

            “Yeah,” I listened to the silence for the first time I could remember.  No television, no birds, no people, only the whispering sobs of those so happy to be alive they only now realized what they lost.

            As we navigated past the fallen trees, torn up street signs, and gawking citizens down Interstate 95 from Miami to Homestead, what once was a twenty minute trek now took over two hours.  Several places were impassable while several others were impossible to ignore.  We witnessed flipped semis, cars resting in living rooms, pieces of trailer homes miles away from the park, and faces so stunned they had nothing to say.  That is, everyone except the members of Pastor Raz’s church.

            “Hola, Pastor,” she said with a hug.  “You want something to drink?” 

            We looked into her house from the driveway and saw the refrigerator sitting next to the bathtub. 

            “No,” Raz said, “We don’t want to put you out.”

            “How is your family?” She asked us both.

            “We were fine, fine, but how about you?”

            He spent several hours travelling from member to member, picking up broken pictures of loved ones long past, shouting hallelujahs when they found bibles, crying when their lives were all they could salvage.  I watched with an ever-increasing knot in my belly knowing that home wasn’t going to be the same any more.

            The roof of our house was torn from the sides, my car wedged tightly against the wall, our tree holding my hammock miraculously intact, but our stuff, what took a lifetime to collect, was soaking wet and broken into memories.  I remember his words when he touched my shivering shoulder, “God has a plan in everything.”

            That night, the hammock was my bed as I gazed up at the shining heavens listening to the nothingness of the last remaining quiet evening and thought to myself, “Why?  You took away my father through divorce.  My home through this hurricane. And my pride through poverty.  I have nothing but these clothes.  I am nothing but what I lack.”

            As my head turned away from the heavens, I saw my mother through the broken window of our living room, kneeling down with my sister offering a prayer through a tearful smile.  My eyes drew upwards and I asked, “Can I have what you’ve given them?”

            I told Raz what I prayed about the night before and he took me by the shoulder, Bible in hand, and told me what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.