By Linda Evans Shepherd
The rehearsal dinner was winding down at a popular Mexican restaurant in Fabens, Texas, when I got up to stretch my legs.
The room was full of family—laughter and the warm noise of celebration.
I wandered over to make small talk with the manager, a friendly man in his thirties.
“You know,” I said, “I was in Fabens thirty years ago to this day.” His bright brown eyes searched my face, and he reached for my hand. “Were you one of the missionaries who came to tell the children about Jesus?”
I nodded, not yet understanding what was happening. His eyes filled. “I was one of the children who gave my heart to Jesus that week. Thank you for coming.”
I stood there holding the hand of a man whose eternity had been shaped by a summer I had nearly forgotten—and I understood something I hadn’t grasped at eighteen. God keeps the records of faithful moments even when we don’t.
The Summer I Almost Stayed Home
Thirty years earlier, my friend Lilly and I had stepped off a Greyhound bus in Dallas—two eighteen-year-olds on a mission adventure, not at all sure what we were doing. We’d been sent by the Texas Baptist Mission Board to travel city to city, helping small churches run their Vacation Bible Schools.
That week, we joined a church youth group heading to the border town of Fabens to run a VBS for the local kids. Mornings were full of songs, crafts, and the simple telling of the gospel. Evenings were an outdoor revival beside the local church. It felt wonderful.
Then Something Went Wrong
One evening during the service I felt it—an eerie absence I couldn’t name. The preacher preached with passion, the words were right, but something was deeply off. It felt as though God’s presence had vanished into the warm night air. I looked around and saw the same hollowness on other faces.
On the bus ride to the campfire afterward, Lilly and I both noticed it—the youth group’s joy had grated into friction. Sharp words turned into sullen silence. I prayed quietly: What does this mean, Lord?
By the time we gathered around the fire, I spoke up, “I think we need to forgive one another.” What happened next surprised me. With tears, the teenagers began forgiving one another. Faces softened. Hugs were shared by the firelight. The tension in their faces gave way to love, and for the first time all night, our joy returned.
The next morning at VBS, thirty-eight children gave their hearts to Jesus.
What Forgiveness Unlocked
We learned later that a group, with deliberate intent to disrupt, had infiltrated the evening services. Working quietly among the young people before each service began. After our time of prayer that night, the men didn’t return.
But more than their absence, I noticed the presence—God’s presence was felt again in everything that followed. Looking back, I don’t believe the harvest came in spite of the conflict inside our group. It came after we addressed it. Our disrupters had tried to stop the move of God by sowing seeds of discord, but our forgiveness toward one another cleared the spiritual atmosphere. And thirty-eight children walked into the light of God’s love.
Before the harvest came the forgiveness. Jesus said the world would know we belong to Him by our love for one another (John 13:35). It makes me wonder if unity among believers opens more spiritual doors than we understand this side of heaven. I’ve thought about this truth many times in ministry.
How often do we go out to share the gospel while carrying unresolved friction with the people beside us? How often does unforgiveness between believers quietly close doors that God wanted open?
That summer taught me that evangelism isn’t only about what we say to the people we’re trying to reach. It’s also about what we’ve settled with the people standing next to us.
God Keeps The Records
Standing in that restaurant thirty years later, holding a stranger’s hand, I realized I had planted a seed I never saw grow. I had no idea which child went home changed that week. When the church bus returned to Dallas, I boarded a Greyhound and went back to my life and forgot most of the details.
God forgot none of them. Not the bus rides. Not the prayers whispered under Texas stars. Not the awkward teenage obedience. Not one child sitting in a folding chair listening to the gospel. Heaven records what earth too easily dismisses. He arranged a family wedding in Fabens, Texas. He put me in the right restaurant. He brought a thirty-something manager out of the kitchen at exactly the right moment. Thirty years to the day.
If you have been faithful in a small place—a VBS classroom, a conversation that felt insignificant—take heart. God is keeping the records you’ve already forgotten. And sometimes, thirty years later, He lets you shake the hand of someone whose life was changed because you showed up.
Be faithful. Forgive quickly. Trust God with the fruit.
You may not see it for thirty years. But you will see it.
Linda Evans Shepherd is the publisher of Leading Hearts and the founder of the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association. Watch for her new book, Praying the Word for Women: 90 Scripture-Powered Prayers to Calm an Anxious Heart, from Christian Art Gifts, which hit number 25 on the ECPA’s new release list.
