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Evangelism on the Train

My autobiography has been written and will be in print soon. In the meantime, here is a little outtake from my many travels for speaking engagements:

One time in 1957 or 1958, I caught an overnight train home from the Coast Guard Academy to D.C. I had planned to spend the 8-hour ride sleeping.

The train stopped at Penn Station in New York City, and a woman boarded with several suitcases. I got up to help her stow her bags.

She sat down next to me. “You are the first person to be polite to me on this trip,” she said. “What do you do for a living?

I told her I was a graduate of the Naval Academy and ministered the gospel at the service academies to help cadets and midshipmen come to the Father. It is hard to imagine that I could have said anything that would have impressed her more. If I had said I was the Queen of England, that might have done it.

She told me she had been a Follies Girl for Ziegfeld back in the twenties and thirties and had dated midshipmen from the classes of 1928-1932. In fact, she was still dating one of them twenty-five years later. He was the captain of an aircraft carrier out of San Francisco.

I wanted to go to sleep, and she wanted to know God. Every time I made a move to sleep, she wanted to hear more. I ended up telling her the gospel all the way to Washington, D.C. I put her in a cab and took her home before I went home myself. In the cab, I told her how to call upon the LORD.

The next day, I was so burdened for her that I prayed for her all day. In the evening, I phoned to see if she had called upon the LORD. She said she had, and her day had been so wonderful that she was going to receive the LORD again that night so tomorrow could be just as wonderful! I told her it was not necessary. Later I visited her in New York City where she had an interior decorating business...

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Anonymous said…
Can’t wait!!!

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