Divine Appointment

John wrote:

For those who have been reading our blog for a while may remember a local scam artist named Ronnie that we met in August, while on a trip to downtown San Jose. If you missed it and are interested in the whole story, you can go to "Homeboy Gospel" and "Follow-up to Homeboy Gospel", posted on August 3rd. Long story short, we met Ronnie downtown, shared the Gospel with him, and later found out that he has been around for years and has hit up countless other gringos and missionaries for money. But we said in our first story that when we go back downtown we would find Ronnie and see how he was doing.

So Friday, Jessica and I went downtown to see the sights. When we were on the bus, we said to ourselves, "We hope get to run into Ronnie." Well if you can believe it, a couple hours into our visit downtown, Ronnie actually came up to us and asked us for money. The same old line that he used on us the first time, "Do you guys speak English?" We told him that we had met him a couple of months ago and found out that he has been doing this for years. He said he remembered us and that we had talked to him about God. I asked him, what the real deal was and he told us the real story. He has been scamming for about 10 years, lives in a local hotel, grew up in California, mother lives in Cali, father lives in Costa Rica. We told him that we have been praying for him, we talked some, and I tried to share more of the Gospel with him. Then we parted ways again.

I can't believe in a huge downtown area, we actually ran into him again. But it is easy to believe knowing that we serve a God that creates divine appointments just like this one. I hope we will run into Ronnie just one more time, because there is still more he needs to hear. But mostly, I want to see God do something God-sized. What a trophy of grace Ronnie would be. What a testimony of what God could bring someone out of. I just want to see God do what He does best, transform and restore that which seems hopeless.