Written Across His Face over Barbecued Ribs

I laugh as I try to slice through glistening barbecue ribs with a plastic knife and it breaks.

I think I’ll just use my hands to eat the ribs, I murmur, watching my table companions. Men and women dot my eight-person round table, one of five or so tables in the large retreat dining hall. Mr. Leroy, an older gentleman beside me, continues his story to me, and my eyes watch his mouth in the noisy room as he talks.

“I felt God telling me to turn left here, and then right here, and suddenly I was in a neighborhood I didn’t recognize.”

Mr. Leroy stops talking to take another bite, chew, and swallow. I’d just met this grandpa at a retreat, four hours north, beside a wide, wave-lapped lake.

Throughout the weekend, I had been holed away with the women of the retreat, while the men had been in another corner of the chalet, having their own retreat. But tonight, this Saturday night, our groups joined together, the men grilling out for us all.

Piles of rack-browned chicken and savory barbecued ribs towered high and were passed around for seconds.

“How did you come to know Jesus?” I had asked the joyful-faced grandpa to my right. He had laughed and hinted that it was a two-act story.

In this first act, Mr. Leroy had been a young husband and father, recently moved to town and needing a small affordable house large enough for his growing family with wife and several kids. Feeling supernatural nudgings — even as a non-God-follower yet–he had obeyed the nudging gentle thoughts as he looked desperately for a home, and found himself staring at this rapidly-emptying house in front of him.

“Hey, whose house is this?”he’d asked the furniture-bearing people, busy out front. “Can I rent it?’

They’d directed him to the owner whose office was twenty minutes away.

“Hurry, it’ll close soon,” they’d warned.

Reciting the directions in his mind repeatedly, Mr. Leroy raced across towns and down highways, before appearing at a small business office.

“My secretary’s not here,” the owner said, “so I can’t write up a contract or rent you anything.”

Standing boldly, politely, Mr. Leroy petitioned his cause. “Please, I’m a hard worker. I’ll pay the rent on time each week.”

“I don’t want to rent it, I want to sell it,” the owner said.

“I can’t afford that!” Leroy protested. “Let me rent it.”

“I don’t want to rent it. I want to sell.”

“I can’t afford that!”

“How much have you got?” the owner asked.

Pulling open his wallet, Leroy counted the well-worn bills. “Twenty.”

“Sold,” the man said.

“What?!”

Grabbing some paper, the owner hand-wrote some lines and reached out his hand for Leroy’s $20. “Sign here.”

Leroy walked out of the office, an owner of the house God had led him to, with only a twenty dollar down-payment. Incredulous, thankful, he was curious about this obviously-otherworldly experience he’d had.

Time passed.

Leroy’s wife loved God and invited Leroy to visit a local church with her. Grudgingly, he went. The people were friendly and one tattooed man invited Leroy to a Bible study.

“I didn’t believe in God,” Leroy tells me, “but I was curious to hear what this tattooed Bible teacher would say. I decided to show up each week and poke holes at it inwardly. I sat up in the balcony the first time.”

Mr. Leroy pauses to wipe his mouth and sit hot coffee.

“After a few weeks, I moved to sitting in the front of the room, and to helping him carry in his white board and supplies.”

“After some time, I felt something pulling me heavily. It weighed on me, pulled me, called me. I needed to do something. Calling my Bible study teacher, I asked if he could meet me at church after work.”

“‘Sure,’ he said and we set a time for that evening.

“Well after work, I showered and put on my best clothes. I felt like I was going to my funeral. Arriving at the church parking lot, the Bible study teacher showed up, wearing his work clothes, still dusty and sweaty.

‘What?! You’re coming like that?!’ I’d asked him.

“‘Yeah, just like that,’ he’d said, grinning.

“Inside the church, we had moved into some pews towards the front,” Leroy tells me, staring past me as if experiencing it again right now. “I felt like I was going to my own funeral. It felt powerful, heavy, something pulling me, drawing me.

‘I feel like I have to do something, …to talk to God,’ I’d said to my friend.

‘Good. You start,’ he’d said and waited.

“I’d never prayed before. I didn’t know what to say.

“I spoke out the feelings in my heart, stumbling to put them into words. Afterwards, my friend prayed.

“I didn’t feel anything. Nothing seemed different. I was furious. Standing up, I’d said, ‘I’m going to tell everyone. This is a fake! Nothing changed or happened–‘

“I hadn’t taken more than a few steps, when everything changed! I felt like a whole new person, and joy and peace flooded through me.

“I cried and hugged my Bible teacher, feeling joyful, hope-filled, a whole new person.”

“And you want to know something?” Mr. Leroy asks me, cutting his fork into crumbling apple pie. Our dinner plates have been carried away by kind new friends, and we’ve chosen desserts and refilled hot coffee.

“Before this I had had a terrible mouth, cursing, swearing all the time. It never bothered me, but after this–” he gestures to the account in the church he had just described. “–After this, I didn’t swear again. I hated it. And one day a week later, I heard someone swearing across the room from me and my head swiveled to them quickly. It was abhorrent to me now.”

“And since then, phew!”– he smiles a humble grateful head shake, “God has been so good to me! He’s helped me be a husband, a dad, a grandpa, and great-grandpa!”

“I love God and his words,” Mr. Leroy says and I can see it all over him, how his love for the Creator has sculpted this man over the decades. Jesus was written all over his face and demeanor.

(*Disclaimer: Mr. Leroy shared his story with me in September 2024. If any details have been remembered in error, the fault is mine. I have been impacted by his account since he told me and eager to share it with you too.) 

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Jennifer speaks often at conferences, retreats, MOPS/MomsNext groups, churches, camps, home school co-ops and more. She loves getting to know people and making new friends.