THE LOST LAMB

In November of 2021, two obedient disciples, Jaime and Richard responded to the prompting of the Holy Spirit to make a very important phone call. The call was to a Marine veteran they had met while he was waiting their table in a restaurant in San Antonio many months prior. Jaime requested his phone number that day thinking one day they might follow up with him. While going through his phone almost a year later, Jaime felt the prompting to call the young man that had waited on him that day. What Jaime didn’t know was the young man was alone in his apartment contemplating taking his life. Depression threatened to add to the devastating statistics regarding veterans with PTSD.

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The young man would never answer the phone for an unknown number, but for a reason he couldn’t explain himself, he answered the phone. In the hours that followed, Jaime and Richard talked with him. Richard shared how Matthew 18 demonstrates the true heart of God for even one lost lamb. How God would move heaven and earth to save one soul. The Marine had been raised in church and through the years had cut himself off to any discussions about God. Yet on that night, he was fully convinced that God saw him in his darkest hour and sought him out. That night he knew he was the lost sheep in Matthew 18 and the loving Shephard Jesus had come to him. 

The next day he called his dad overwhelmed by God’s miraculous intervention. Over the next several days God continued to speak to him. He later told his dad how one night in particular he spent all night in deep prayer and how he experienced the mighty presence of God with him in his apartment.

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In the weeks before the phone call from Jaime and Richard, the Marine had been drinking excessively. Alcohol is a common coping mechanism for veterans with PTSD and he had been consuming dangerous amount of liquor. Although his response to God was genuine, the damage was already done. The day after that all night encounter with God, he checked himself into San Antonio Methodist Hospital extremely sick. His parents came from Houston and was with him when the doctor told him he was in liver failure. Bringing him back home to Alvin, Texas the family was optimistic he would be healthy enough to get a transplant, but that wasn’t to be. Within three weeks of diagnosis, the young Marine passed away in Houston Methodist Hospital.

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That Marine was my son, Stephen Wayne Vaughn Jr and our family is eternally grateful for the loving Shephard that left the ninety-nine to search and find that one lost lamb. For years I prayed for the unknown disciples that would be sent by God to my son and we are eternally grateful for the two evangelist that were sensitive to, and available to the Holy Spirit to be used by God in Stephen Jr.’s reconciliation.

It’s our purpose to always be sensitive, available and obedient to evangelize the lost. Pray for us. We just might be the Jaime and Richard for your loved one. We are ready, passionate that “None Perish”.