“Hi Jerry! I’m Weili!”
The cheery voice streamed from the phone. Her accent had the musical lilt of a young Far Easterner, which clearly pulsed with excited urgency.
“I have just recently come to Tulsa from California where I have been studying at a university.”
It’s always a refreshing sound, a cheery voice at the opposite end of a telephone line. Weili caught me a little off guard with her next words – strung together with enthusiasm – high speed.
“Jerry, I am a Christian. I met the Lord there in California. Now I’ve heard about the work you are doing here in Tulsa, and I have a request!” She continued with barely a pause,
“Please come to the Jesus Inn tomorrow night. Bring your guitar! Several new grad-student guys just arrived from my country, and you can sing some songs and tell them about Jesus!”
I smiled at the spunk of this girl I had never met, Somehow she knows of our presence on campus and that I plunk guitar strings now and then. Adding to the mix, I mused, Weili seems a young lady overflowing with boundless joy, and a heart just bursting with evangelistic fervor.
Her spirit (all that I really had to go on) sparked inside me both an element of intrigue and a sense of adventure. Her child-like eagerness felt contagious. Who could not like this person? I thought with a smile.
Finally she paused, making room for a response.
“Well, Okay Weili, If it’s alright with the Jesus Inn folks, I’ll see you there.”
The ‘Inn’ – a string of aged houses lining a stretch of city block near the campus – had gotten launched as an in-residence place offering help and hope to a young generation back in the 1960s. Gordon and Susan Wright, along with ‘recovered-and-in-recovery’ volunteers – together with the Wright’s own children – had long stewarded the unconventional space.
To a long parade of the homeless, the hippied and the bedraggled – from lost and afraid flower children to strung-out , disillusioned druggies – the Jesus Inn became a haven of refuge. A place of hope.
“Lord”, I whispered the next evening as I gathered Bible and guitar and headed out the door, “please meet us, please guide.”
©2024 Jerry Lout