Mike Cahill works for an airline and uses Chick tracts to witness in many places here and in other countries. However, he relates this recent story that happened in his home church:

In our church was a secretary working for FedEx Ground who was a faithful witness. Rose kept a wicker basket of tracts on her desk and was very vocal about the gospel. However, in her late 50s, she had a stroke and was confined to a care facility for four months while recuperating.

In the facility was an 85-year-old woman from Poland named Mary. Rose befriended her and asked Mike to talk to her. So, he and his wife set up a Saturday morning visit to the care facility and brought along a pizza. In a private room they met and Mike thought that Mary might be Jewish but asked about her story.

She had been in Poland when the Soviets invaded and hauled her, with a quarter-million other people, off to prison in Siberia.

As a young woman, she was horribly abused and emotionally scarred for life. Later, she was returned to a work camp in Germany and ended up in the US for 60 years after the war ended. It turned out that Mary was an active Roman Catholic.

Mike had prayed, before going, for guidance on which tract to take. Thinking that the lady might be Jewish, he looked for a copy of Love the Jewish People but did not feel that it was right. "I normally take This Was Your Life and always take Flight 144.  As I looked over my assortment, the tract Sorry stood out," Mike recalls. 

Bitterness laced Mary`s story not only over the abuse in the war prison, but the fact that her son was in jail for driving under the influence, and a daughter was married to a homosexual. Catholicism had failed to bring her peace even though, at one point, when in Poland, she met and spoke to Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who later became Pope John Paul II.

She parroted the standard Roman Catholic teaching that "the Bible is too hard to understand, so you have to rely on the 'church` for salvation."

The little group talked for about an hour, planting seed but felt that it was not time to push. Mary thanked them for the pizza and the visit.

Mike gave the copy of Sorry to Mary and they left. Since the tract dealt with someone in prison, it was obvious why the Spirit had prompted Mike to select it, since Mary`s son was currently incarcerated.

Later, an excited call came from Rose: Mary had read the tract —twice, and prayed the prayer in the back to accept Christ and commit her life to Jesus. Rose said Mary was treasuring the tract for the hope that the gospel had given her, that she had not found as a Roman Catholic.

Rose realized that, without her stroke and recovery in that care facility, Mary might have been eternally lost. Sometimes our comfort is less important than a lost soul who is open to the gospel.