Christ’s Ambassador

By Benjie Leach

One of my goals as chaplain of Forest Lake Academy in Orlando, Florida, was to become acquainted with each student. It was a challenge in a school with 450 students in the mid-1970s.

Image © Pacific Press

At the beginning of the school year, a student came up to me and said, “Have you had a chance to become acquainted with Paul yet?” I had not.

“You need to get acquainted,” the student said. “Just ask where he is from.”

My curiosity was aroused, so I invited Paul to my office. He turned out to be a rather shy 16-year-old. “So, Paul,” I said, “where are you from?”

“I’m from a little town in Georgia called Plains,” he said.

My mouth dropped open. “What?” I said. “That is where the president of the United States — Jimmy Carter — lives!”

I had to ask. “Paul,” I said, “do you know the president?”

“Oh, yes,” he said.

Early that summer, he had needed a job to pay for his tuition at Forest Lake Academy, and he had gotten a job at a peanut warehouse, the main industry, in Plains. He was excited about finding work and thought that he had made it clear about taking Sabbaths off. But his work supervisor stopped him when he left on Friday with a promise to return on Monday.

“No,” the supervisor said. “You come tomorrow. We are open Saturday.”

“But, you see, I’m a Seventh-day Adventist,” Paul said.

“Come tomorrow, or you won’t have a job anymore,” the supervisor said.

Paul thought for a moment. “Can I speak to the owner?”

“But that’s the president!” the supervisor exclaimed.

“Is he in town?” Paul said.

“Yes, but I don’t think that it’s going to make any difference.”

Paul went to the Carter home. He had to go through the Secret Service, but he was able to sit down with the president. Jimmy Carter listened attentively as he explained the situation and his observance of the seventh-day Sabbath. “I respect any young person who has convictions and stands up for what he believes” the president said. “You can have your Sabbaths off.”

And the soft-spoken 16-year-old teen became Christ’s ambassador to the U.S. president.

You and I also are ambassadors for Christ. “Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20, NKJV). Let us, with Christ’s help, be faithful ambassadors.

Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission. Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org

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