When my wife and I were at Dallas Seminary back in the early 1960s, we lived in a little apartment that was part of a small group of apartments that have since then been destroyed, I am happy to say. Hot and cold running rats—all the joys of home were there. In the summer the weather came inside, and it was hot. Hot? Hotter than you can imagine. Like a desert.

That hot fall we began to pray for an air conditioner; we didn't have one. I remember through the cold blowing winter we were praying for an air conditioner. Through December, January, and February, we told nobody, made no announcement, we wrote no letter; we just prayed.

The following spring, before we were to have another summer there, we visited my wife's parents in Houston. While there, one morning, the phone rang. We hadn't announced our coming; it was for a brief visit with her folks and mine before we went back to seminary. The phone rang, and on the other end of the line was a man I hadn't talked to in months. His name happened to be Richard.

I said, "How are you." He said, "Great! Do you need an air conditioner?" I almost dropped the phone. "Uh, yes."

"Well, we have just put in central air conditioning here, and we've got this little three-quarter ton air conditioner that we thought you might like to have. We'll bring it over and stick it in your trunk and let you take it back, if that's okay."

"That'll be fine, Richard. Bring it on over." We put that thing in the window, and we froze summer and winter in that little place!