Doc the Hitchhiker

Meet Doc the hitchhiker. Actually, his real name is Marvin but he goes by Doc or the Professor. Doc is a Vietnam war vet. On our drive down to Joplin on Saturday we cruised right on past Doc not giving it much thought to pick up a hitchhiker. Then Anique and Carolle (work friend) agreeably decided that we needed to turn our car around to pick this guy up.

Doc was traveling from Duluth, Minnesota down to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. From the tales he was telling, it sounds like he's been around the country and world many times over. We heard about his time with the Sioux Indians in South Dakota to his tour in Vietnam to his sight problems to his knowledge of history. Now, none of us have any history with hitchhikers, but from what I can tell they do like to talk. And another FYI...it takes them about 10 minutes to make a cup of coffee at a gas station. We speak from experience.

Our man on Hwy 71 South - about 30 miles outside of Kansas City.

There is some amazingness in the story of the hitchhiker though. We were able to share the story of the memorial to him and we even invited him to attend the event with us. Due to his time-crunched schedule he was unable to attend, but we still got to pray with him before we dropped him off at the laundromat in southern Joplin. 

One crazy thing is that as we were traveling down to Joplin, he told us about his two buddies who had actually died during the tornado. Then as we entered the town itself we told him that we drop him off wherever he wanted to go. Well, he wanted to be dropped off in southern Joplin so we drove right through downtown and into the path of the May 22 tornado. We were all in awe as we passed through streets of pancaked homes/offices. It was nothing like we had ever seen before.

Just think, if we hadn't stopped and picked up Doc we never would have heard his wonderful stories, saw the devastation, or been able to pray with him. We did get his contact info as well, so I'm sure we'll be sending him a Hallmark card soon! Praise God for putting Doc the Hitchhiker in our path this past Saturday.

Pleasant morning for hanging around on the side of the highway