December 12, 2020

Wayne was born in Portland Oregon and graduated college with an Associate degree and a Bachelor of Science Degree. He was a Police Officer for over 30 years having also graduated from the FBI National Academy. Wayne 
is also a Vietnam Vet who served in the US Navy on Aircraft Carriers.

Watching Wayne grow as a storyteller over these past few months has truly been a treat.  It’s a privilege to present our next storyteller, Wayne!

My stories are about the power of prayer and how it’s been in my life in significant ways. The first story I have was in 2018, when I was very sick, short of breath, with a heart murmur, and I was full of water gain. I had a heart murmur that developed into being a situation where I had to get surgery and to get my mitral valve repaired. I had a seven to eight-hour surgery, and at which time, of course, I was on a heart-lung machine type thing. And they took eight liters of water from me.

When I was wheeled into surgery, I was sure that Jesus was going in there with me, and I’m sure that he also left with me. Because the operation was a complete success, the doctor was able to take the irregular afib heartbeat away, which was nice, made life more comfortable for me. So, the recovery was more than a year, but it was well worth it. The doctor did a good job. So that was the power of prayer that I wanted to tell you about, the first one.

Now the second one I wanted to tell you about was just recently, December 7th, 2020. I had been in a parking lot, actually a McDonald’s parking lot, and I returned home from there, and I noticed that I didn’t have my wallet with me, which had credit cards in it and money, driver’s license and everything. When after I got home, I was about seven miles from where the parking lot was. So I decided well, I’ll go back to the parking lot. But before I did that, I prayed before going back to the parking lot that somebody would find my wallet and give it back to me very soon. I was hopeful that somebody would find it soon, so I wouldn’t have to wait for, like, a year to get my wallet back. Because when you lose certain things like your credit cards, everything, it can really cause you a lot of problems.

So, I went back to the parking lot. I drove back to the parking lot. And when I drove into the parking lot, I noticed a pickup was sitting not too far from where I had been parked before. There was a man inside the pickup, and he looked at me. It looked to me like a look of recognition because he, kind of, put his head out a little bit. And he looked at me and just like he knew who I was or something. I drove around his pickup and just a couple of spaces down and parked.

The next thing I knew the man walked up to my car, and he said, “Did you by chance lose something?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “What? Could it have been a green wallet?” And I said, “Yeah, it was.” And he said, “Well, what’s your name?” I said, “Wayne Johnson.” And he said, “Well, you know, I’ve got your wallet in my pickup.” He says, “Let me bring it over to you.”

Well, I was really ecstatic about that. I was really happy because I wouldn’t have to go putting in for a new driver’s license and credit cards and everything and, oh boy, does that cause you problems? So anyhow, he brought the wallet back to me. And it’s just like a miracle because the guy, he could have just eaten his food, drove off, or not even said anything about it or hand it over to a police department. Who knows which police department? And I might not have seen those items at all or for a long, long time. So, I was really grateful that the power of prayer helped me out in that time also.

There was another time too, that I was on I5 at a rest stop and I’d lost my wallet and I had prayed about that. And lo and behold a policeman brought my wallet back to me to that particular place. It was just amazing.