Old Friends
Yesterday, thanks to Facebook, I reconnected with an old friend from high school. After almost 20 years, making contact with this friend felt great. She was one of several people that I give credit to for helping lead me to Christ.
When I was a in high school my mom and I had moved to Midwest City, Oklahoma. All of my siblings were now adults and I was the last one still living at home. Having recently lived in California, I had been getting into trouble and quite honestly had an incredibly large chip on my shoulder. I thought I was too cool to be living in Oklahoma surrounded by all of the ‘hicks’. I may have been born there, but in my opinion, through the years, I had reached a whole new level of coolness.
In all of my coolness and attitude, I was standing in the foyer of the school during lunch one day when a guy approached me and started talking to me. Unfortunately for him, I wanted no part of anything he had to say and rudely brushed him off and walked away. A week later, three girls and a guy walked up to me and asked me if I wanted to go see a house they had toilet papered. I thought that would be pretty cool, so I agreed and walked out to their car with them in the school parking lot. That was the day I met Joel, Stephanie, Andrea and Cindy. I jumped in their car and Andrea looked over at me and asked if I was concerned that they were going to take me somewhere and kill me. I thought that was pretty funny and I knew right then that I had found some friends. At that point in my life, I felt like I didn’t have a friend in the world. So this was a really monumental moment for me.
The house we went to look at that afternoon, belonged to the youth pastor at Stephanie’s church. While observing this wonderful piece of art and expression, my new found friends told me about a get together that they go to each week called Young Life and invited me to go with them. I agreed to go.
I arrived at my first Young Life meeting and was intruduced to one of the leaders, a guy named Todd. To my embarrassment, this was the same guy that had approached me the week before. The same guy I was extremely rude to. Fortunately for me, after our encounter, he started praying that God would soften my heart. It worked. Now there I was, sitting at a meeting of people I barely knew but cared enough about me to reach out to me.
After that experience I became a regular at Young Life, started attending Stephanie’s church, accepted Christ and was baptized. I was inseperable from my new friends. There was hardly a day that went by that Joel, Stephanie, Andrea and I didn’t interact with one another. It was probably my first taste of true friendship.
After high school we all drifted our separate ways and eventually lost contact. Or so I thought. Apparently Joel and Stephanie had remained in contact through the years. Then about six or seven years ago, Joel and Stephanie found me and initiated contact. We even met in Oklahoma City once and had lunch and dinner. But we always wondered what happened to Andrea. She seemed to have disappeared without a trace. That was until yesterday. Stephanie finally located Andrea on Facebook and passed the information along to me. I now have a new friend with an old friend feel on my social media list.
I am not sure if the three of them know the impact they have had on my life after our ‘chance’ meeting all those years ago. But I am thankful for them, the house they TP’d, and the boldness they had to reach out to a troubled teenager.
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Terry Ward 
This is a really cool story. I've had somewhat similar experiences of reconnecting with old friends via Facebook recently. Although we provide social media consulting services to other companies, a lot of my friends from high school are just now getting involved with Facebook. (I live in Knoxville, Tn and we really do run a year or two behind everyone else in the country, but it's a great place to live).