Last week I posted an article about a Marine who was killed in the line of duty in the Middle East. I posted the write-up from the Boston Globe and the Nazarene News Service.
This morning I received this email (it was signed, but the author shall remain anonymous) from someone who read my "blog":
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Good evening,
My name is ***********, and I came across your blog as I was searching the internet for articles on Robert Moscillo, the Marine from New Hampshire who was killed recently.
I had the privilege and the honor to be Bobby’s first youth pastor. I wanted to say thank you for paying respects to him in your blog. Bobby touched a lot of people, I knew him when he was young, maybe a freshman or sophomore in high school. I was a rookie, very green and made a lot of mistakes, but Bobby stuck with me and stuck up FOR me.
I spent two years with him as his youth pastor, and I am pretty sure I learned more from him than he could have learned from me.
I would like to pass on a story that I heard today from my best friend from home, I moved away from New England about 3 years ago, so I was not able to be at his funeral yesterday, so he was filling me in on the proceedings.
A story came out about a gentleman that was attending Bobby’s church off and on. The church Bobby went to specializes in helping adults through recovery, this gentleman had come in drunk on two occasions, and each time Bobby had talked with him, worked with him, and simply tried to love him. One Sunday it paid off, the gentleman committed as best as he could to getting his life into shape. Two days later Bobby left for Iraq. The gentleman continued to attend church, and continued to recover. No one thought anything more of Bobby’s involvement, to the general public it looked like he had talked with this man briefly, and had been nice to him.
The gentleman showed up to Bobby’s funeral, and was just devastated, I mean wrecked. The pastor of Bobby’s church, who had been very close to Bobby, went to the gentleman, not really understanding why the man was so hurt and broken up, he had only talked with Bobby maybe once or twice really in his life. The man looked up at the pastor and said the following, “Bobby and I have talked quite a bit actually, he has been writing me every week from Iraq, encouraging me to keep with my recovery, to give my life to God and the church, I don’t know what I am going to do without that kind of support.”
I am humbled by the man that Bobby Moscillo had become.
Please pray for his family, that God will use his passing to glorify His own name. Please pray for all of his friends, and would you please pray for me? I am struggling with a lot of feelings I did not expect.
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Not only did Bobby's family lose a son, but that congregation lost a valiant and wonderful saint of God. And it appears that many people have lost a great, great friend.
Let's pray for all of our troops and their families.
