Pete and Janet DeBusk (read their testimonies) illustrate the value of persevering in prayer for unsaved children. Back in the 1970s, as a new convert in our Dallas, Oregon, church where the two of them had long attended, I volunteered to paint Sunday school tables and benches. When coming or going during the lunch hour, I frequently noticed a pair of work boots placed just inside the back door of the church. Interestingly, those boots disappeared an hour or so later. Before long, I learned that they belonged to Pete DeBusk.

Pete was employed at the Willamette Industries sawmill in Dallas. On his lunch break, he would come to the church, remove his soiled boots just inside the back door, and go downstairs to the church basement where he would pray for his unsaved children. He did this day after day. I don’t recall ever actually seeing or hearing Brother Pete—I just saw his boots. I also saw the results of those prayers.

I lived in Dallas for seventeen years, and I was in church when their son, Tim, was saved. In the summer of 1977, he sat through a Sunday night service under Holy Ghost conviction and at the conclusion of that meeting, he came forward to one of the altars of prayer where he wept and prayed through to salvation. However, had you walked in the back door of the church the next day at noon, you would have seen Brother Pete’s boots inside the door. He still had unsaved children.

It was perhaps five years later when the DeBusks’ daughter, Sharon, put her baby in the arms of her mother at the altar call and came down the aisle of the church to the place of prayer. There she fell on her knees in a heap and prayed until she knew God had saved her. The next day, you would have found Brother Pete in the basement at noon praying for his other unsaved children.

It was a hot summer Sunday evening in June of 1992, when their youngest child, Theresa, answered the call and was prayed through at the conclusion of a church service. You already know where Brother Pete was the next day at noon.

Now the DeBusks have grandchildren and great grandchildren, so you can be sure the prayers continue, though in his retirement the lunchtime location of Brother Pete’s prayers has changed. Other aspects of their lives have changed over the decades as well, but God has not. He still answers prayer. May the DeBusks’ testimonies and this issue of Higher Way magazine inspire you to pray until you find the answers you seek.