Angel in Disguise

         We were preparing to have church on a Sunday in July a few years ago. The service began and in walk a scruffy looking guy with a stocking cap on, a pair of worn blue jeans and a shirt. He proceeded to the back of the church and sat down in the last pew, on the end by himself and away from the rest of the congregation. The service concluded and I went back to where he was and introduced myself to him and he told me his name was Jeff Hornbeck from Oklahoma City. He said he wanted to paint the church. We visited briefly and I told him I would think about it and let him know. He left and I thought it was an unusual request and then forgot about the encounter.About a month later, just as we were starting our Sunday morning service, I looked up and noticed Jeff had returned and was sitting in the same spot as before. We finished our service, and I approached Jeff and said hello. He again said that he wanted to paint the church. So, with some skepticism, I agreed to allow him to paint the outside of the building and asked if he would work on the front and side of the building first and we would see how well he did. I stopped by the church a day or two later and discovered that Jeff had managed to make it all the way around the church scraping and caulking around the windows and the trim of the building. He was doing a lot of the work using a 20-foot extension ladder that was not very stable, but he painted the entire outside of the building off this ladder, but he was unable to finish the taller parts of the building. I went and rented a lift type device and took it to the church on a Saturday morning I remained at the church with him while he worked from the lift to paint the areas of the building which he could not reach before. Once he finished with the lift, the church, which before was looking weathered and worn, suddenly looked amazing. He had done an impressive job painting the building and everyone was so proud and appreciative of the work he had done. The church paid for the supplies he needed, and we gave him financial support, which he never asked for, to help cover some of his expenses that he incurred while being here. He would drive back and forth from Oklahoma City and stay at one of the local motels in Hillsboro with his two dogs which always traveled with him. He seemed to be happy while he was painting, which was his profession, and he just said he wanted to paint the church as it was a piece of Americana history. He was excited to be able to paint the church that Willie and Bobbie Nelson grew up in. One time while he was here, I was able to call Willie and put Jeff on the line to speak with him. Willie told him how much he appreciated what Jeff was doing for the church. Jeff was excited to talk to Willie and was a bit overwhelmed to have spoken with the real Willie Nelson.  After he completed the outside of the building, he proceeded to move inside and began painting on the inside. All the cracks that had developed over the years when the building shifted, Jeff repaired, and then he proceeded to paint the walls in the sanctuary of the church. The ceiling had developed water spots over the years. With scaffolding that I took to the church for him to use, he repaired all the ceiling tiles which we would never have been able to replace because of their age. He refastened the tiles that had begun to sag, repainted them and even hand painted the trim between each tile making the ceiling look brand new. He finished by painting the fellowship hall, both men’s and women’s restrooms and the kitchen area.Jeff continued to come back to Abbott on a regular basis and would always stop and touch up paint or any other project he thought needed to be done. As a church we are grateful to him and appreciate all that he has done to make the church look new. We could never thank him enough. He also spent time doing projects for a few of the members while he was here.I received a call from Jeff several months ago and he told me that he was in the hospital in Oklahoma City. He said he had more tubes and wires coming out of him and that he was really sick. During one of his calls I asked and he said they had diagnosed him with a perforated ulcer. He received blood transfusions while undergoing efforts to recover. The calls became fewer and fewer and the time between the calls was longer and longer. The last call from him was a couple of months ago and he was still in the hospital and said the tubes were still coming out of him. He told me that he had lost his van and his dogs due to him being in the hospital, which I know was disappointing for him because the dogs meant the world to him.I have tried to reach out to a couple of people on his Facebook page for any information about Jeff but have not received any responses. He has not logged into our Facebook live services in a long time.I think about Jeff Hornbeck quite frequently and I miss his random phone calls. He was strange in his own way, but I can only describe Jeff and his relationship with the Abbott Methodist Church as an Angel in disguise. The cost of paying someone to paint the church, and to do the work he did, would have been a struggle for the members of this small country church which formed 142 years ago in the small Texas town of Abbott.