A man who has friends must himself be friendly, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Proverbs 18:24, NKJV

His name was Mark Moudy, and he was without a doubt one of the friendliest men I have ever known. He was a first cousin to my wife, and one of the first times I met him was at our wedding reception. When we left for our honeymoon, someone had put a bunch of mixed nuts into my bride's luggage. As it turned out, of course, it was Mark. He was a practical joker from the time he had been a small boy, and he later revealed that he had actually thought about adding a piece of wedding cake and a cup of punch to go along with the nuts. In retrospect, he was wise to stop with the nuts.

Before we moved to Happy, I would see Mark from time to time at family gatherings. He was a big man who I'm sure could have been intimidating if he had desired, but Mark was not at all interested in intimidating people - he just seemed to want to be friends and make everyone around him laugh.

And he was good at making people laugh. Once, when he was in high school, he thought it would be funny to scare a teacher by hiding in a locker in the classroom. His plan was to jump out and say, "present" when she called his name for role, but the teacher was way ahead of him. Knowing where he was, she proceeded to call role and, if my memory of Mark's telling of this tale serves me right, latched the door to the locker prior to calling his name. Knowing he was caught, Mark just remained in the locker, answering, "present" from within his recent confinement. 

I suppose everyone has a "Mark" anecdote that they enjoy telling and retelling. Many involved the fact that he had only four fingers on one hand (from an unfortunate farm accident) and involved his interactions with small children who just couldn't resist the delicious horror of going up and viewing his injury from close range. One little fellow, Gage Waldo (aged four at the time) was so concerned for this big bear of a man who treated him so kindly, would often pray at home for Mark to grow back that missing finger. Just about every week, Gage would come up to Mark after the worship service to view Mark's hand just to see if God had miraculously healed that finger. One of these times, Mark impulsively held up his good hand and cheerfully wiggled all five fingers. He realized too late what he had done for he had to interrupt Gage's jubilant celebration with a sad shake of his head and a holding up of his bad hand to show him that it was still missing that finger.

At other times, Mark would warn the little guys who had just glimpsed his four-fingered hand of the dangers of picking their noses.

He sold Herba-Life for a while and would proudly wear a button that read, "Ask me how I lost 60 pounds". He would go to various Herba-Life conventions and tell everyone he was from Happy, Texas. When the inevitable question came as to where in this world Happy was, Mark would tell them it was located about half-way between Arney and Wayside. That was a big help since both were located well off of any highway, and had populations of about five and twenty people, respectively. It would have been way too easy to tell them it was about 35 miles south of a city everyone had heard of, namely, Amarillo, Texas.

More than anything, Mark loved people. He was fiercely devoted to his family and, as some of his children would say, maybe a bit overly protective. While you know this had to be a burden in the eyes of his kids when they were still at home, all came to realize that his protective nature was just an extension of his great love for them. He was equally protective of the church, where he spent over twenty years of his life serving as one of our elders. When healthy, Mark was at the church building every time the doors were open, be it Sunday morning, Sunday night, or at Wednesday night prayer meeting. He led singing, taught in the Bible classes, and would even fill in at preaching if needed. Whenever Mark got up to speak, he nearly always had a smile on his face, and got you to laughing if he could, for he wanted everyone to feel comfortable. Then he would bring the Good News to them, unashamedly and without reservation.

A few years ago, Mark was diagnosed with cancer. I'm sure he must have had his private moments of despair when alone or with family, but in public you would have never known he was even sick. He hesitated to tell people too much about the things he was going through and the pain he was experiencing, because he was simply not the kind of man who let on about his difficulties. Up until just a few weeks before he passed, he was at the worship if his health would permit it. It took him a lot to get into that building, and a lot of discomfort to sit in those uncomfortable pews while he was there, but he didn't let on. He didn't like people to focus on his ailment, but he was still most appreciative for their concern. 

He spent his last few weeks, mostly in his chair or bed, receiving family and friends and trying to make them feel at home and appreciated for their kindness in coming to visit him. He was not a perfect man (the only perfect One who ever lived was crucified) but he was about as close to perfect in the friend category as a man could possibly be. As the Bible instructed, he loved people deeply from the heart, and you felt that love just about every time you were in his presence. 

He has gone on to his reward now, and he has a left a giant hole in this world that will be hard to fill. We can all try, however, to do our part. It will begin with the instruction we read at the beginning of this article: We can prove ourselves to be friendly, and we can stick closer than a brother when we see others who are experiencing things that they really don't need to handle on their own. We will all miss Mark, those of us who knew him, but just the memory of his mischievous smile and obvious love for life will always have the ability to bring a smile to our own faces as we now must go through the rest of our lives without the companionship of this man who was such a dear friend to so many. He truly is a man who will be greatly missed, but never forgotten, and I think we are all better people for having known our friend, Mark Moudy,