“I stopped working for a while because I was scared of all the COVID. But he did go to work. Maybe it was there that he got sick. Then I got it, too.

“I didn’t have any problems. So I just took care of him. He went to the hospital emergency room two times. He had a high fever for 14 days. That was the worst part. After that he was fine, but he felt so tired. So he stayed home for a few months. The doctor said it would be better for him.

“Now he’s back to work. I’m back at work. We hope everything is going to be all right.

“Our daughter, Guadalupe, is a nurse in the COVID unit at Houston Methodist Baytown Hospital. It’s now an IMCU/COVID unit due to the acuity of the patients in this current surge.

“She finished school, and has been working there a few months. At first, it was so hard to see her leave home and go to work there. She’s working with COVID patients, so we’ve been worried about her a lot.

“But she already had the vaccine. She has lots of protection with masks and shields and clothes. They change and change all day. So I think she’s fine. She looks happy. She prays every day about the people who are sick, and about us because she worries about us, too.

“Sometimes I think she’s going to be so sad when she’s back at home. But no. She says, ‘Mom, I’m so happy to be helping people.’ I’m so proud of her. And I pray for her.”

— Fanny Zepeda

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• Love takes them from Mexico to U.S.

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“We met online on a Christian chat. At the time, I had a dog that I loved that was sick. I was looking for somebody to pray for my puppy. He said, ‘I’ll pray with you.’ After that, we chatted online for about two months. Then we started talking on the phone. We never asked each other our age or anything. We fell in love.”

“I hadn’t asked her to marry me yet. But she had kind of an abusive thing going on in her home. I felt like I needed to get her out of harm’s way. So I flew to Georgia to get her. I took a wedding ring with me. On the way, I asked her, ‘By the way, how old are you?’ I was 60 at the time. She was 18. A few days after we got back to Texas, we got married in a ditch in front of Ellington Air Force Base while an air show was going on. Fake bombs exploding in the background and everything. The next day we left on a seven-day honeymoon cruise to the Caribbean.

“I’ve been married several times before, and I have six kids. Three or four of them went kind of crazy when I told them about us. They couldn’t accept Dad marrying an 18-year-old girl. A lot of people think I’m her daddy and stuff like that because we’re 42 years apart. But the age thing really doesn’t make any difference to us. Life’s life, you know? You’ve just got to grab it and live it your own way. 

“We’ve been married for over 11 years. We get along great. We don’t fuss. We don’t fight. We pray together. We eat together. We play together. It’s just one of those marriages made in heaven. But we’re here on earth. So it’s kind of like heaven on earth.”

— Suzie and Carl Beam

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“One day I told my wife, ‘I don’t feel well. I’m going to lie down and take a nap.’ She was going to school at the time. When she came back from class, she couldn’t wake me up. She told my son to call 911. Next thing they knew, I was in an ambulance heading to Hermann Hospital in Houston.

“I had suffered a brain aneurysm. They had to remove a portion of my skull and do surgery. Afterwards, they put me in a medically induced coma. I was out of it for seven months.

“When I came to and they brought me home to recover, they had me in a hospital bed by a window so I could see out. Eventually, I went from a wheelchair to a walker to crutches to a cane. I was doing physical therapy at a rehab place in Baytown that we just loved. They were so good to me. Every day, they had me do a little bit more.

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“My husband had a very persistent attitude. He never wanted to give up. He always said, ‘A winner never quits and a quitter never wins.’

“We stood by that. There were days when we were tired and didn’t know how we were going to make it. But we took one step at a time and one day at a time, with lots of prayer.

“He was a man of prayer and a man of faith. I think that’s what really kept us going. When we were tired and weary he would say, ‘It’s the last lap. You have to get up. You have to keep going. You have to push yourself through every circumstance if you want to win the race.’

“Now that he’s gone, there are times when I feel like this is too much to handle. But I know there’s a vision and a mission to where we’re heading. And I think that’s what keeps us going here.”

— Samantha Payton

Following the death of her husband, Oscar, to a heart attack this year, Samantha has continued to run Payton’s Blend coffee shop in Baytown. She and her son, Oscar Jr., honor her husband’s goal of helping others in the community.

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“At a time when there is so much brokenness and disarray all around us, people are looking for something, for hope. We see it in those who stop by and want that prayer.

“The first day, before we had even finished setting up, we had several cars of people saying, ‘Will you pray with me? I’m going through something.’

“We’re not trying to recruit people for our church or to accept money. We’re simply here to pray with people and to touch hearts. We’re out here to be a light in the community.”

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“I’ve got a tattoo of Jesus on my neck because, man, I struggled a lot in life. I had moments where I was really down and out. I was in the mud. I was in a hole and I didn’t think I would come up. But I just kept praying and praying and finally, you know, good things started happening. I just had to wait. I had to be patient.”

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