How long would you wait in line? The other day I lasted a whole four minutes at my local post office, before abandoning the queue. At the front of the line was an old bloke, trying to pay a bill. He was fumbling with his glasses and looked like he was in slow motion. Behind him were more snails and bill-payers. I’m not the most patient man. And so when I read about someone who waited in a queue for years, I could hardly believe it.

Gwobata is now in heaven. Early in life he became crippled in both legs, and would drag himself around his Ethiopian village. One night he had a vivid dream where he saw someone with a book in his hand, who claimed that it contained the Word of Life. Such was the intensity of the dream, that in the morning, Gwobata dragged himself down to the dirt road that ran through the village, and asked every traveller whether they had the book with the Word of Life.

None of them did, and so when evening came, his relatives dragged him up the hill to bed. But when morning came, down he slid again to his post beside the road. Eventually, after many days, a missionary man arrived in his village with a book in his hand, who gladly explained its contents and message to Gwobata. And then reeled when he found that Gwobata had waited patiently for the book, beside the road, every day, for twenty years.