Communities of faith rally for Fair Grove man

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — On Saturday, OzarksFirst spoke with the Roy family who emphasized their faith and said their son Cooper had truly embraced that life. On Sunday, that community of faith gathered to uplift Cooper and his family.

A sea of people gathered outside 20-year-old Cooper Roy’s window at Mercy Hospital Sunday afternoon to pray with one another just before Cooper returned to the operating room for another set of surgeries.

Roy was hospitalized in critical condition after he was hit head-on by a driver going the wrong way on Highway 65 on Sept. 24.

“This community has rallied around the story of this young man. It’s a story that has touched individual lives,” Dr. Wesley Vance said. “You had people that weren’t even faith people that gathered here to say, I’ve been touched by Cooper Roy and his testimony about Jesus.”

Cooper was an intern at Crossway Baptist Church with Vance, who led the group in prayer Sunday afternoon.

“Cooper was one that everywhere he went, he wanted to build into other people. Whether it was working out in the gym, whether it was just meeting people in the community.” Vance said. “He had a group of young boys that he was mentoring, being a leader and he was teaching them how to be strong.”

Vance said cooper wasn’t a perfect teenager but found a way to make a change.

“Cooper was a rebellious kid. He made a lot of dumb decisions, and he doesn’t hold his guilt over him because he met Jesus,” Vance said. “Even as we met with him today, he’s got a joy and a peace in his life that we pray he would want everyone to know about.”

Dylan George is a friend of the Roy brothers. He said that his relationship with Cooper was one he had never experienced.

“He was a guide to me and like an older brother that I never had,” George said.

When George noticed the amount of people around him Sunday afternoon, he was grateful to see how many people cared about Cooper and the Roy’s.

“It feels great that other people have had impact from him that I had. It feels good that it wasn’t just me.”

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