Sometimes on Facebook you'll see one of these:

Lucky for you, this is just a replica for my article, so if you keep scrolling you in fact will not express your love for the rather muscular and large-eared santans. (Sidenote: the ones with misspellings like this one are my favorite. I can't be expected to feel bad for loving santans when I have no idea what santans are right?)

Along these lines but to a much greater extreme comes the situation I found myself in just last week.

As a precursor, unlike with most stories, this one is probably best if you know the ending first. My girlfriend Megan was behind all of this. There was no spam activity. She downloaded the Sprinkle of Jesus app on my phone and hid it on a third home-screen page (I only use two for my phone). She also turned on every possible notification in the hopes that this would all go on longer and lead to many notifications telling me I had a completely bewildering Sprinkle of Jesus on my phone. Now, to the unfolding of my idiocy...

I woke up and checked my phone to see that I had a notification from "A Sprinkle of Jesus."

My immediate thought when I saw the notification was "How on earth did this happen?" I knew I didn't have any apps on my phone that were connected to this app at all. But then I thought it could have been Megan, who maybe downloaded the app as a joke on my phone. I looked through all my apps on "both" of my home screen pages. Nothing. So at this point, I'm thinking that some Christian phone app managed to break through Apple's protection and get around to people's phones all over the country. I was less worried about my phone at this point and more impressed by the app's ability to break through Apple's security walls.

I deleted the notification and decided to forget about it. The next day, however, I received another push notification from them. I figured I better call the app and get them to stop sending me the notifications and remove me from their list. I really thought that was the best thing I could do for myself. I assumed I was in a situation similar to receiving repeated unwanted telemarketer calls. I was just trying to help myself out.

So I clicked on the notification and it took me straight into the app. Again, I was shocked by the intricacy of the security breaching that this app had pulled off. Like, this was some impressive sneaky stuff right here. I found the "contact us" part and called the organization. A man, with a heavy enough Latino accent that I could hardly understand him, answered and asked me how he could help me.

I wholeheartedly believed by this time that I was simply the target of some spam mission. So, naturally, I told the man the situation. I didn't have the app; I was receiving push notifications; I wanted it to stop and I wanted off the list.

He proceeded to tell me that I must have the app then. I told him no, I did not. This is where things picked up.

I reiterated my wishes, and his response was priceless. He told me, "You know what. You don't have the app right? God must have a message for you. God is trying to reach you."

There I sat, in my car, on the phone, thinking that this stinkin' telemarketer of sorts was trying to convince me that his company's spam was rather a message from God. I was not about to have it, but I figured that going along with the guy would be my best route to achieving my goal. So I told him he might be right, and that God tries to reach out to me every day. But I said that I know how things work, and that this man's organization was responsible for the notifications that I simply wanted to come to an end. He then accused me of not wanting any part of God's word.

I didn't want to get too deep into going along with this guy, but I thought I better throw in a quick defense to how I consume plenty of God's word without this app. I told him about growing up a Christian in a Christian household and how I have a Bible both in my backpack and in my closet. All truths. I figured I could get out of this without lying about anything. And, as if he wanted to test me, he asked me to say a prayer for him.

This just floored me. A pseudo-telemarketer middle-aged Latino man wanted to convince me to keep getting spammed by proving to me that I need God's word. I couldn't believe it! I was caught too off-guard to say anything, a situation I'm not too familiar with, so I weaseled my way out of it by telling him I didn't need to prove myself to him. I was starting to get irritated, so I figured I'd pull out my dagger. Now was where this:

came back into play. I said to the guy, "You know those Facebook posts that tell you to like for Jesus and scroll for Satan? That's what this is! You're telling me that if I don't want to keep getting stuff from your app, I want to defy Jesus!"

I made the guy laugh super hard, so I thought things were headed down a better track for me. Oh no. As he was recovering from his laughter, he said "Man I always hit like just in case! You gotta hit like just in case bro. You gotta!"

I was through with the games and wasn't about to admit defeat to a spammer, so I responded by saying, "Alright dude I mean no disrespect but everyone is different. I have never felt compelled to hit like on a post like that and I don't feel compelled to keep getting these notifications, so please just remove me from your list."

I thought I did a stand-up job of going along with this guy, and lo and behold he finally helped me out. He responded in a tone that was a clear admittance of his little game coming to an end, and he told me "OK it's not about that. It's just your phone. You have to have the app man. If you can't find it, go into settings. You can find it there."

So I told him thank you and that I'd be deleting the app, but I'm still under the assumption it was all a super successful spam attack at this point. Before I could hang up, though, the guy asked me if I'd pray for him. I said sure and asked if he'd pray for me too. But he meant right then, right there. So he said he'd go first. As best as I can remember, this was his prayer:

Dear God in the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, thank you for everything you have given us. Thank you for sending Jesus Christ to die for our sins. Thank you for the conversation I have had with this young man today. And please, please do not let him delete this app. God I'm begging you to show this young man the light so that he does not delete the app. Please God, all I ask --"

I hung up. I figured I had won the war with the spamming organization, so I had no reason to sit through that. During this conversation, I was in my car waiting on Megan to come down because I was picking her up. When she got in the car, I told her I had an interesting phone call with the Sprinkle of Jesus people.

She seemed to react with a little more interest than I expected. After I told her the story, she burst out laughing, also a little more than I expected. Then she told me everything, and she said she never expected it to reach such high levels. We then both realized we felt bad for the representative I talked to, but honestly that guy probably just has a good story now.

Moral of the story: Megan is a genius and in the end both a middle-aged Latino man and I got played.