This morning trouble, by what he says was random chance, came looking for him when two boys chose his house to rob.

The 67-year-old retired excavator operator, who requested to not be photographed, walked away from the ordeal with minor scratches to his hand and a bullet meant for him striking a front porch column.

“By the grace of God I didn't get shot,” Ferguson said on his front porch, near where the bullet struck the column.

Ferguson, who last year went off to Bible college in Colorado to become a teacher but returned so his daughter could finish school in Roanoke Rapids, was rousted from his sleep around 4:30 this morning.

He had his pistol with him when he went to answer the knock but laid it on the table, seeing it was a teen on a bicycle who claimed he crashed his bike into Ferguson's car.

The story didn't add up and Ferguson told the boy there was no need for him to be in the yard at that hour.

Still, he went out to look and that's when another boy came from the left corner of the house “with a pistol stuck in my face. I didn't even think. The first thing I did was grab it.”

During that struggle Ferguson got scratches on his hand and began his attempt to get back inside to retrieve his pistol. “One of them was trying to keep me from getting there. At the moment I thought he would have to kill me to get in my house.”

As he retrieved his pistol that's when the shot was fired which struck the column. “If he hadn't hit the pole, he would have shot me.”

Once he retrieved his pistol he fired two shots into a ditch across the street as a way to wake his neighbor, who he had been yelling and screaming for to call the police.

He held one of the boys, who was hiding behind one of the cars in the driveway, at bay with the pistol trained on him as the other was beating on and breaking two windows in an attempt, Ferguson believes, to distract him.

It was unclear which boy was Michael Jaquan Davis, a 17-year-old currently in custody, or which one was the one who fled the area and remains at large.

Ferguson said he told the boy he had the pistol trained on he wasn't going to kill him.”I had all the rights,” he said, but thought better of the repercussions that could come from killing a teen.

After 15 minutes, the boy Ferguson had the gun on sped off on his bicycle.

What he learned afterward was the boys had rifled through both cars parked in the driveway but found nothing.

He can't explain why the boys chose his house this morning. “They just rode by. It was my house. They randomly picked my house. I have no qualms with anyone.”

Ferguson attributes surviving the ordeal to keeping in shape. “I'm in great physical shape. I work all the time.”

Ferguson says he always goes to the door with his pistol at night. “I will carry it with me (outside) from here forward.”

Through this morning's ordeal, in which Davis was arrested and jailed, he still looks forward to returning to Bible college to continue his studies. “God said my word is truth.”