Rodger Prater, Youth Pastor at Abba’s House of Worship Center in Oklahoma, is being hailed a hero today after finding an abandoned one-month-old baby on the side of the road.

Prater was driving on a busy interstate with a van full of church youth group members after a fun-filled day at an amusement park when he made the startling discovery with his wife, Nancy.

“He was just a little fella,” Rodger Prater, 46, told PEOPLE. “Thank God we got there in time.”

“I couldn’t fathom it at first,” he says. “Then the little boy’s feet moved. I told my wife under my breath, ‘I think I see a baby.’ She said, ‘What?’”

The infant was sitting inside a carrier only 10-feet away from the white line on the shoulder of the road. As Prater walked up to the baby, he began to panic as he didn’t see any movement.

“His eyes were shut,” he says. “I was freaking out. I thought, ‘Don’t let there be anything wrong with him.’”

As soon as Prater approached, the baby woke up and started crying. They called the police, and changed the child’s diaper as they waited for help to arrive. A Good Samaritan driving along the highway stopped to provide them with a clean diaper.

The baby was also found with $5,500 in cash, a birth certificate and a social security card. The mother was quickly found that day, however the baby remains in custody of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.

Despite it being almost 90 degrees, the baby showed no signs of being overheated or sunburnt. Police estimated he had only been sitting for a half hour.

Prater, though being called a hero, is downplaying the incident.

“All I know is that God intervened,” he says. “One day when the baby is old enough to understand, he can call me and I will tell him that it was no fluke that we found him. We found him for a reason. I will tell him that God has a plan for his life.”