WATCH: Freed pastor Andrew Brunson prays with President Trump in the Oval Office

Here’s something you don’t see every day.

The New York Times reports: 

President Trump welcomed home on Saturday an American pastor freed by Turkey and said the release would improve relations with Ankara, but he denied any connection to the dispute between Turkey and Saudi Arabia over the missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

With television cameras on hand to record the event, Mr. Trump invited the pastor, Andrew Brunson, to the Oval Office roughly an hour after he had landed back in the United States. In an emotional moment, Mr. Brunson asked if he could pray for Mr. Trump, then knelt next to him and asked God to give the president “supernatural wisdom.”

Mr. Brunson’s sudden release after two years in detention came as the Turkish government was seeking help from Mr. Trump in its confrontation with Saudi Arabia over the disappearance and apparent murder of Mr. Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post and critic of the royal family. Mr. Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul but never emerged, and Turkish officials said he was killed and dismembered with a bone saw.

Turkey is looking for the United States to back it up in forcing Saudi Arabia to account for Mr. Khashoggi’s fate, but Mr. Trump insisted on Saturday that Mr. Brunson’s release was not related. “The timing is a strict coincidence,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “It really is.”

Read more. The video of the encounter is below.