Lumber Yard & Good Samaritans

As others in our group worked on Miss Olga’s fence today, Fr. Rich and I went to the lumber yard to get all the lumber needed to rebuild the structure behind her house.  It was a lot of lumber – three 4x4 posts, two 15’ 2x4s, and sixteen 12’ 2x4s.

Lumber yard

We got the lumber, and immediately a problem became evident.  Father has only one rope in the truck, and it certainly didn’t seem sufficient to tie down the heavy load.  The lumber had to be put on the truck diagonally from the top of the cab down to the tailgate, which made it pretty easy for it to slide off.  The lumber yard guys tied it up with our rope and assured us that we would make it.

Approximately ¼ of a mile later, people started honking and yelling at us.  Four of our 2x4s had fallen off in the middle of a busy road.  We immediately pulled over and ran back (dodging traffic) to get the boards.  Now what?

Almost immediately a truck pulled up, and three young Honduran guys jumped out to help.  As one of the guys and I struggled to hold all the lumber from sliding off the truck, the other two guys grabbed some rope from their truck and tied the lumber down even more tightly (using some ingenious knots).  We thanked them greatly and tried to give them some money for helping us and giving us their rope, but they refused to take it and simply wished us luck and headed off.

We then drove about a mile, and another board worked its way out into the middle of a street.  Once again came the honking.  I jumped out, grabbed the board and stuck it back under the rope.

About 100 yards away was a hardware store.  So, we drove there slowly, and once again somebody immediately came out to help.  We tied the load down even more securely, and the gentleman helping us built a small net/parachute out of strong bags (the kind that probably help rocks or something of that sort in them), and he put it around the ends of the boards and tied its ends to the truck.  It was an awesome way to hold the timber from sliding backwards.

After that we were able to drive up the steep roads to Miss Olga’s without any additional mishaps.  Once there, we discovered that much of the fence was done, and that a good bit of welding had been done by a Honduran welder who volunteered much of his day to help us.  Yet another Good Samaritan.

Dona Olga

A local man stopped by to help

Elizabeth

Paul and Meghan

In retrospect, it was a wonderful day!  We had a few setbacks, but we really got to see the compassion and generosity of the Honduran people.  I can’t help but wonder if people would have pulled over to help us if we had lost our lumber on a busy road in Atlanta.  Or, would people pass by too busy to help?  I hope they would stop.  All I know is that I’m going to try harder to be more helpful to people in distress in the future.  I need to pay it forward, I think!

Matthew