Watty Watson - Operations Pastor

There Are Still Good People

Savannah, my daughter and I took a hunting trip up to the Panhandle of Texas. The trip was great and getting to spend time with my daughter was priceless. We talked about everything - even the birds and the bees. I figured I should talk to her about all that stuff before her friends do. I have taken each of my kids on an adventure like this and it has been awesome!

Let me tell you the story:

The last morning of our hunt we left Pampa at about 4:30 a.m. to light snow showers. By the time we got to the hunting blind, it was 5:30 a.m. and the snow was starting to stick on everything. It was still too dark to hunt so Savannah and I cuddled up for warmth and we dozed off for about 30 minutes. When we woke up, about 5 inches of snow was on the ground! We had a nice hunt and then we had to walk about a quarter of a mile in the cold.

When we reached the truck and started it I noticed the steering wheel would barely turn. After a bit, I was finally able to turn the wheel but I was scared because I also discovered that the defroster was not working! So I started driving very slowly because I could not see anything. Once I got on to the main road to town, my temperature gauge starting acting up, hitting the red line and then backing off the red line the five miles to town. I looked at my daughter and said, “pray”. A trip to town that should have taken five minutes turned into about a 40 minute trip. Once we got to the town of Fort Elliot (pop. 100) we pulled up to the only store and gas station in town. I did not know what to do but ask for help. Only two guys were there and one the guys said he could help but it would be about two hours! Four hours later he comes back with a part to fix my Dodge. However, when he went to the parts store in the big town of Wheeler (pop. 500) he could not believe the part was available! We left the store and went to his shop (which was actually just a barn) and he fixed my truck. I then asked how much and he just showed me the receipt for the part and would not take any money. I tried to give him an extra hundred but he just refused to take my money. “Wow!” my 11-year-old daughter said.

Now we had to go back and get our deer. The store manager refused to let us go back out in our 2-wheel drive truck. He told his wife to cover the register and took us in his big 4-wheel drive truck. There was no way we would have made it through the snow drifts four and five feet high in my truck. But in his truck we ran right through them! When we finally got back to the store I pulled out my wallet to pay him and he wouldn’t take a dime. My daughter was again shocked. We finally got everything together to get back on the road and we talked about how there was still good people and how God provided for us.