Outsiders

Eight youth and 4 adults from our community spent last week in Wyoming. These 12 people spent a week with people from Lander Wyoming, from the Wind River Reservation, from Oregon, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, and Illinois. In all there were 76 “outsiders” who had come to work on houses, and work with children for the week.

We left early on Saturday morning July 3. We stopped for lunch in Amarillo before continuing our journey, trying to make it to Longmont, CO before it was too dark. I drove our bus to Amarillo and I knew that we needed to fill up with gas before we continued on our journey. My plan was to drive to a gas station after lunch, fill up, and then let one of the other adult drivers get us further down the road. That was my plan…

After lunch we took a few photos, and I forgot what I had planned to do. So, I handed the keys to one of the other adults and found a place on the bus. I was lost in conversation when I remembered we needed gas, that was about the same time the driver asked, “Um, did we need to fill up before we left Amarillo?” I got a sick feeling in my stomach, I could just see us running out of gas between Amarillo and Channing, with no cell phone reception and no one coming by for hours. I do not know how our driver did it, but somehow she got us the 30 miles to Channing. We drove through Channing, I could have sworn that they had an Allsup’s or some type of convenience store with a gas station. We reached the edge of town and turned, somehow we had missed the gas station. On our second pass we found it. We pulled in and I went inside to ask them to turn the pump on so we could fill up. Before I could ask my question they told me they were out of gas and wouldn’t get any more until Monday. They thought the next town might still have some gas, but they weren’t sure.

The owner returned and siphoned some gas out of his truck. A pastor came by and brought a few more gallons to help us get to Dalhart (because the gas station in Hartley was closed for the weekend). The pastor keeps a few gallons handy, apparently we are not the first vehicle to run out of gas in Channing when the gas station is out of gas.

These two men went out of their way to help our group of “outsiders” in their community, people they had never met before, and more than likely would never come in contact with again. Their generosity, and their hospitality were overwhelming as we worried about getting not only to our destination for the evening, but also our final destination.

This experience left me wondering, Do those in our community offer hospitality to those who are only passing through? Are we generous to those who are only passing through? Sometimes it helps us to be “outsiders” in other places, so we can be more aware of how we treat the “outsiders” we come in contact with.