Breakdown

This weekend we had the privilege of helping someone in need.  After unsuccessfully calling some friends to make some plans to visit on Saturday afternoon, Nate and I were headed to run an errand in a nearby town when along the way we passed a car on the side of the road with a retired couple standing alongside the car.  As we drove past I did the common 180 degree turn to have a longer assessment of what was happening and if more help was needed.  As I turned, I saw a tire leaning against the front fender of the car and no work was being done.

"Do you think we should turn around?" said Nate.

"I think so."

"That's what I was thinking too."

And with that Nate pulled around and drove back to the car on the side of the road.  As we pulled behind the car we saw they had New York plates and the wife had gone to sit back inside the car.  The husband was still out and we introduced ourselves to one another.

Tim and Lori were headed back from Minnesota where they were visiting their family and grandkids to home which was just across the river near Niagara Falls in New York.  The drive is actually shorter when you come through Canada instead of coming through the States.  They were on the interstate when they started to smell something wasn't right with the car.  It smelled like something burning.  So Tim pulled off at the next exit and got out and looked at everything but nothing was visibly wrong.  So he had just gotten back in the car to get back on the road when the front driver's side wheel fell off and rolled across the road...  The bolts had been sheered off and there was no way to reattach the wheel.

So when we heard the story we called back to the house and gave our location and had Nate's dad call a tow truck for the couple since they didn't know who to call in the area they were in, and we waited in our cars (it's getting pretty cold these days!)  Once the tow truck arrived we suggested a Canadian Tire store that wasn't far away and in the same shopping plaza we were also headed to.  Since everything was taken care of for the moment we said we would go do the stores we had planned on and then check on them back at Canadian Tire.

Shopping completed we headed over to the shop as the tow truck was delivering the car into the shop bay.  They got the news that the store wouldn't be able to get all the parts they needed to get them on the road again until the next morning.  Tim called a neighbor who agreed to drive up and pick them up since they only were an hour and a half from home.  So we stayed with them and visited at a diner across the street until the neighbor was well on his way and then we dropped them back off at the Canadian Tire and headed home ourselves.

It was 4 hours our lives overlapped with Tim and Lori, and we got to know about their family and their life story.  We heard the story of how they met through traveling back from the same speech competition in Catholic school and went to mass together that night before heading home.  They have now been together for 51 years and married 44 years.  Tim retired 4 weeks ago.  We got to know the story of their son who was a chemical engineer who was now going to school to be a deacon in the Catholic Church.  We were all grateful that Tim and Lori's lives where spared this Saturday.  We were grateful they were on the side of the road when the tire fell off and not traveling at high speeds on the highway.  We were grateful that while Nate and I were not able to get together with old friends that afternoon, God arranged it so were able to make some new one's instead.