The road to Jericho is littered with people in need of help.

You remember the Savior's parable of the man on that road who was set upon by thieves, and was left for dead.  There were bad guys back in those days, too.  There were also those who were uncaring, and those who were too busy to get involved.  The priest and the Levite passed the unfortunate man by, but the Samaritan stopped and bound up the man's wounds.  "Samaritan" back in those days was a derisive word, but because of Jesus' parable it has since evolved to become synonymous with goodness, kindness, and compassion.  The Samaritan saved the man's life.  The word "good" has thus forever become affixed to the word "Samaritan."

There are good Samaritans in our day, too.  My son, Danny, is one of them.

The road between Union and North Powder became the road to Jericho for Danny on the first week home from his mission.  He had gotten a job replacing a fence for his brother.  Some sections of the fence were particularly difficult to rebuild because thickets of trees had grown up through the wires.  The wires were embedded in the trees, and Danny didn't have the tools that day which would be necessary to do the job.  His motivation waned, he got discouraged, and decided to go home.

He felt guilty about quitting early, but after what subsequently happened, he remembered how he and his companions had viewed similar discouraging days on his mission.  Danny would wake up excited about a day full of promising teaching appointments, and then see every one of them fall through.  Operating on plans B and C would quickly become exhausting and discouraging, but there was nothing to be done but to keep slogging along.  Finally about 8:30 at night the missionaries would run into someone who was in desperate need of being ministered to.  The missionaries would return to their apartment feeling on cloud 9, realizing that the whole day had been orchestrated to put them in that person's path.  On days when things stated going wrong, it became a running joke between Danny and his companions as they wondered aloud about who they were being guided to.

On this day, as Danny returned home and rounded a corner, a glint of light down off an embankment caught his eye.  He instantly felt the need to investigate, and turned his car around.  What he had seen was light glinting off the very top of the windshield of a motorcycle.  The motorcycle was tangled in a barbed wire fence.  He called out, and got a muffled cry for help.  He slid down the embankment, and found a man pinned face down beneath the bike.  The man didn't know how long he had been there, but had been painfully aware of the few cars which passed without stopping.

When Danny tried to move either the man or the motorcycle, the man screamed in pain.   While holding the weight of the motorcycle off the man, Danny reached into his hip pocket for the pliers that were always there, and clipped the wires of the fence.  The bruised, but not-badly-injured man was then able to stand up.

The question then became one of how to get the heavy bike back up on the road.  It was too much for the two of them.  The priest and the Levite passed by in the persons of Danny's bishop and then his uncle.  Next were two Jehovah's Witnesses.  They stopped.  Between the four of them, they were able to get the bike back up on the road, and sent the bruised traveler on his way.

Last week a street in Hermiston became Danny's latest road to Jericho.  He and his wife and children were five minutes away from arriving on time to the baptism of his niece, the daughter of his brother, best friend, and business partner.  They passed an old man who was pushing his motorized scooter, and pulling his oxygen tank.  Danny said, "Dang it, I've got to help that old man," and pulled over to the side of the road.  The old man explained that the battery of his scooter had lost its charge, and that he was pushing it home.  Danny sent his family on to the baptism, and took over the old man's heavy work while dressed in his suit.  The not-so-short distance to the man's home required the same amount of time as the entire baptismal program.  Danny cheerfully got the old man comfortably settled at home, plugged the battery in to be charged, and called for his wife to come retrieve him.

This really wasn't a sacrifice on Danny's part.  These things give him great pleasure.  The fact of the matter is that Danny collects old people and looks for ways to help.  He gravitates to them because they're usually in need, and they end up blessing his life with their wisdom and experience.

For instance, there was the old cowboy in Arizona whom he visited regularly, and to whom he read his favorite stories.  The old cowboy wanted to give Danny his guns.  Danny only took one.

There was the old man in Oregon that Danny befriended.  The old man shared the experience he had when applying for a job.  The man who interviewed him asked what he could do.  He replied that he could either be the company's best janitor or its best manager.  He was hired to be a janitor.  He was such a good janitor that two weeks later he was told that he was the company's new manager.  He served in that capacity for the rest of his life.  Danny learned from that man's experience, and tries to imitate it.

Danny and his wife befriended an older woman this year.  He currently spends his free time renovating her basement to make a nice apartment for her to live in.  Which will be more blessed for these current efforts, the woman or Danny?

There is an old couple in Danny's ward whose lawn he mows each week.  Never mind that Danny runs a busy, and often stressful, pivot business.  He has mowed the lawn for two years.  The two-hour job takes him a minimum of three and a half hours because the couple is so excited to have him there.  They keep him there visiting for as long as they can.  It's the highlight of their week.  The man calls every Friday to find out at what time Danny will arrive the next day.

Shortly after Danny started mowing the lawn he decided that he needed to report to the man how many bags of clippings he removed from the yard that week.  The man looks forward with great anticipation to this report, and carefully marks it on his calendar.  The amount of clippings is the major topic of conversation between him and Danny, and with anyone else who comes to visit.  The couple insists on paying Danny, so he leaves each week with twenty dollars, usually in quarters.

Carving out the time to do the job can be very stressful for Danny, but he admits that being on a lawnmower or on a tractor is one of his best stress relievers.  Sometimes when he's feeling overwhelmed and behind with his work, and he's stopping everything to go mow a lawn, he tells his heavenly Father that he needs blessings for this.  He hesitates to tell Him where he needs the blessings because God knows better than he does, but he asks the Lord to bless him in his work.  So far he's survived both busy springs.

This past spring he got a call about a new pivot that wasn't auto reversing.  When the pivot reached a barricade, it was supposed to automatically reverse.  When Danny went to investigate, he was horrified to find that the pivot had spun its tires against a barricade for twenty minutes before shutting itself off.  The barricade was leaning at a rakish angle, and was all that was keeping the pivot from running into a transmission tower that held the transmission lines coming from The Dalles dam.  Had it run into the transmission tower, it probably wouldn't have hurt the tower, but it would have totaled the fifty-thousand-dollar pivot.  As he stood there a thought came out of nowhere which said, "There's your blessing."

As Danny finished fixing the pivot, he got a call from a new client nearby.  Danny had just finished installing $200,000-worth of pivots for the client with the understanding that there would be that much more additional work to be done the following year.  On its first trip around the field, one of the new pivots had hit the pump house.  When he got there he found that the last wheel of the pivot had walked in through the door of the pump house and spun out.  The pivot should have climbed over the pump house which would have tipped the span over, which would have pulled all seven of the other spans down.  Danny instantly knew that was another direct blessing for his service to the old couple.

He fixed the pivot the next day by shortening the span by twenty feet and adding a twenty-foot overhang to the end.  The owner came out after he had finished, and looked embarrassed for Danny.  Danny told him, "Stan, if I'm going to sell you any more pivots, then you need to be a little more careful where you put your pump houses."  Stan ordered three more pivots.

There is lots of litter on the road to Jericho.  When we stop to pick it up, it's hard to say whose life is most blessed.