Today’s world is full of too many twisted and dark people to afford the luxury of helping a stranded stranger on the side of the road. To protect our families from the shadows of evil, we barricade ourselves behind tightly closed windows and triple lock our doors. We shield our ears from unwanted noises by plugging into an I-pod or turning up the volume on our televisions. We no longer hear, listen, trust or even tolerate anything that seems to threaten our personal space.

And most of the time, unfortunately, this is the way things need to be. The world has drastically changed and trusting even your neighbor seems foolish. Who knows where the next Jeffrey Dahmer may live?

So when my husband agreed to give a stranger a ride to Wal-Mart, I knew I should’ve protested, but something told me not to. We were coming home from our son’s karate class and once we got into our town, we noticed an older, neatly dressed gentleman, seemingly waiting to cross the road. We stopped to let him cross, but he shook his head and waved us off. We shrugged it off and thought nothing of it. My husband then decided he needed a few snacks, so we pulled into the next parking lot. My son and I waited in the car while my husband went into the convenience store. After he returned, and as we were about to pull away, we heard a knock on the car window. We were surprised to see the older gentleman standing there. My husband partly rolled down his window and said hello.

"Wal-mart?" was all the man said.

My husband rolled the window all the way down and tried to talk to him, "you need a ride to Wal-Mart?"

The man shrugged and shook his head, "am Russian. Wal-mart?"

"Do you speak English?"

He shook his head and looked apologetic. He spoke a few more sentences in what I believe might have been Russian (I’ve never heard it before, except in movies, but the accent definitely sounded Russian-ish). "Wal-mart." he said yet again.

My husband turned to me, "he doesn’t speak English and I guess he needs to get to Wal-Mart. Wanna take him?"

I was hesitant, but didn’t get any weird vibes from him, so I agreed.

My husband nodded and gestured to the back seat. The man got in quickly and thanked us by saying, "God Bless! God Bless!"

From our town of Mechanic Falls, to Wal-Mart, the drive is about ten miles. It would’ve taken this man several hours to walk there. I was appalled at the thought of someone dropping an elderly man off in the middle of a town, at night, with him not knowing a lick of English and then cutting him loose to find his own way.

When we got to Wal-Mart, he said, "Seven Day Adventist Church."

We figured this was is original destination and because it wasn’t far from Wal-Mart, we took him there and dropped him off at the door of the church. He tried to invite us in by gesturing for us to join him, but we declined. He thanked us again with, "God Bless! God Bless!" With a wave we watched as he went inside the church.

On the way home, I asked my husband, "who does that? Drops someone off in the middle of nowhere and expects them to get by on the kindness of strangers?"

He shrugged, "I don’t know. But I guess it was good we were there."

I guess it was.