“Living Water”

For the past couple of years my wife and I have traveled out to Sheridan, Wyoming, for the Leather Crafters & Saddlers Tradeshow, and then spent some time visiting places of interest in Wyoming and Montana. So far we’ve been to Cody and Jackson Hole, walked out among the Pryor Mustangs north of Lovell, seen the wildlife, mud bogs, and Old Faithful at Yellowstone, visited Glacier National Park, gone horseback riding in the Bighorn Mountains, and even seen Hulk Hogan & family filming their reality show at a waterfall in Wyoming (we later saw that episode on TV - the only time we‘ve ever watched the show). It’s breathtakingly beautiful out there, and we really enjoy these trips.
Of course, you can’t head out west through South Dakota without stopping at Wall Drug along the way, and we generally find ourselves pulling in around noon or so to have a meal (there really isn’t anyplace else to stop anyway). Now, I’ve been to Wall Drug before these trips began, once when I was growing up and again six or seven years ago when we went out to the Black Hills (another beautiful area to visit), but I had never known the history of Wall Drug until two years ago when I read one of their pamphlets over lunch. Though Wall Drug is little more than an expensive tourist trap today, the story behind their success has become one of my favorites.
In 1929 Ted Hustead graduated from pharmacy school, and after two years of working for other druggists, he and his wife Dorothy were itching to find their own store. Ted’s father had just died, and he'd left Ted a $3,000 legacy that he could put towards their own business. As they searched together for the right opportunity they had two requirements; they wanted to live in a small town, and they wanted the town to have a Catholic church where they could attend daily mass. In Wall, South Dakota, where a drugstore was for sale, they found both. The priest, the doctor and the banker in town all insisted that Wall was a good place to live, with good people, and they encouraged the couple to come and set up shop.
While Ted and Dorothy were excited about the opportunity, their extended family was decidedly less so. A cousin warned them that the town was in the middle of nowhere, and that everyone there was broke. Even Ted’s father-in-law noted that Wall was “about as Godforsaken as you can get.” But together the family prayed about it, and in the end they all agreed that God seemed to leading Ted and Dorothy to Wall.
The first few years did little or nothing to confirm that decision. As Dorothy wondered whether they could use their talents to the fullest, Ted promised that they would give it five years, and if things didn’t pan out by then they would leave.
Those five years were nearing an end when the breakthrough came. Dorothy had gone upstairs for a nap while Ted minded the empty store, swatting at flies with a rolled up newspaper just to pass the time. An hour later Dorothy was back down. The conversation that followed her return appeared in 1982 in Guideposts Magazine.

Ted: "Too hot to sleep?"
Dorothy: "No, it wasn't the heat that kept me awake. It was all the cars going by on Route 16A. The jalopies just about shook the house to pieces."
Ted: "That's too bad,"
Dorothy: "No, because you know what, Ted? I think I finally saw how we can get all those travelers to come to our store."
Ted: "And how's that?"
Dorothy: "Well, now what is it that those travelers really want after driving across that hot prairie? They're thirsty. They want water. Ice cold water! Now we've got plenty of ice and water. Why don't we put up signs on the highway telling people to come here for free ice water? Listen, I even made up a few lines for the sign:
"Get a soda . . . Get a root beer . . . turn next corner . . . Just as near . . . To Highway 16 & 14. . . Free Ice Water. . . Wall Drug."

Over the next few days Ted and a high school boy put some signs together, modeling them after the old Burma Shave pattern of using staggered signs, placed a distance apart, to convey their message, and the next weekend they went out and put them up. By the time Ted got back to the store people were already lining up for their free ice water, and Dorothy was bustling around trying to keep up. A few bought sandwiches, ice cream and other items. The next summer they had to hire eight girls to help run the business, and the rest, as they say, is history. The place is famous today. I’ve actually seen signs for Wall Drug at the intersection of dirt roads in Africa, pointing towards Wall and informing travelers of how many miles they’ll have to travel to get there. Imagine that trip with your kids asking “Are we there yet?” It’s a fascinating story. Free ice water, and some creative advertising, saved a families business and launched an icon.
But I’ve been thinking (that’s the curl of smoke you see rising over SE Minnesota). Don’t we (the Church) have Living Water to offer? In John 4 Jesus, pausing by a well outside of Sychar in Samaria, asked a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. Now, if you understand the culture and religious practices of the day, this request is extraordinary on so many levels, but for our purposes I’m more interested in the conversation that follows. When the woman expressed surprise the he, a Jew, would ask her, a Samaritan and a woman, for a drink, Jesus replied that "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." A few verses later Jesus explained himself this way. "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
On a dusty, hot summer day, not much beats a glass of cold ice water. Dorothy Hustead recognized this back in the 1930’s. But all around us are folks who are thirsting for the water that Jesus is offering, the Living Water that quenches an even deeper thirst. Travelers were driving by Ted & Dorothy’s shop every day even before the signs went up, they just weren’t stopping. I wonder how many people drive by our worship centers every day who are dying of thirst? And what will we do to reach them?