"Sticking Together"

 The 1988 centennial celebration in the small town of Bruno, Nebraska was an incredible display of the power of synergy. 

Seven years earlier Herman Ostry had purchased a farm, which included a barn, half of a mile out of town. In 1988, when spring flooding covered the barn floor with twenty-nine inches of water, Herman decided it was time to move the barn to higher ground. 

The $1,500 estimate from professional movers was too steep, so Herman’s son, Mike, devised another plan. He estimated that the barn weighed roughly 17,000 pounds.  If 340 people carried fifty pounds each, they could simply carry the barn to its new location! 

Mike built a grid of steel tubing around the barn and attached handles for the carriers. On July 30, over four thousand people from eleven different states watched as 344 people carried the barn about 120 feet. Minutes later, the barn was sitting on its new foundation. What one person could never have accomplished alone, 344 people were able to do together. As someone once said, “teamwork makes the dream work.”

“Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.” -Ecclesiastes 4:9 (KJV)