Thanks to Pedialite, by the quarts, I think I am on the mend and have lived to learn a very valuable lesson! Thanks to all of you who have kept me in your prayers, I appreciate them more than you know.
Please allow me to be a week late in introducing the newest homeowners that we are working with. Welcome John, wife Brenda and their son Stephen, who is now our new all-summer volunteer. These photos show what someones home looks like when the water level was below the 4' line and they were only required to tear out their walls at the 48" mark. You have rooms with no walls, bedrooms with no separations for privacy and alot of attempting to match the sheetrock with what is already there. Mom Brenda has been scraping and scraping trying to get the upper walls prepared. Thanks to a blessing from our Camp Hope people we were able to provide the family with new doors, something they had been saving to do before the storm and thought that it would be impossible to do now.
Monty, Diane, Bobby and Stephen worked in their home all last week and the work will continue this week. The doors are ready to be installed and the taping and mudding of the walls is coming along fine, thanks to the work of the family, even throughout the weekend! You see, when you live in the home while the rebuilding is going on you are never away from it, it consumes your life and after over 10 months this family needs some joy and fun in their weekends, not rebuilding!
Our new incoming volunteers will start arriving this Wednesday night and this home will be one of the ones they will be working in. The Wednesday night team is one Monty and I are looking forward to hosting as they are from a church in our hometown. We pray blessings on them as they prepare for the trip and for safe travel here.
The next team this week will arrive Thursday and are coming from Alabama. It's not that far away yet they, like everyone else, take time from their own lives to come and help others. The heart of a servant is an amazing thing!
On this mornings news they were talking about the Today Show that will air tomorrow morning. It seems Brad Pitt made a trip to New Orleans and is appalled at the way nothing has been done to date! Maybe it will take the celebrities to get on board to raise the awareness levels and spur some people into reality! Atleast with the celebraties we are assured it will be back in the news, and that's a start! Oprah is also planning another show about Katrina and like I said, atleast it will bring it back into the news and people will see the reality, the devastation, the loss of life and lives!
This weekend we had another meeting with our Convoy of Hope leaders, Fory and Cindi. They paid us a visit and I was telling them how we have been getting requests for help in Slidell, Louisianna. When I asked about a relief effort there they told me to call a Baptist church there as there just aren't enough relief efforts set up there to date! You cannot set up relief efforts when you have no building to house them in, no way to feed them, no way to get water to them, no place for them to get gasoline, no place for them to use the bathrooms.... you get the picture! And people are calling us! The one call is for a 90 year old widow woman whose house hasn't even been torn out yet! Now I know you aren't here and maybe you haven't seen the photos, but you can imagine in your mind what it would look like if your home flooded and you didn't touch it for over 10 months, black mold would be .... well.... picture it for yourself and then ask yourself just where would you start....and what if you were 90 years old? Get the picture? Could you turn your head and say, "sorry, we don't have anyone to help you!"
Please take these thought to prayer and find a way you can help in this effort. There IS a way, you just need to see what works best for you. If you can, watch the news tomorrow. I don't know what it will tell or show, but it will tell and show something!!! Please.....we beg you....pray for the people here, for us and for a way that you can become an active part in the rebuilding of lives. God bless you!
Until tomorrow...we love you all....Susan and Monty
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