A future with hope ~ end of mission day three

Today Teresa made a video of what we have been doing here. Enjoy the YouTube video.

A Future With Hope ~ Sandy Relief Mission Day Two

We have just had another day of great day of accomplishments. We have also had many God sightings. One of the sightings that resonated with some of our team members was seeing a worm. You might ask, “What does a worm have to do with rebuilding hope for people’s lives?” The answer is, “everything!”

Our homeowner took great joy in her flowers and garden before the storm. As we were raking debris from her former garden and filling it with dirt and rebuilding a stone wall, she spoke longing for this sorely missed garden beauty. We dug up a few random, unidentifiable bulbs which had not bloomed this year. As we worked together she relayed a story from past years of telling her grandson not to buy worms for fishing because her rich soil had plenty of worms. She then sadly recounted how she had seen none since the storm. Not ten minutes later I, Nan, dug up a fat and very much alive earthworm. What delight filled her face and her voice! Joy and hope presented itself as a big, fat juicy earthworm! We carefully covered him back up and were grateful for this harbinger of good times to come. Hope comes in many forms, even in the form of earthworms!

Hope continued to come alive as our team finished more and more of the inside of the home. It is beginning to look like it might be habitable within a week or a little longer. Many of us had sore knees after having finished laying down hard wood floors. We began to tile out the bathroom, we hung some more doors, and put trim around windows and doors. She also had three windows that were not operable, they are now fully functioning windows.

Thanks for your continued prayers.

A Future With Hope ~ Sandy Relief Team Monday

This morning we went to the house assigned to us. Judy came to ‘a future with hope’ a while back desperate because she had a house that she couldn’t move into despite paying contractors to fix it up, they had taken her money and not done the work. Now she was going to be kicked out of the place she was staying because the grant money had run out. She was facing putting up a tent in the back yard. A couple of other groups ahead of us had done some great work but more needs to be done. We had to put down some flooring in two rooms and tile the bathroom. Also a number of doors needed to be hung and windows trimmed. We finished one of the room’s floors and got the cement board down on the bathroom floor. Several of the doors are now hung and a couple of windows are trimmed. There is still a lot more work to be done, but it is only Monday. It was a good day meeting new friends and sweat together. We are hoping to be able to get the homeowner back in her house by the end of this week or early next week.
Thanks for the prayers.

This is the next door house which is being torn down. During super storm sandy there were 8 people and a dog who waited out the storm in the top floor. The water surge was higher than the telephone poles.

We put in this wooden floor today.