This week we’ve focused our efforts on one home in particular. It is one of the first homes we began working on after I arrived. It was in pretty sad shape structurally, but not as unlivable as some. Like most homes we work on it has a story in it.
This house is in one of the coastal communities near Gulfport, a city that took high wind damage and depending on where one lived a couple of feet or more of water damage. The house is a common ranch style built on a slab. As with many around here after Katrina, the owner had been working on the house himself to get it livable.
We felt a tremendous pressure to get this home ready due to Mike, the owner. Mike had been working hard to rebuild the house after it was severely damaged by Katrina’s winds and rain.
Three weeks ago when I first looked at the house, it had a new roof and new drywall was up, but the bare concrete floor of the living area had a 3-foot square hole in it where the natural gas meter had stood. There was a 1/8-inch ridge on a seam running the width of the living room floor where new concrete had been poured for an addition. No flooring had been installed in the house. There was no electricity, no painting, no kitchen and all the furniture and new cabinets were stacked in the living room and one of he back rooms. The old roof trusses were stacked 8 high on the ground of the back yard, now termite-infested.
When we came on the scene Mike had been in the hospital for quite a while and about to be discharged for home care and extensive, long-term rehabilitation. Our hope has been for his home to be the place for that.
Mike is a commercial roofer. He was working on a commercial job. A few months ago he was inspecting the finishing work on a new roof. The crew had covered with blue tarp the openings for the skylights remaining to be installed subsequently. Those tarps looked much like the roof itself. Mike stepped onto the tarp and fell through the opening 34 feet to a concrete floor. He shouldn’t be here; the statistics for this kind of industrial accident say he had better than maybe 90% chance of being killed. He came out of it with compression fractures of the spine, shattered elbow, torn rotator cuff, some other broken bones, extensive bruising, a long hospital stay and a longer recuperation.
He is very fortunate. His recovery has better and faster than expected. He can walk and other than his neck brace and full torso back brace, he has remarkable mobility. It will be a while until he is able to work. He faces a about a year of physical therapy, but if we get it done today he will have his home during his rehabilitation.
I drove over to the house earlier this week to figure out one of the last problems, how to respect the building codes and get a hot water heater installed in the attic. As I walked in the house for this second time I was amazed. The walls are painted, fixtures are in the ceiling, receptacles and switches are in their place, and there is nice new kitchen and the plumbing in the bathrooms work. All the floors have been installed.
I arrived about 11:30 of this Friday morning because I knew Mike’s fiancée was driving him way to his physical therapy and was stopping by to see what we had done this week on his. I was stunned; our work assignment was completely done.
Our work-site manager has done such a god job. She has instructed and supported three teams here. These folks from Minnesota and Virginia have worked hard all week for her and Mike, fixing all sorts of problems, switch boxes covered by dry wall, shorted fan lights, and leaky plumbing. You name it and these engineers have fixed it.
As I walked in, all I saw were a few people sweeping and mopping the floors. A couple of people putting finishing touches on mudding the edges of doors and attaching a few remaining pieces of molding. Not only the water heater was installed, but to my surprise and satisfaction so was the missing 230 volt power to it.
I was out in the back yard talking to his dogs when someone came out and said Mike was here. I hurried back inside. There he was standing in his kitchen and just saying he couldn’t believe it, he had a kitchen.
There was a bit of confusion with twelve or so people milling around. I watched Mike walk around. I told him the guys uncovered a hidden switch box in the living room wall. He said, yes he was supposed to have a three-way switch for the light in the foyer. He edged around and tried the switches. I could see his smile as he tried the switches and they worked. He turned the porch light on and leaned out he door. His smile and the quietly muttered comments wee not lost on me.
“Wow. I can’t believe I have a kitchen. I am so grateful. “
“You put in the porch posts. This is so great.”
There is nothing in this world as profoundly moving as to help someone in need, to do something that you feel is expected, if not demanded by God, and to see the profound gratitude in the eyes of the one you served. Is it God looking back at us through those eyes?
The goal of the team was to get done by noon and take it easy Friday afternoon. But they knew we had a half-full dumpster our front and that pile of Katrina-damaged trusses littering his back yard.
“Mike, do you want us to clean up that stuff in the back yard?”
“Well, I guess sure, if you have the time, I’d really appreciate it.”
So we decided to do it. Just like Josephine’s siding in Pearlington eighteen months ago, we were not going to leave a part of this job undone. The trusses were about sixteen feet long and pretty bulky. While the team ate lunch, I fished out a contractor saw and started cutting up the trusses so they would fit in the dumpster. By 1:30PM we’d finished that job. Drenched in the sweat of this 85-degree, high humidity day and all we had to do was load everything in my truck and head home to the village
Today Mike’s house is livable and one group of volunteers are a little closer to God.
Thanks to the Minnesota and Virginia folks from me, too. And thanks for dinner, the shrimp creole was great. I hope to see you all again.
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