This week is another special week. Special can mean "good" and it can mean that something stands out in contrast to other experiences, regardless of its value label.
A few weeks back the group from Fountain City, TN came down to Pearlington, They are the folks who got me into this. They needed a home to drywall and I had a home that needed it. We put up drywall together again on and off the whole week.
This week, Trinity Presbyterian Church in Fairhope, AL has sent two volunteers, almost in spite of our process to take volunteers. This church invited me to preach and responded with an outpouring of zeal (see Day 308 - It's not Too Late Brothers and Sisters.)
This is a slow week, and I am desperate since next week is our last operating week wherein we help homeowners. Trinity is our only volunteers this week. and so again, I get the more intimate work and personal experience than normal.
We've been working on this family's home about 15 or so miles east of town for several weeks. We drive through a lot of typical Mississippi countryside to get there.
We pass large farms, stands of old clear-cut land with twenty-thirty year old pines. It seemed every plot of land has a pond or lake.
We see five or six churches, mostly free-will baptist churches. We see the infrequent restaurant planted in unexpected turns in the highway," Jamie's Diner and Catfish," "Sally's Gas and Deli" and automotive body shops - "Crazy Colors Auto Body" with three high bay roll up doors.
We pass very infrequently nicely done brick farm house ruling a nice horse or Heifer farm. I can drive maybe fifteen or twenty minutes with totally dead cell phone coverage. This is back country.
When we get to the house, we find a husband in his late 50's or 60's and a loving wife. They have six early teen and under children.
Several weeks back we went out to the house to check out what work is needed. When we get there we find a story behind the home. We find a seriously ill husband striving hard to keep all his woe from his wife's awareness.
The house is packed with "stuff." The yard is full of old cars. bicycles, RV's, tricycles, broken lawnmowers, it is just filled with the junk of time. I realize we live in the South and we have a characteristic to collect; but, even the out building is full of broken tools and machines. There is no place to sit and rest.
I walk trough the house out onto a deck raised maybe 30 inches above ground. The deck is covered with an old table saw, two fiberglass shower stalls, old clothes, scraps of wood and drywall.
Standing there on the deck, I notice a white PVC pipe running out about twenty or thirty feet where it stops in a watery pool of wet dirt. I realize it is the grey water line from the sinks and kitchen.
The chickens and ducks are peckiing around in this mess. A couple of sheep wander around and plaintively bah at us.
The deck wobbles, it is barely attached to the house. i note the house is set on pressure treated and already rotted telephone pole timbers. There is an above ground swimming pool planted among all this detritus in the back yard. It is full of dark green water that a pump is circulating continuously.
I notice one of the chickens has been pecked on badly and a good part of its feathers are missing. The skin of its back, where feathers once grew stands out as a reddened sore mass. I hear that when a chicken shows red or blood in a farm, the other chickens will peck it to death. I see a turkey with a damaged wing lunge at the wounded chicken and it runs for cover under the house. There are two filthy turkeys and they are doing this damage to the chickens.
Inside the house I find one bathroom in disrepair. It stands adjacent to a bedroom for two of the kids, The room is filled to the brim with the boys' junk.
The lving room needs new wall board and a ceiling. The bathroom on the parents' end needs rebulding also.
We find out these kids are foster children. I can only imagine the disasterous home situation that led to improvement by moving them here. But this couple is fully dedicated and as good as or better than any. They pour every ounce of energy into these children, turning disfunctional elementary-aged children from screaming, crying and terrified animals into loving, playful children. It really is a great accomplishment. I hear "yes ma'am", "yes sir," see smiles and hear laughs as the girls head off to ball practice.
So we dive into repair. The earlier team from New York, bless them, crawled around under the house among dead cats and all the refuse left behind by barnyard fowl to rebuild the plumbing, to connect the grey water to the septic tank and rebuild the children's bathroom.
This week we are finishing the final items in the house, installing moulding in the living room, trimming out the drywall in the hallway and applying door trim.
One of the Trinity volunteers is a woman with long experience with Habitat for Humanity, she jumps right in. The other woman is as eager and committed, if less experienced. She also jumps in and in two days we have completed the living room molding, painted it, patched drywall in the boy's bedroom and begun finishing the hallway between living room and bedroom.
We hear of some very sinister health issues of the husband who is keeping it from the wife. I will not go into it, but I'm worried for everyone.
Today we ask to look at bathroom #2 since we want to start on it this week to ensure the small final crew of next week can complete it. We find challenges. In order to get the shower insert into the bath we are going to have to tear down a wall in the bedroom and rebuild it. We find evidence of mold in the bathroom that signals problems behind the wall board. Can we do it in a week?
As I sit writing this, all I can think of are those small children, the lives they've been saved from, the unbelievable success these foster parents have had with them even with their tenuous health, how badly foster parents are needed to justify this situation and why these things happen to children. Why?
Why?
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