Progress Report
Current Projects
Project 15 - Husband and wife took in their cousin who recently had his leg amputated. He suffers from diabetes and is on dialysis three times a week while waiting for a kidney transplant. They cannot get his wheelchair upstairs so he pulls himself up the stairs and uses an office chair to get around his room. On top of the expense and difficulty of caring for him the last car they had in the family stopped working. We are helping them with car repairs and sending a team out to install handrails so he can lift himself into the chair and into the shower.
Project 14 - A woman who has a son who is retarded and has other medical problems moved in with her sister and the boy is sleeping on the couch in the living room. They are emptying out a room that was an office and then we are going to send a team to paint and put up shelves and whatever is needed to make it a bedroom for him.
Project 6 - A widow with minimal income who is just getting by had water leaking from a light fixture, a leak in the bathroom and an attic full of junk making it a fire hazard. We found and fixed the leaks fixed the electrical problem and hauled away trash from the attic. We are going back to get the rest of the trash out of the attic and put some insulation up where there is none.
Project 8 - A school in Howard County that serves a diverse population, many with troubled family situations, reached out to us as a result of the Extreme School Makeover and invited us to help with some projects inside the school. We are looking at various needs of classroom teachers to see what we could do for them.
Project 2 - An elderly woman had mold in her basement which we removed last year along with rotted furniture and paneling. We returned to waterproof re-frame the walls and install paneling. We are going back to finish the trim on wall and replace a downspout for her.
Project 7 - An elderly woman needed help putting on storm windows and caulking around doors. A volunteer took care of the windows and the caulking but she still has a roof leak which the roofer is coming back to fix. She is then going to call us to fix ceiling where water stained it.
Completed Projects
Project 1 - A household of women with few resources had a sidewalk that was broken and they were ordered to fix it. We went out with a team and broke up the sidewalk and hauled the concrete away and poured a new walk for them. It took several tries to get the weather and the guys together to do this job, but it got done
Project 3 - A man with a handicap who has limited use of his hands and limited income had a big tree damaged in a storm and wanted to use the wood for heating. A crew of men went out one Saturday and cut up the 4’ thick tree, split all the logs and stacked up 4 cords of firewood for him. When 2 PM rolled around they were tired but thankful for being able to work together to accomplish so much for this brother.
Project 12 - A woman with slim resources made her front porch into a bedroom for her young teen son. The problem was that everyone coming to the house had to walk through his bedroom to get into the house and the window on the entrance door was broken. This was a team effort. One group went to assess the project. Another went and built two partitions to form an entrance into the house and repair the window. Another went and finished the drywall. The trim was installed by the group that built the partition and the woman and her son are going to paint.
Project 13 - A woman who is a single mom with limited income asked for someone to help with caulking around sliding door where it was leaking. She also needed some grout replaced in shower, a loose receptical fastened and a wobbly table fixed. A group of volunteers took care of all her repairs as varied as they were.
I thought it would be fun to look back on what was accomplished this year through the efforts of volunteers who just had a willingness to make themselves available for God’s work. Little by little things get done and lives get changed both on the giving end and the receiving.