Get me outta here!

A Texas-sized Project

February 28, 2012 by davidbcarver

In July 2008, Hurricane Dolly made landfall in southern Texas, dropping up to 16 inches of rain in isolated areas and causing more than a billion dollars of damage.

The path of Hurricane Dolly

Among the affected were our new friends Gustavo and Julia. They lost everything – their home was totally destroyed. In the aftermath of the storm they found shelter in a FEMA trailer, but have longed to get back into a home of their own. With the help of a number of well-wishers and relief agencies, they have managed to rebuild the shell of a simple home. Not long ago, they were accepted into the program administered through Faith Communities for Disaster Recovery, and now we, along with some tools from the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, are seeking to make a difference for this family of five.

The home as we arrived on Monday

The exterior of the home

Gabe, Bob, and Steve start to work on the walls...you are standing in the bathroom, looking through the bedroom into the laundry room.

Bob finishes a little framing in the bedroom

Jeff cuts insulation in the attic. It was "only" about 80° outside, so...

Do you think Gabe is having a good trip so far?

An alert photographer captures a rare site...Dave working!

Some of the walls were already drywalled, leaving us to start the mudding

In Texas, we say "Go big or go home". Stax shows us how the insulation gets done.

Seems like we spend a lot of time cutting little pieces to fill in the gaps...

At the end of the day, Jeff treated us to a visit from the Goody Bar Man!

One thought on “A Texas-sized Project”

Sue Makin says:

February 28, 2012 at 6:14 pm

Good work, Pennsylvania team. You look well organized. You are pilgrims on a journey to love God and love your neighbors.

Reply

Leave a comment Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood By Jimmy Carter

I picked up this volume as a friend was thinning his library, thinking that it might give me insight into the character of a man whose integrity I admire deeply. I’ve long respected the ways that former President Carter seeks to integrate his love for Jesus with his love for his neighbor through efforts like Habitat for Humanity and the Carter Center, and I thought that it would be interesting to see something of how that developed in his childhood. I was struck by the notion that a white child who grew up in the 1920’s and 1930’s in Georgia would include so many African Americans in the group of adults who formed his earliest life experience. I was equally impressed by the ways that this stood, in some ways, contrary to his own father’s commitment to segregation.

With simple prose and elegant clarity, Carter narrates his memories of his strong-willed mother, his loving sisters, the neighbors who helped him to learn, and the development of his sense of right and wrong. Several generations of Carters are introduced to the reader, and it’s easy to get a feel for life in the rural south of that era.

And here is a surprise for me in this reading: I realized that Jimmy Carter was born in a tiny town in Georgia in 1924. My dad, Frank Carver, was born in a tiny town in Kansas just seven years later. As I read the account of Carter’s upbringing and daily experiences with chores and neighbors and commerce and exploration, it occurred to me that my dad’s experiences could not have been that dissimilar. That knowledge helped me to imagine what my dad would have been like as a boy, and that alone was reason enough to love this book.

I’d encourage discerning readers to give this book a try – and then think about it for a long while afterwards.