Jarret and his wife, along with their three daughters, have a lease that ends on Saturday. Which men's they need to be moved into their new house by then.
After Katrina came Jarret and his family bought a house. They gutter it and rebuilt it and then sold it. They used the money from that house to buy a very nice house in St. Bernard Parish (not far from the mission house). They were so excited to find this new house! Or was newly renovated and rebuilt. Gorgeous.
But, after already surviving tragedy #1, Katrina, Jarret and his family were faced with tragedy #2. The new house they bought... was rebuilt with Chinese drywall. Before, and during the time after Katrina, Chinese manufacturers were producing large amounts of Sheetrock and selling them to rebuild homes. It was found out later, that this drywall contained chemicals that corroded electrical wiring and plbung, and was also hatful to humans. Many people who worked hard to rebuild their homes after Katrina (with the help of imaurance money) had their homes tested and confirmed the presence of this drywall. So they were sent back to square one; gutting and rebuilding again. This time, with no help from insurance and government money.
Jarret and his family have been working hard to finish rebuilding their new home. But they are supposed to move into their house this coming weekend, but there is still a lot of work to do.
After going to church this morning we were planning on going sight-seeing downtown. But after hearing Rachel tell us about Jarret's need last night, we all vetoed the shopping to spend some hours working on the house.
What's really cool is how Fod has really brought this story full circle. A few months ago Troy got a call from Rachel saying that the water to the mission house had stopped working. Having to deal with this from michigan roved to be a huge hassle. What had happened is the pipe supplying the house's water had broken, so a passerby had turned off the water for the house. So Rachel set up a plumber to work on the house to restore the water. Turns out, that umber was Jarret. So today we got to serve a man who first served us, by taking care of
the mission house. How cool is that?! Such an awesome God story.
So we spent our whole afternoon working on Jarret's home. Out main jobs were painting, electrical work, caulking, laying floor, trim, and cleaning. We all enjoyed getting our hands (and clothes) dirty with helping this family out!
There is still so much work to be done in order for the family to move in on Saturday, so we have chosen to have a few of our group members stay at this site all week, to see what else we can get done. The rest if us will partner up with St. Bernard Project tomorrow and start at a new site.
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