being a blessing

Ken, Vickie, Liliana, and her brother

 

Two people from Pearland are really good at being a blessing.  Liliana and her husband are amazing people who have given their time to volunteer in Galveston once Saturday a month since hurricane ike.  They are very faithful and love to come and work hard.  When I met a family who needed help who was also from Pearland, Tim and I connected them with Liliana.  She has been absolutely amazing.  Liliana called her brother who knows how to build fences and asked him to assist her.  She called Vickie and set up a work date.  Ken and Vickie and the team of three rebuilt the one side of the fence in her backyard.  It looks wonderful!  I feel very blessed to know such great people who are willing to go the extra mile for others.  Ken and Vickie feel so blessed that they are willing to come to Galveston on Liliana’s next trip to help out!  I love passing on the blessing and look forward to seeing them all working in Galveston together.  Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

Galveston Prayer Update 20

Friends –
Greetings from Deer Park, Texas, about an hour drive north of Galveston.  We are currently supervising some work teams that are helping out in the Baytown area – another area that was significantly affected by the storm.  We will be spending the month of August here and then move back towards Galveston in September.  We want to share some prayer requests with you:

• We continue to ask you to pray for Tim’s family and friends as they grieve the loss of their neighbor and her son in PA.  We flew back to PA  two weeks ago for the funeral.  It was a very sad week as we grieved, cried, and spent time together with these friends and family.  Please continuing praying for Sue, Ron and Glenn as they continue to come to grips with this loss. 
• It is now the first week of August.  Do you know what that means?  It is time to start thinking about Thanksgiving week and how you are going to get down here to volunteer with us.  We would love to have you and your family and/or church family join us.  We will help you take care of housing and other logistics.  This year, why don’t you celebrate Thanksgiving by giving?
• Will you pray for the homeowners where we are working on their homes?  Jayne and Logan, Ardis, and Frances and Charlene.  Each one has their own story –
  • Jayne and Logan had a couple of feet of water in their house.  They had been overwhelmed by the storm and were unable to clean up completely by themselves.  As a result, they were still living in the mold and mess.  Logan has breathing problems and carries an oxygen tank with him.  They are also collectors and haven’t thrown too much out (our team this week found her geometry test from 1966.  She got an A).  So, it is tough to work in the house as we try to cut out the drywall mold and help them live in a more sanitary environment.
  • Ardis is living in a house that has been neglected and overrun by termites.  Some of the studs on the outside of the house are so bad they break away like paper.  We are removing the siding and putting new studs in as well as new siding. 
  • Frances and Charlene also live in a house that has been neglected to the point that all of the wood underneath the floor had rotted away in two rooms.  So, the floor was incredibly unstable.  In Frances’ bedroom (who is in her 80s), the only thing that is keeping her from hitting the dirt under the house is the carpet that still remains there.  She has subsequently fallen a couple of times in the past weeks because of the flooring.  Frances is a very timid person who needs a lot of reassurance to have helpers in her house.  However, we have replaced one of the floors and the other is going in this week.
• We are deeply grateful for the volunteer teams that we have been working with.  We really enjoyed the teams last week from Pennsylvania and Maryland.  This past week, we hosted two teenage boys from the Philly area. They were hard workers and a bunch of fun to be with.  This week there is a team for Massachusetts with us.  All of the volunteers have been hard and gracious workers – bearing hope at each location that we have been working.
• Please pray for the churches that we are associated with – Primera Iglesia and University Baptist.  University Baptist is going through a tough time – they have been doing good work in the community in rebuilding, but they are still feeling the effects of the loss that accompanied hurricane Ike. Primera is also feeling those effects but is starting to take steps to move forward.  Jenn and I have agreed to lead a Wednesday night prayer service with them – a time to talk about the present and the future while they discern what the Lord has in the future for them.  Jenn and I are praying that it will be a time of focusing, drawing them together in unity and also helping them to do the difficult work of rebuilding ministry and fellowship.   

We are grateful for your partnership in ministry and ask that you continue to pray for our strength as we minister here in the Galveston area.  We are incredibly thankful to Jesus for all he is doing in us and through us!

As always – check out our blog for more stories and info about our ministry – timandjenn.wordpress.com. 

Tim and Jenn Schwartz

tuesday highlights

Ira and Jenn on the back porch

In addition to checking on all our teams, we had a bunch of other fun as well today.  Tim and I met Ira, a woman who lives in Houston.  Her house has had damage from hurricane allison in 2006 and now also ike in 2008.  She is currently living there even without electricity and very little running water.  She and her 21 year old son are living in a house with broken windows that is very unsafe.  The tub and bathroom floor have sunk have detached from the walls and are patched to prevent animals from getting in.  It is a sad situation, but it was nice to spend a few minutes chatting with her.  We hope to at least get a team there next week to start on the yard, though that’s the least of my concerns.  Ira is a very sweet sister in Christ who was very much cheered up just with our presence there.  Hopefully we can help her out.  I hate to see people living in such unlivable conditions. 

Bath tub with hole on top

Not very secure- window and drywall

 

 

Another highlight was definitely going to “Someburger” for lunch.  What a crazy name!  It was a cute little diner like place in Baytown.  The tables all had laminated inspirational pictures under the glass top.  It was a quaint little place.  All the food was bagged and put on a tray- burgers and fries separately.  There was a ton of mustard and mayo on the burger but somehow it still tasted good.  It was some burger!  🙂

Someburger shop

How inspirational

 

Tim and I stopped at several grocery stores today to collect boxes to move our client Yvonne tomorrow from her apartment in Clear Lake back to Bayou Vista.  I’ll fill you in on how that goes (please be praying for everything to work out).  The funny part was the name of the store was “Food Town.”  Very special! 

Loading boxes at Food Town

san leon team

Tuesday the team at San Leon finished pulling out all the insulation underneath Jayne and Logan’s home.  They also insulated the exterior walls where we had cut out the sheetrock.  Dan worked inside on the water heater closet, bleaching it and getting it ready for insulation and sheetrock.  The group purchased insulation for under the house in the afternoon and then had a lot of fun unloading it too.  I don’t have too many pictures from here today- too much running around elsewhere!

Insulation line

Unloading the insulation

Walls now have insulation

working at ardis’ house

Another part of the MA team is working at Ardis’ house in Baytown.  This group is doing siding, pulling off the old stuff, priming the new, wrapping the house, and putting up new siding.  They are also doing a fabulous job!  This team is working outside all day in the heat.  Thankfully there are some trees providing shade.  They high today was 97 with a heat index of 106, so it was very very hot.  Everyone on the site is very positive, which makes it even better.

Ardis' house

Replacing the siding

Pulling off the old siding

Priming the siding

working at frances’ house

Part of the MA team is working at Frances’ house in Baytown.  They are fixing the floor in Frances’ bedroom.  Yesterday they found a rat’s nest under it!  There were several rats under there, and of course no one was too impressed.  After the rats scattered though, they haven’t been back- at least not that we could tell.  But now everyone jumps when they see any animal or surprise movement.  🙂  It was hard for the team to pull out the hardwood floor, especially around the edges where the floor was intact.  The team is also painting the outside trim a nice shade of brown.  It looks great!  They are doing a very thorough job and working hard. 

Frances' house

Bedroom floor pulled out

Floor rebuilding team

Tim and Mark pose on the cut plywood

guest blog- jett’s reflections

            On my first day of working I was assign to scraped paint off of a house in Galveston. Then, with my new friends Caitlyn and Lauren, we primed the house. The first day was my easiest day of working because we were able to stand in the shade without the sun beating down on us. After that we were done working we went to lunch. Later, we took the ferry and we went to an island to understand the severity of the destruction that was brought about by Hurricane Ike.

            My least favorite day of work was the last day of work. Much time was spent on sitting around and waiting for someone to finish their job so you could start your job. The frustration of the nails not going into the studs, or flying out of the wood, added to the pain of hitting the tip of your finger with a hammer was all multiplied by the sun of beating down on us.

            My favorite day of work was when we went to a house that had mold on the inside of the drywall. We had to cut the drywall then break it down and get rid of the moldy scraps of drywall. I also got to take apart the bathroom sink and take the toilet out to the scrap-pile. The thing that made this day my favorite was when I had the opportunity to punch through the drywall.

            My favorite experience was when I went the house of Mr. And Mrs. Rojas to witness a house blessing. Mr. Rojas had just gone through a stroke and they had just returned to their house after many months of living in hotels and other places. They hired contractors to refurbish their home so they had just moved back in. Mrs. Rojas was so overwhelmed with joy that she was in tears. She then fed us and forced us take home her delicious chicken salad sandwiches and cakes.

            The trip was a lot more fun then I thought it would be and going to eat and watch movies with Jen and Tim was fun and exciting. When Zach and Tim had their arguments I watched in amusement. Tim’s synopsis of the Movie G.I Joe was the most fun I had the whole trip. Tim and Jen showed us much hospitality and I am very thankful. I think what they’re doing down here is very good and I can see how thankful people are of their help.

guest blog- zach’s reflections

            When my mom first told me that Tim and Jen had invited me to come down to Texas to help them build houses again, I was reluctant to say yes. This is for one reason and one reason alone; I like my free time. I like to be able to relax and not worry about being some where at a certain time or doing something that needed to be done. But of course I said yes. I would have felt bad if I didn’t. I live in a great house with a great family with no disasters coming around to screw that up, but unfortunately, not everyone is that lucky. If I didn’t agree to come on this trip, I would be like every other fortunate soul without a care in the world who just sits by and lets the world go to hell without stepping in and doing something about it.

            So that is how I found myself in the Houston, Texas airport waiting for my good buddy Tim to pick me and my other good buddy, Jett up. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you; before I left for Texas I dragged my best friend into it as well. After all, misery does like some company from time to time. Anyway, there we were sitting in the airport, waiting for Tim who was late. Yeah, that’s right, Tim forgot we were coming, or at least that we were coming that day. So once Tim arrived and found us, Jett and I hopped into a red pickup truck with Tim and we were on our way to the church that we would be staying at. Once we settled in and got unpacked, Tim and Jen took us in to Galveston and dropped us off at the beach while he and Jen went to a prayer meeting. After we had spent the day at the beach and were ready to go back to the church, Tim picked us up and we were on our way. Now, normally I would not have described this visit to Galveston on our first day with more than a few words, but its more of a build up to something better than an actual description of our day. You see, while we were making our way back to the church, a police man on the side of the road took it upon himself to pick us out of the traffic and pull us over for speeding I found this funny because Tim had joked about getting pulled over by a cop on our first day during the ride from the airport to the church. Once this whole mess was over, we were actually on our way back to the church now for our first night sleep. I got to bed at a decent time because I knew I had a long week ahead of me. 

            The first day began with scraping off paint from the side of a house. Although this job was not physically demanding, it sure was annoying. After the paint was for the most part gone, we took out the primer and painted the house with it. After a not so long day of working, the team headed to lunch and then a trip to see just how destructive hurricane Ike had been. This was a sobering experience because I had not seen anything like this back in Pennsylvania. On the second day, we traveled to an old couple’s house that had a lot of water damage to it and a lot of mold under the drywall. This was by far the most fun job because it involved destroying the drywall that was already up there. Everybody loves demolishing. On the third day of work, we traveled to a church building that was being worked on by a large team. Tim, Jett, and I worked as a small team and put up drywall on the ceiling, this brought back some good, and some not-so-good memories of when I worked on a house in Mississippi with Tim last year. On Sunday, we had a relax day. We went and saw G.I. Joe with Tim. The only thing I will say is that Tim’s synopsis of the movie that he gave to Jen was better than the movie itself. On Monday, Jett and I helped some of the new work team put up siding on a house. This was the last day that Jett and I worked and that brings me to where I am at this moment. I have a flight to catch tomorrow at 10: 45 AM to bring me back to Pennsylvania. Even though I went into this expecting hard work with little to no fun, what I got out of it was much more and I would not have changed my decision to come down to Texas to work on houses and help people have homes again for the world.