A second email from a stranger (A must read!)

After Gary's first email I responded and told him about our trip. I also asked him if I could use his email in the blog. His response (again only slightly edited).

While I would encourage you to read the whole thing, YOU MUST READ THE three paragraphs following "I still keep in touch". WOW.

I will keep an eye on the blog. If anything I wrote can help then please use it .

The need down there is still so real though.

I still keep in touch with the group I went down there with and they are making once-a-month trips. There was a trip at the end of January in which the group headed out on an assignment one morning and totally botched the address.
They pulled up in their vehicles, descended on the house and explained to the disoriented, elderly couple living there that they were the group from the church and were there to assess and fix things.

It wasn't until after they had finished with the house that they discovered they were at the wrong address. That was also when the tearful couple told them that the night before they had shown up they had made a suicide pact. Here it was almost a half a year after Katrina, they were still living in a mold infested house with a leaky roof. They had exhausted (or thought they had) every avenue for assistance and apparently had lost all hope.

They went to bed deciding to end it all and the very next morning an entire group of people with all the tools and supplies needed to fix their house "just showed up" and asking for nothing in returned helped them out of a very deep and dark hole.

I personally had several encounters where we would seem to "just happen" to find ourselves in the exact right place at the exact right time with exactly the right tools to help people who needed it. Several times we would go to work a site that wasn't as bad as we had thought it would be but we would find a neighbor in desperate need.

We even stopped at the wrong house one time and were met by a frazzled 80+ year old widow who had been promised a trailer by FEMA but SHE had to clear a spot for it in her yard and had to have it done by the end of that day. Even if she had owned a chainsaw she couldn't have lifted it ... but all of a sudden, there we were.

It is rather staggering to find out after having helped someone that, finding themselves with no where else to turn they had actually prayed for help and then you just showed up.

Share that thought with people.

If they go down there they will undoubtedly be used as the answer to someone's prayer.

"How" may not be revealed to them as dramatically as with these stories but they WILL be used.

There are so many tragic things going on in this world right now that we as individuals can't realistically do anything about. This though is that opportunity.

Gary