A Day with a Team

Posted on by Bob DeGray

Gail and I arrived in Florida on Saturday (January 13, 2024) and helped welcome a team from Buffalo, Minnesota on Sunday. Beginning on Monday, we spent the week working with that team to complete a few steps of rebuilding for homeowners. This post is a quick walk through a day of working with that team.

Why should I read this post? It’s got a flying rat in it.

The team day starts with breakfast, devotions, and prayer in the community room at Ft Myers Evangelical Free Church. Team members sleep in bunk rooms off the main room or in a modular building outside the church.
After breakfast we head out to homeowner’s homes. The team I was on worked at John and Kate’s home. These newlyweds had two feet of water in their home and got a partial rebuild from a contractor who did bad work and then stopped before it was done. We’ve come in to help them finishl their home.
My half of the team painted and hung bi-fold (closet) doors throughout the house. Here Cindy is putting the second or third coat on some of the doors. They really soaked up the paint.
The other half of the team worked on tiling a bathroom.
Malaki had one day of experience as an apprentice tiler, so he got the tough job of making all the cuts.
At lunch we joined another piece of the team at the home they were painting.

But what about the flying rat, you ask. Here’s the story: John, the homeowner, is kind of a character. He’s about 83, has been in a recent motorcycle accident that left him with a bad leg, fell from the attic through the ceiling into the garage, has other medical problems, but is the kind of gruff old guy you can’t help but love. Think “Second Hand Lions.” One day while we were painting doors in the garage, John pulled down the attic stairs, went up and came down a few minutes later with dead rat that hung from his hand by the tail. He’d had rat traps set in the attic and caught one, about seven inches long with a ten or twelve inch tail.

When John reached the floor he decided to throw the rat across the garage into the trash can. Unfortunately he missed. The rat bounced off a medicine cabinet we were painting, luckily missing the painted part, and landed on the floor in a pose quite reminiscent of Ratatouille, above.

I did not have the presence of mind to snap a picture of that pose. I did get a picture after he (or she?) was deposited in the trash can.
So that’s another day on the job site. We’ll be back tomorrow for more adventures in rebuilding.
But the point is not just rebuilding homes, it’s rebuilding lives. Whether that means buiding relationships of trust with homeowners that open doors to the Gospel, or hearing the stories of team members and encouraging them in their walk with Jesus, our primary task is people.
Even Boaz is fascinated by people and their rat stories – or at least their pats and tummy rubs.

Thanks for partnering with us on this adventure. If you would like to support our ministry financially, visit Giving: Bob and Gail DeGray. All gifts are greatly appreciated. If you want to be on our frequent pray-ers team, just drop us an email, a text, or reply to this post.

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