Hipolito was living alone in the FEMA trailer parked next to his home. There was a wheel chair ramp going up to it for his wife but she had had to leave since she could not find the kind of care she needed there after Hurricane Katrina had drown their neighborhood. Hipolito was a sad, elderly man. They had left for higher ground but their home had been destroyed. His wife's doctor had stayed... and died. Hipolito told us that he had been a kind man.

He asked us what had happened to his hardwood oak floors that had been there. The oak had been pulled up and thrown out by a group before us. They'd been swollen and warped and ruined in the flood. You could literally see the ground beneath his home between the boards and in the empty nail holes. The group before us had put up insulation (there had never been any before), hung sheetrock and painted. A volunteer electrician was working on it. I think the group before that had given him a roof. It was finally falling into place for him.

The group before us did the sheetrock and it is the worst sheetrocking I've ever seen. The walls in the livingroom looked as if they had not even been sanded but they had already had a coat of paint so there was little we could do. We have had to change our thinking a bit in regard to remodeling. Having to cut corners because one doesn't have the money or the equipment and especially the time to do things "right". They want to be living in their homes. Hurricane season is upon them again and they want to start living normally in their own finished homes. We all did the best we could..

Hipolito had paid two different contractors ($1800 each) to do plumbing so he could get back into his home. Both had taken his money and run. It's hard to understand that someone would pay up front for a job to be done... especially twice. But he was desperate to get his home in order, to have a home, to get his wife back with him. Desparate people grasp at straws. Desparate people attract unscrupulous contractors and apparently they are plentiful around these parts.

We painted the trim in the livingroom and all of the dining room and set his kitchen cabinets and sanded some sheetrock and scraped up sheetrock mud off the livingroom floor and painted a bedroom floor... and they set his toilet and got it working!

We had worked on Hipolito's house all morning and then had to leave for home that afternoon. We left him, so grateful to have more of his home ready and yet,so sad at all that he had lost.

(More Mission Trip memories: our own little flood, Katrina Flood, First United Methodist Church of Kearney, Gautier United Methodist Church, Ander's house, Miss Martha & Miss Ruby roofs, "Mississippi Manicures", Flood damage, Gautier, Mississippi, Biloxi hurricane destruction, coming home, Mississippi Hurricane Relief Mission Trip)