On October 18-26, St. John's UMC/Des Moines mission team members Johnny Audette & Matt Kelley took a trip to the Oklahoma City area. Johnny's mom, Dottie, lives in the town of Choctaw. She's elderly and blind in one eye. She cared for her ailing husband for two years, prior to his death from cancer earlier this year. During that two years of caregiving, many household chores had to take a back seat, including clearing debris from an ice storm late in 2006.

       We visited the local UMC the first day we were in Choctaw and met their mission team leader, who promised to rally a few other volunteers to help us for the week. At least four good-natured, hard-working folks joined us at Dottie's for a host of fixer-upper chores.

       The main project we focused on for the week was tearing out the brown shag carpeting (original to the house from 1978), removing the tack strip, cleaning the concrete slab, laying underlayment, then laying new laminate flooring that looks like hard-wood pine. It looked beautiful when complete. We also rototilled and transformed a ho-hum set of four bushes in the front yard to a nicely-accented landscaped area, with red brick edging, white marble rock and a 20-foot flagpole, complete with solar-powered spotlights for the flag. We also tackled a number of odd jobs, things like putting up new security lights. We cleaned up several storm-damaged trees. A cheerful, spry lady from Choctaw UMC, Julie, climbed up in the trees and had us hand up the chainsaw so she could cut from up there. She was tireless!

       We took a half-day break from the work to visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, a very moving honorarium to the 168 people killed in the terrorist bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in April of 1995.

       Since we had to move every stick of furniture from Dottie's house, Johnny and I slept in an old RV. The ever-present winds literally rocked it back and forth all night, as coyotes howled in the distance and tumbleweeds bounced through the yard.

       Dottie was thrilled with the work we were able to accomplish on the house, and we were just happy to be able to help -- and we couldn't have gotten a third of it done without the wonderful help of local volunteers from the UMC.

MK