VIM Fernley 2008

Comment by Bill O'Rear

 There seems to be a great lack of photos of the "dry-wallers at Farm Ln."! What a team we had: Bill and brother-in-law Bart (the brains) and Ann, who wields a mighty power drill, dry-walled three rooms in the basement of a house that had been completely filled with mud following the levee break. With the help of several members of the family, we mudded, taped, sanded and textured the two largest rooms. Later in the week, Pat and Art, from Novato, gave able assistance to our crew. I'm sure the lives of the 4 men and a baby who lived there were affected by our presence, as we were from entering their lives, if even so briefly.

We are home. By now, all of our crew should have returned from Fernley. Jennifer and I drove back last night, and discovered that our car needs service. It pulled to the right all the way home. Nice drive. (Followup: we had a tire tread separation, and had to replace the tire.)

Please ask other members of the team to describe their experience to you.

To me, I am always grateful that I can take the time and have the energy and opportunity to do mission work like this. We have so much, and it is a small effort for us to share some of our resources with those who really need our help. To be quite precise, it is the Christian thing to do.

Please consider joining us on a future trip. It will change you.

On our last night together, Thursday, we sat after dinner and talked about our experiences. After singing and devotions, Diane told us we could go, but no one did. We needed to be together and talk through it some more. After a while, we sang another song, Surely The Presence, and then we left. The words of the song say it all:

"Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place,
I can feel God's mighty power and God's grace,
I can feel the touch of angels' wings,
I see glory on each face,
Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place."

It's hard to remember to write a comment every day. Our days start about 6:30 am. We rise, eat breakfast in our rooms, and get ready for the day. At 7:30 am, we meet at the Senior Center for any last minute arrangements and to pick up beverages for lunch and water for the day. Then it's off to our houses.

At lunch, we were fortunate to have Meals On Wheels deliver our lunches. Then after working at the house all day, we may or may not have time to take a shower before dinner at 5:30 pm. After dinner, we share what happened at our houses today, sing a few songs, and have a devotional time. Then it's back to our rooms or RVs for a little time before it's off to bed and start the day again, unless you had an errand or two to run, like picking up something for breakfast or some building supplies so you could get a better start in the morning. Some days, there is time to write a comment and some days there just isn't time or energy.

I hope you have had time to view some of the photos that team members have taken this week and we have posted here. I hope to get some titles and comments so you will know a little more about what has happened here the last two weeks.

Right now, we have 3 sites going. One is a carry-over from last week, the Otuafi's. There is so much to do on this house that we can't possibly get done, but the team is trying anyway. Several bedrooms have been changed from unfinished to almost ready to carpet and occupy. The outside of the house has been scraped and cleaned, and primed today. It should be painted tomorrow. The kitchen is still a collection of cabinets in the center of the room. But we have made tremendous progress, and we think re-energized the family to complete the work.

Another house had its basement completely filled with water, and we will have two rooms sheetrocked and mostly taped and mudded and sanded. If you don't know what taping and mudding is about, ask any member of the VIM team.

The third house is the one my team and I have worked on this week. Jesus and Monica Rodriguez had about a foot of water in their house. When we arrived, most living areas had been repaired. Except for the bathrooms. They had one working toilet, quite a challenge for the 6 family members to share. We had a great day, and managed to get the second bathroom tile cemented in place today. Tomorrow, we will do some drywall work, and then grout the tile and install a second toilet. We will have both bathrooms ready for use, so the family of 6 will again have two functioning bathrooms. Imagine what it was like for this family to see their home flooded in January, and despite their effort, not being able to use it all in September. This is what many here have faced. We found in our discussions at the Senior Center with other local residents that there are some people in need who are just discovering that there is help available, so there is still a lot of need here.

We have one more day of work here in Fernley.

We are pleased to have been able to get the Rodriguez family much closer to normal after our week. There is still work to do, but it is really cosmetic, like finishing sheetrock and painting, rather than functional.

It is the least that we can do. We do it in God's name.

I felt a little out of touch with the group today. At about 3:30, I put a drywall screw through a water pipe at Jesus and Monica Rodriguez's house. We waited until we located a plumber, then hurried off to the senior center to get dinner, then back to work with the plumber to restore water to the house. Fortunately, it all worked out fine. The plumber refused to take what I thought was a fair price for the repair, saying that he doesn't want to charge his neighbors a lot as they all went through the flood as he did. We are working this week at the Rodriguez house. On January 5, they had a foot of water in their house, while the houses across the street escaped flooding. Monica learned about our longterm assistance program at work, and we will help them get their two bathrooms restored to working order. We are replacing drywall and flooring. Their house is very different. The living areas are all finished with ceramic tile, and the walls are painted in a most interesting pattern, with three colors that are intermixed and swirled together. Very artistic. We are working at five houses this week. Two are carryovers from last week, and three are new. (Notice that my math is still good ;-) I'll tell you more about the other sites as I learn more about them. We spoke with Jesus Rodriguez while waiting for the plumber. He was amazed that we were there paying our own expenses and on our own time. We tried to explain to him that our Jesus expects us to do what our neighbors need from us. We hope that we can do a little to ease the real suffering here among people who are putting all of their paychecks into restoring their houses.

Our first week is done here at Fernley. We made significant progress in helping the people disrupted by the January flood.

Jennifer and I completed our work at Debbie Sue's house. We completed the bathroom - yeah! We installed a tile floor, wainscoating, and trim. Now she will be able to use all of her house. This was the last work to completely restore her house. She lost a lot during the flood, like her hardwood floors, which she could not afford to replace. But at least she has a weather tight home, with all the rooms in liveable condition.

Other work completed this week included most of Andrea Davis's project, although there is still more to do there. Brian Garrison's team completed the fence. Norm Hardin's team completed the replacement barn floor. There is still a lot of work on the Otuafi house, where most of the team finished working this week. In addition to completing our work there next week, we will take on two new homes, where we will be finishing bathrooms and basements. Yes, there is at least one house with a basement here. It is as rare as back in California.

Some of our team is returning home tonight or tomorrow, and some new team members join us Sunday night for orientation and job assignment. And we will sing and pray as a new team for the coming week, and work hard to get more people back in their homes. We know that Fernley, Nevada, doesn't seem as compelling as last year's trip to the Gulf Coast to address Hurricane Katrina's impact. But you would be wrong to think that there was not real need here, nor that we could make a difference. Those who joined us this week recounted the joy they felt in being able to help here, and glad that they came.

After all, as we have heard on other VIM Mission trips, it is not about us. It is about those in need who we can help. We are the missionaries of Christ in this place, for this week.

For those of you who don't know her, Judy joined our trip from Modesto UM Church.  Judy says:

In Fernley - hospitality from the Otuafi home crew:

1. Noma Otuafi, the owner, stops by each day with gifts of Tongan hospitality - punch, otai, and bottled water.  Listening to her family history draws us into Noma's long-term dream of finishing this home begin 15 years ago. Our help has energized the family to hope and work toward their goal.  Yesterday, Noma herself cleared out the desert weeds.

2. The Fernley Senior Center offers such hospitality that we've signed up to receive Meals on Wheels lunches!  Besides giving us a place to meet, wash, and eat, friendly seniors have welcomed us and given us a key.

3. We enjoy working together as a team - using our gifts and encouraging each other as we step out of our comfort zones!  There are always tasks, skilled or unskilled.  It's fun to find and share our common bonds.  There is comraderie in Fernley.

We are getting a lot done in Fernley despite some of our frustrations with getting needed materials.  Thankfully, we are able to use funds raised at our churches to help offset this problem.

At Debbie Sue's house, we completed the fences and gates to replace those destroyed by the flood.  We also laid ceramic tile in her bathroom, and should be able to grout them tomorrow.  She should have her bathroom ready by the end of the week.  Imagine being without your bathroom since January!!

See the photos posted for Diane Jackson and Nancy Zanolini for photos of the Otuafi family house.  They have been working for years to get their house in livable condition.  We will make a big dent in the work to be done.  What impressed me is the plaster carvings in their house's interior walls.  They have put a family crest and a number of other artistic carvings in their house.  We painted the walls and some of the team took the time to highlight the carvings.

Also see Ray Nipper's photos for some of the work his team is doing to rebuild a fence destroyed by the flood.  The homeowner has been unable to use his back yard for livestock since the waters tore the old one down.  You can also see that food is a big part of our time here.  This year, the local Meals on Wheels is providing hot lunches to us at our sites at a very inexpensive price.  See Ray's photos of our Tuesday lunch.  You will also see that his homeowners did a little extra for them.  Check out the cinnamon rolls, for example. 

Of course, it isn't really about the food.  It isn't about us.  It is about the people here who have lost a lot because of a flood and the work of church members from many locations to help them get back in their homes.  OK, it's a little about the food.  At least, it's a great topic of discussion when we get together in the evenings to share a meal, tell about our day's highs and lows, and to sing a few songs and have evening devotions.

Today, we began work on our sites. My site was the home of Debbie Sue. She was renting her house to some tenants when the flooding started, and her renters left. She was going through a divorce, so she decided to move back into her house, She said that her friends made it possible, as FEMA would not help her since she was renting her house at the time of the flood. She has done a lot of work so far, but needs a little help to get things completed. We are putting up a fence and two gates that were wiped away by the flood. We are also tiling her bathroom and putting up wainscoating. When these are completed, just about everything will be done for her. It has taken her 8 months to get her home restored to how it was before the flood. Money is tight for her, as she lost her job recently as a result of the problems in the mortgage business.

We had dinner tonight at the Fernley Senior Center. I told you how nice they have been to us. We has a great dinner (though not as good as we had courtesy of Sara Rhodes). We told some of the people there tonight (Monday is Bingo night) about why we are here. Several seniors asked how they could contact our group as they still need help getting their houses straightened out. There is still need.

After dinner, one of the volunteers was talking with us, and showed us a bumper sticker they were selling for $1. It said,
"C.A.G.
"Citizens Against Gophers"
"I survived the 2008 Fernley Flood!"

It is good to see that they still have a sense of humor. It was gophers who undermined the canal walls and caused the flooding. Of course, from what we have heard, the people who watched for two weeks before the flood and didn't do much to prepare or mitigate the damage might have some responsibility, too. But it's more fun, and probably more useful, to blame the gophers.

Work progressed at other sites, too. We had our usual first Monday problem: lack of materials. My team ended up making a trip to Lowe's so we wouldn't just sit waiting. We found out at dinner that several other teams did the same thing. We hope to have this straightened out soon, but we know from prior trips that it is always a problem.

Tomorrow, Brian and Diane are making a trip to Reno, about 30 miles away, to pick up some materials that are not available in Fernley. Well, they should be available, but they are in some cases out of stock, and we can't really wait a week to get them. In others, we want to take advantage of some offers to help. For example, Sherwin Williams has a paint factory in Fernley, and has made an offer to sell us paint at $5 per gallon. We have to go to Reno to get it, but at the cost of paint, it is worth a trip to Reno, even with gas costing what it does.

Thank you to all who supported our trip so that we have some money to purchase materials to keep our work going, and to help out where there was no other help available. We still welcome your prayers and donations to keep our work going. Can you imagine getting flooded in the middle of the desert??

The rest of the first week team arrived today. We had a group dinner and orientation meeting at the local Senior Center. The team leaders had a chance to tour the houses where we will be working this week, and probably next week, too. The needs vary a lot, but we can tell that all of the homeowners are really appreciative of us being here.

I will be leading a team at the Adams home. We have some wallboard replacement mudding and taping, some ceramic tile to put in the bathroom. and two fences and gates to build. Other sites have everything from painting to finish trim to fences to barn floors to cabinet installation to whatever it takes to get these people back in their homes.

I wish I could say that we were finishing the work, but we saw many houses that were vacant and needing repair before they can be inhabited again. We could work for months to help the people here. We will do our best to get at least some back in their homes by the time we leave. I'll keep you updated on our progress.

The first part of the team leadership has arrived in Fernley. We got here mid afternoon, and didn't do much, other than some of us making a trip to Wal-Mart for snacks, etc.

We met up for dinner, and walked next door from our motel to a restaurant, which turned out to be a restaurant/casino, like so much of Nevada. The food was very good, and we learned that they have soft-serve ice cream. I expect we will be back many times during the two weeks we are here.

Fortunately, we were also surprised and pleased to learn that our motel, the cheap one in town, has nice rooms and wi-fi, so I can send messages like this one. I will also send photos and more info as we have it.