Nashville, Tennessee

Six months ago, Nashville flooded and nobody noticed. Tennessee is known as the volunteer state, so they took care of themselves and rebuilt. But there is still a need here in this city.
It is interesting being here. You drive around the city and see nothing wrong. Nothing looks like it is damaged. The river looks so low it is hard to imagine it flooding anything. And yet it did. And the damage still exists. Many homes here still have damage, some never rebuilt. One of the houses Samaritan's Purse is working on is a large house of a family that has 6 children. 4 of the kids were adopted and the other two have special needs that require the house be wheelchair accessible. The family was supposed to be on extreme makeover, and so they did not rebuild right away, but then the show dropped them. They were close to being homeless before Samaritan's Purse heard of them and stepped in. The house is just now getting dry wall up - over six months after the flood that destroyed it. I think that exemplifies the need that still exists in this city.
Today, me, along with the nine females on the trip from Tabor, worked on a house that had just two feet of water damage. They were on the low end of the street, the upper ones escaped with likely little to no damage. The lower level of this house has been completely redone. And today we were in charge of painting it. We got a lot done, and a lot on ourselves. It was a lot of work but also a lot of fun. It feels good to be part of something like this, which I have never done before. The work so far has been fairly easy (it has only been a day) but soon floors will need to be put in as well as other appliances. To see tangible progress is nice...we painted nearly half the house in one day. And by the time we leave this house should be nearly done. It will feel good to give some one back their home, their life. Things we take for granted, these people no longer have. It makes me remember the extent to which we have things, we live in a material world and then a flood can come and take it all away. Many people here have been left with nothing and forced to start over. It is nice to help them do that. To give them back a little piece of what they have lost.