ATLANTA — It had been two years, and Beth and Joe Weedo still slept on air mattresses on the floor of their Pensacola, Fla., home. Hurricane Ivan had ripped through their community and dropped a tree on the Weedo house two years ago, but life wasn't anywhere back to normal.
But it wasn't for lack of effort. The retired couple had tried several times to get their house fixed, but contractor after contractor took their money, promised to fix the house and then vanished with money in hand. They were frustrated; they were losing hope; but they were about to be touched by two Cooperative Baptist Fellowship partner churches.
The Weedo's daughter, Becky Bennett, is a member of Fredericksburg Baptist Church in Fredericksburg. With her husband overseas on military deployment and a son with disabilities, Bennett hadn't been able to travel to see her parents. When she discovered how they were living, she asked the church's youth minister if he had any Florida contacts that could help her parents.
“It was me simply asking a question, and him saying, ‘Oh don't worry about. We'll take care of it,' ” Bennett said. “I was completely floored.”
The church committed to providing money and labor to restore the house. Soon after, the church's pastor, Larry Haun, and another church member flew down to evaluate the house.
“We had two 77-year-old individuals sleeping on a concrete floor … for two years,” Haun said.
CBF executive coordinator Daniel Vestal told Haun about First Baptist Church of Pensacola, and Haun called the church's pastor, Barry Howard, to find a trustworthy contractor. But Haun found more than just a suggestion. He found a group of men ready to work.
“The more we got into it, these men said, ‘We'll do the work. Don't spend the money to fly down here,'” Haun said. “It was just incredible how they just took the project on.”
The storm that damaged the Weedo house was the same storm that started First Baptist Pensacola's hurricane recovery efforts two years ago. The church served as a recovery distribution point after Ivan, and when Hurricane Katrina hit, the church reached out, making numerous recovery trips to Mississippi.
“We had a group of retired men, some of whom could not travel to Mississippi each week, and this gave them a project close by,” Howard said.
This group of less than a dozen men worked on the house and oversaw subcontractors, “giving Fredericksburg a set of eyes [on the ground],” Howard said.
And as work began, Bennett asked her mom what dream she had for the house. More than anything, Beth Weedo wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving in her house with her family. So church members worked on the house last fall with the goal of having it done by Thanksgiving, when Bennett and her family would come to visit. The house wasn't quite finished, but the family still celebrated Thanksgiving under the roof of a house they were thankful to have restored.
“My mom … says, ‘Churches don't do this. Churches will feed you, but they don't build houses for you.' She's never had a church do something like this for her,” Bennett said.
In the end, it only took $36,000 to do the job — an unbelievably low amount considering the house's condition, Haun said.
The house is complete, but the relationship between these churches isn't. When Howard learned an elderly church member's husband had just died and she was living in Fredericksburg, he called Haun. Howard asked Haun to make a pastoral visit, and after the funeral, Haun got church members to offer care through the grief process.
“Partnering together was able to accomplish two things,” Haun said.