'They were pros': Visiting mission team completes major home repairs

There were two church groups in Hawkins County the week of July 17-21 providing home repairs and other services as part of the Of One Accord ministry’s mission program.

The mission team from Garrison Baptist Church in Dayton, Tenn, was featured in the Review last week for building two porches, a wheelchair ramp and making repairs at the home of an elderly Rogersville woman.

Also bringing a mission team to Hawkins County that week was Flemings Baptist Church from Lenoir City, N.C., which completed three major projects.

The people helped by Flemings Baptist Church included:

Wanda Winstead who resides in the Carters Valley community. She has difficulty walking as well as a hard time pulling her car into her driveway. The team made her a new driveway. Her house sits next to a hill and had water runoff that absorbed into her basement. French drains were also installed in a couple of places to solve that problem.

Ruby Brice of Ebbing Flowing Springs Road has her house up against the bank of a hill. The team replaced windows and dug a drainage ditch to prevent water from running under and damaging her house. The team had to hand-dig the drain removing dirt, but dirt had washed down the hill against the house with moisture being soaked up by the wood. The team did a great job with their repair, but ministry officials are searching for a way to further repair damage to the house.

Lenny Ball of Church Hill is paralyzed below the waist. His wife has to use a hoist to move him to a rollator to move him from the bedroom to the living room. The bathroom was made handicap accessible. The floors were leveled for his wife to move him easier, and windows were replaced to be more economical. We have to partner with another agency trying to get the family an HCAV for the home.

Of One Accord ministry director Sheldon Livesay estimated the overall volume of work completed on all three projects by Flemings Baptist Church exceeded $50,000 in value.

“They had one of the greatest skill levels of any team that we’ve had in a long time,” Livesay said. “They had two or three contractors with them, so they had a lot of people in their church who do construction type jobs. What a blessing to get a mission team in here which such high skill levels.”

Livesay added, “At Ms. Winstead’s house they rented an excavator, and they rented that little Bobcat, and those guys operated those things — they were pros. The projects in Church Hill and Ebbing and Flowing Springs where they replaced all the windows, I don’t know that we’ve ever had a team able to do that before. They didn’t have to ask each other questions. They all knew what to do, and did a great job.”

Originally published on therogersvillereview.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.