She copes with breathing difficulties and heart problems, recently became a widow after 60 years of marriage, and lives in a deteriorating house. Della needed help but wasn’t sure where to turn.
“My husband always took care of everything, but since I don’t have him or my son [who had moved in with me but then passed away after a heart attack] helping me out anymore, I can’t afford [home repairs]. I mostly stay in the living room, because that’s where the fan is – my air conditioning is also broken. And I don’t really clean up the house because it’s too hot,” she said.
“It’s been really hard, because I’m just trying to learn how to be by myself; it’s been like trying to learn how to live all over again. Recently, I’ve had to learn how to budget, take my Social Security Income to pay the light bill and the water bill, and only buy the things I need.”
Della was in a difficult situation both emotionally and financially – her quality of life was in serious decline. Then one day, Home Repairs Ministries came into the picture.
“I told them my house was getting kind of ragged around the edges, so they came out to look at it, took pictures of it, and then a few weeks later they came out and began to fix it up,” Della said.
What the Home Repairs team found was Della’s ceiling breaking loose, multiple walls that were rotting and filled with holes, rotted soffit and fascia boards, and a part of the home’s structure that was particularly hazardous for Della: a broken porch post.
“There was a broken post that, when I pulled myself up with it, I’d almost pull the whole thing down,” she said. “But when I went out to the porch [after Home Repairs came] and pulled up on the post, and I said, ‘It’s so steady; I can pull myself back up and catch myself if I [start to] fall!’”
Throughout the whole repair process, Della enjoyed having the Home Repairs team there.
“I just prayed for them, and they took their time and did such a good job. And they were just so nice, talking to me and bringing me things that I needed,” she said.
“Home Repairs took care of everything, and [the house] really looks brand new. It was just like a miracle!”
Between faithful prayer and the generosity of Home Repairs donors who make repairs like this possible, Della now finds herself in a safer, happier home, and is deeply grateful for it.
“We sometimes have to go through suffering. But I’m taking each day as it comes and trusting the Lord, and He has been blessing me,” Della said. “I am so blessed and highly favored.
“I just thank God for how the team came out and have been working on the house. I can’t say enough about them or thank them enough for how they have been such a blessing to me.”
