Thursday, September 01, 2005

it's the little thing. It's always the little things.

Check this out.... it will make you smile. It made ME cry. Such a seemingly small gesture. But yet, such a HUGE one. I'm proud of my little hometown museum. Makes me know, without a doubt, that I'll be renewing our family membership with them.

And speaking of displaced families in Fort Worth. Dani told us tonight at dinner about a coach at her school. He has 38 people living in his house - all family members displaced because of Katrina. I'm gonna call the school tomorrow and offer our guest room. It'll sleep 4 in beds....6 if we move another bed in there, and even more if we put people on the floor. I hope they'll take us up on it, 'cause this is something we can do NOW. And we want to.

And I'll take 'em to our awesome museum.

9 comments:

Sherilyn said...

Corey and I have discussed taking some people in. Not quite sure about that.....we have trust issues.

Sigh.

Don't even know how that would work. How long would they stay? What exactly would it involve to hve them here? How do we know we can trust them with the valuables we have in the house?

Need to think about that some more....

Stacy said...

See, that's something I can't answer. 'Cuz you either have NO QUALMS, or you do. You can't be worried about your material stuff and have strange people living in your house.

I'm not worried about that stuff. Obviously. I have poverty-stricken people in and out of my house every day, and I'm completely OKAY with that. I figure if they take something, oh well. It's not all about me. At this point, it is ALL about THEM.

Most people aren't going to, though. But again... if that's something you're worried about, then hosting displaced hurricane victims isn't for you.

If I take people in, maybe you could help by helping me feed them. Or by buying them a few outfits apiece.

I have the open arms. You have the checkbook. Maybe we can work together. :)

Elaine said...

Yeah, it's just stuff. Those people have NOTHING.

If they took some of my stuff, so be it. Then at least they'd have SOMETHING.

Nancy D. said...

What DO I have?

Nothing they'd want that I cannot replace.

Even if they took off with our family photo albums... I CAN replace them.

If I had a priceless Picasso, I could rent a storage locker.

Sherilyn said...

I'm not as worried about them taking a TV or furniture or computer equipment .....although I'm not dying to lose $5,000-$10,000 worth of stuff or have some very expensive things damaged through abuse or what-have-you. (we are both very particular about taking care of furniture and such...Corey especially...his mother was positively neurotic when it came to keeping things loolking new).

I worry about things like family heirlooms...things that CANNOT be replaced. My grandmother's diamond earrings, quilts my grandmother and great-grandmother made for me, the china and other items I inherited from my great-grandmother, paintings/prints we inherited when Corey's mother died, etc. Some of these things I can lock up, other things I can't.

If I have some sort of references on people (through friends or an organization, etc.) I'd hesitate less, but you just don't know about complete and utter strangers that neither you or anybody you know knows.

Stacy said...

Right. You just can't know.

I happen to be okay with not knowing. Maybe I'll regret that later, but right now, I'm going with my heart and on complete blind faith that sheltering people who have no where else to go is what I was born to do. I've said a thousand times... this house is not ours. It's God's. We'll use it for His purpose. If that's to host a scrapbooking ministry, or to house hurricane victims...whichever. It's a responsibility I feel to use it for something other than me.

It's okay for you NOT to have this desire. Like Cara said... everybody has different gifts and are blessed with different circumstances. I know you'll find a way to help that's both beneficial to the victims AND considerate of your fears and circumstances.

Sue said...

Way to go, Stacy.

If I had unlimited funds, I'd rent some hotel rooms for folks.

As it is, we're building up a sizable donation for the Red Cross.

Bobbie said...

Santos and I talked to the girls tonight at the dinner table about housing a family. Brianna is all for it, she said she woul read the children stories, but she does not want a "man" she does not know in this house. It scares her. Brittani asked "what will they do when we are gone all day at school and work?" How long would they stay? My question is, how do you go through the process of finding the family's in need? And once you do, do you lay down some ground rules, such as, this is not a free ride for ??months, but make sure that they are trying to build their life back, looking for a job, HOW does all of this work?

Bobbie said...

I answered my own question, if you want to house victims you can go to www.katrinahousing.com