One afternoon Jody Hooper, Vice Chair of SMI, and I were scouting for people who had completed work order requests. We turned into a driveway of a house with a tarp partially covering a hole where a large oak tree had been removed. As we approached the house an elderly lady came around the house and extended a greeting. We discovered she is a widow of a retired military husband. She is also a retired teacher from Alaska. We asked if we could see inside her house and she gave us permission. As we entered the living room we could only see a wall of downed sheetrock and smell the mold that was already spreading through the house. We quickly suggested we exit the house due to the mold. As we turned to exit, she asked if we could help her retrieve a painting her husband had purchased for her just before they moved from Alaska. As Jody reached over the table to get the painting, I saw a framed filled with photos of her husband and the medals he had been awarded during his time of service. Also on the wall was the framed flag that had draped her husband’s coffin. I asked her if she wanted to take these as well. When she saw them, she broke into tears and said, “I just don’t know what I need to do or take!” We gathered these few special belongings and exited the house. As we stood in the front yard next to the downed tree, we learned she had lost her home insurance coverage five months before the storm. After expressing her embarrassment, through tears, of not getting new coverage, she began to share how she had faith and was continuing to pray and read her Bible. She shared a couple of things she had recently learned while reading the Bible and the joy of the Lord poured from her. We prayed with her before we left and promised we would return on Saturday to help her. On Saturday a great group of men and one lady worked from 8:30-7:30 building a temporary enclosure over the huge hole to support a tarp. We continue the journey with this widow. As of today, a retired military group has gutted her house and assisted her in salvaging many of her personal items. Also, four Mennonite men from New York are now framing up the hole and by Thursday will have the roof completed and the house permanently dried in! We will be placing dehumidifiers in the house soon after the roof completion to help extract moisture from the framework inside the house. Once the framework is dry, we will recruit volunteers to install sheetrock followed by taping and floating. If you would like to help in this process through financial gifts and/or volunteering, please let us hear from you. You may contact Stepstones Ministry International by dropping us an email at stepstones.info@yahoo.com.