A note on a worthy cause

A family in need

Hello Friends!

Perhaps you heard of the family in Tennessee, where the oldest son shot his father, a couple months ago. It was a terrible situation, straight out of Dostoevsky, where the son acted under great psychological duress in order to save the family from further pain. There are very complicated and layered aspects to this story, obviously, but suffice to say that it is a real need. Thankfully, several friends have connected in order to give the family a new start. Details here: Help This Family Now.

James P. Crocker, President & CEO of Waterblasting Technologies, is leading an effort renovate their house. It is a place with a lot of bad memories and a lot of physical needs -- renovating and restoring it will give the wife and kids a new start to life. In the words of Inigo Montoya: "This is a noble cause, sir!" :-)

Please consider making a donation to help this family, ok?

God bless you all!

Sincerely,

Loy
p.s. here's a letter from James Crocker. James and his wife Lynette are really motivated, spearheading this effort in TN from here in South Florida, organizing 60 professional volunteers, plus others, hoping to complete the project in six days.

James writes:

Dear Friends,

Your help is truly needed. We are trying to make a radical difference in the lives of a family in crisis and you can help. Many of you knew or remember Tommy Schankweiler from your school days. You have also heard about the recent death of Tommy. There is so much more that you haven't heard and perhaps there is no need to burden yourself with it. However, the family has been through untold horrors over the last several years. Even if you didn't know them you can still help. In many ways they feel like strangers to me as well. I had only talked to Tommy twice in twenty years. My wife Lynette and I have felt like someone should step forward and organize a broad effort to facilitate a “Fresh Start” for this unfortunate family. We further contemplated the “if not us, Who? “ question. Upon taking stock of our blessings we felt like we should make the effort. So, we wasted no time getting to work. Because so much of their less than pleasant experiences happened within the four walls of their house, and because it needed so much work as well, we thought that a complete overhaul of the home would serve many, many purposes. It would accomplish something badly needed for a start plus it would create a venue for a lot of people to express their love and support for the family demonstrating the love of Christ to them and connecting in a very tangible way. It furthermore would recreate their surroundings making bad memories fade and the creation of new memories a more likely objective. It will serve to bolster the self esteem and moral of the children. I could go on and on but I shall not take your time. Suffice it to say that we made the decision with others to launch a complete remodeling and even adding a small addition to their home in order to achieve the objectives I have outlined. For many other reasons, we also decided that the project would be completed start to finish in just 6 days. This complicates the process immensely, but the positives of doing so far outweigh the added effort. We knew from the start that we could not do this alone and soon realized that a lot of people were just waiting in the wings to help.

Since then we have been on an adventure of a lifetime. Recruiting and organizing 75 Volunteers in a town over 800 miles away is both exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. We also have had the daunting task of trying to raise $ 75,000 for the project. What I have discovered well into my very first attempt at fundraising is that people seem to have more time than money these days. So, whereas we have had over 60 people volunteer so far and I am feeling very good about being able to complete our objectives on that end, we are running seriously behind in our fundraising. With only two weeks left till we start the project, we have raised $ 36,000. This leaves us a rather frightening deficit of $ 39,000. So my very frugal better half and I have been hard at work trimming anywhere we can and we have cut a full $ 10,000 out of the project... Lynette is a pro at finding items on sale and other opportunities to buy items for less. I have been getting quotes for materials through Home Depot and another local lumber yard ensuring that we are getting the very best deals possible. So then, we have trimmed that deficit down to $ 25,201.

Where does that leave us? Well, we have over 60 committed professionals both local and from out of town, ready to tackle this work and complete the entire project from June 30th to July 5th. In fact, some of the names of our Volunteers you will recognize immediately. However, without the cash to purchase the materials, this is an impossible goal. However, I am convinced that God has blessed a number of you out there to the point that your storehouses are nearly overflowing. To keep the levees from breaking you had better bleed a little cash off the top in order to avert disaster. I am sure that you, like me, are overrun with request from here thither and yon assuring you that their particular ministry or project is truly the one that God Himself would have you support. I make no such claims. I only want you to know that should you choose to invest with me, I can tell you that I have put forth a good deal of money and hundreds of hours as well and will make sure that every dollar you give goes directly to the point of need. It is very difficult and even kind of weird for me to be asking for your help. Hopefully it will be my first and last time to do so. I would not be asking for it if I didn't truly need it and didn't feel this was such a worthy cause.

If you want to know more about the project, go online to www.helpthisfamilynow.com and take a look around the website. There you can see the basic layout of the remodel project, pictures of the family, you can see how much we have raised as well as give via credit card (this only cost 2% which is phenomenal) and take a look at the volunteer list. You can fill out the volunteer form and a number of other things as well. Check it out. You can call me anytime at any of my numbers listed below if you have questions, comments etc. about the project, or anything else for that matter.

“There is no deeper well of energy than a clear vision of a worthy cause”

James P. Crocker, upon finishing this letter

Thanks, everyone, for your consideration! God bless you!

Selah.