| Annual Report Story, March 2008
By Scott CoverdaleWe got a call not long ago from Child and Family Services, another agency that serves low-income people in Pima County. They told us of a family living in the far western parts of Viking Road. It seems that this couple was having some trouble with their electrical system. Not to mention that they had no water heater or furnace, or that their toilet didn't flush or their shower didn't work or their faucet didn't run and their roof leaked and their drains wouldn't drain and the tub walls were optimistically made out of masonite. The woman had recently been in a terrible car accident in which she had broken 22 bones and now suffered seizures on a fairly regular basis. She and her husband are getting by on $275 per month, plus food stamps. Their five year old daughter Katie is in kindergarten. This turned out to be a pretty big job by CHRPA standards. Ted and Elinor are Yankee electricians, and Yankee electricians by nature tend to be unimpressed by long extension cords, by aluminum wiring, or by other people's "monkeying" with things electrical. I have to admit that it is sometimes easier to get them started on a job than to get them to call it finished. Anyway, they looked things over with the man who lived there and decided that some new wiring was in order. They explained that a trench would have to be dug from the electrical pedestal to where the electric service would enter the house. I don't think they were telling him to dig it, but when they got there the next morning, there was a trench all ready for them, eighteen inches deep and forty feet long. Ted and Elinor replaced the breaker panel and umpteen outlets, switches, fixtures and wires. The job went on for a while. Over the course of the next three weeks, Francis, Tim, Steve and Abe all spent time working on the house. When we were all done, it became obvious that the family would benefit from a stove and refrigerator, and we rustled the bushes until Tucson Metropolitan Ministries donated the needed appliances. After we were all done with the job, I received a letter from the case manager who had originally asked us for help on behalf of the family. He writes that, "The family is so thankful that they call it a miracle..." I tend to agree with them, really. I believe that this miracle worked itself out through the hard work of these dedicated and compassionate workers, the provision of eighteen hundred dollars worth of materials by Pima County, the contribution of TMM, the board of directors, our partnering agencies, Shalom Mennonite Fellowship, and all of the donors and supporters that make the work of CHRPA possible day in and day out.
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