Chastity

From Janice Branam:

As I read through the blogs of my teammates, Chastity’s face flashed through mind. Chastity was our “client” at the St. Bernard Project. When Katrina hit, Chastity was a divorced mother of 3 children: a sixteen year old son and eleven year old twins (one boy, one girl). Chastity supported her family through her earnings as a hairstylist.

Almost 3 years later, our team just finished mudding her house and began painting. Our Americorp site supervisor estimates Chastity will be in her house within a month, the end of the journey for the young woman who first evacuated to Baton Rouge, then Denver, and then Mississippi.

I can’t imagine paying a mortgage on a house that no longer exists and trying to find food and shelter for 3 children. Chastity’s hair clients of course, haven’t come back. She had to find a new career; in the time since the hurricane she has secured a job with emergency medical services. (As a paramedic, I think). She was able to get enough money to pay off the mortgage on the uninhabitable house, but she didn’t get enough money to make the house livable.

That’s where volunteers like us make the difference.

And that’s what First Congregational is all about. We make a difference…in so many ways to so many people.

Chastity has remarried. She met her new husband, a member of the National Guard, at the rescue shelter in Mississippi.

For Chastity, a new life has emerged from the muddy waters of devastation. We helped. Yes, we helped.