(2021) One of our area African families experienced the tragedy of the sudden death of the forty-five year old father of the family. They had lived in the Buffalo area for ten years and owned their own home. Both parents worked outside the home and had both young and young adult children.
When any of our African families experience such a loss, ROTA springs into action, often with assistance for the funeral and burial of the loved one. Amazingly, the gentleman who passed had life insurance and so the total cost of the funeral and burial were covered. We applaud the father's insightful planning. We still continued our outreach to his wife and offered to assist in any way we could. The mom of the family shared with me a few projects around the house that now, with the death of her husband, she didn't know how to care for. There was a water leak from the roof that would enter the interior stairway of the home each time it would rain. Even the city inspector ruled that the homeowner put on a new roof. I traveled with a church member to make a visual inspection of the home. As soon as we arrived and visually inspected the home, we could notice an indentation in the roof that mirrored where we were told the leak was entering the home.
While both of us agreed upon the portion of the roof that needed repair I noticed an opening in the side of the home
that I hadn't noticed even after we toured the attic space. Lo and behold there was a massive opening in the side of the home where a large picture window had been in the attic space. The window was long gone and the space was covered interiorly by a large carpet nailed to the studs in the wall. We now found two major home repairs and I had to lean on some contractors I knew for advice about whom to call for assistance. Explaining the situation to our secured roofing contractor he gave us a realistic estimate for the whole roof replacement and side hole house repair. We had to compromise with a limited work order consisting of roof repair of the front of the house as well as the side house repair. The owner was able to make a financial contribution that we at ROTA were able to match. The contractor also gave us a huge discount that kept us within our operating budget. The work then began. In the course of a week the work was done, the leaky roof repaired, the hole in the side of the house unnoticeably repaired. All this before the snow would fly. Thank you Lord!
