Meet Jacques. He is an immigrated naturalized citizen from the Congo, who came to America about 10 years ago. He has been almost completely blind since birth.
We met Jacques 2 years ago when he started to come to the Jacob’s Well food distributions (which is also where we learned of his love for grape juice). After getting to know each other, Jacques took part in many of the different Jacob’s Well and First Presbyterian Church events.
Jacques normally has a person come and help him a few hours a week with things like co
oking and cleaning but after moving to a new apartment he had to find a new person to come help. In the break between help Jacques’ apartment became infested with Bed Bugs. After trying to connect Jacques to resources with the government and other
community organizations, the limited and slow response spurred MOT to action.
This is exactly why MOT was founded; the vision for an organization that has the network and resources to act when it is needed. After reaching out to various people we found donors ready to give all the furniture Jacques would need and help to handle the apartment.
John Tinius & Quinn Small prepare to remove bed bug infested furniture
Scott Lloyd, John Tinius and a friend of the organization Quinn Small, headed over to Jacques apartment mid-morning one Sunday. After suiting up to stop the spread of Bed Bugs, the three walked into a space that no one should have to live in. Jacques is a happy, kind-hearted person but with his disabilities he has difficulty doing many things. His bedroom had Bed Bugs all over and the kitchen was full of rotting food.
After plastic wrapping all the infected furniture and linens (to further stop the spread of the bugs) it was taken to the dump and the kitchen was scrubbed to a nice shine again. A heart felt thank you was given by Jacques and we headed out the door.
MOT, in the next weeks, coordinated heat treating Jacques apartment. MOT also paid the $500 bill, as Jacques is on a fixed income and it would have been hard for him to pay for the treatment. Bill from Pest Busters was a blessing in his guidance on how to get rid of infected furniture and he cut his payment rate because of the charity nature of this case. Since all of Jacques clothing also had to be thrown away Jacob’s Well (one of MOT’s partnering organizations) took Jacques shopping and paid for his new wardrobe.
A new care provider was found to help Jacques, and in the first week of July, a new bed was delivered. It was wonderful to see how happy Jacques was and to have him in a good living situation again.
Jacque and his new bed
Often people want to talk about helping others, MOT is about action, to meet the needs we encounter when we can. It isn’t easy and doesn’t always smell nice, but this is our calling. There are so many opportunities where you can make a significant difference in someone’s life. Just as Jacques would call to inform us it was the first night in weeks where he was “not eaten while he slept, thank you so much!”