A reader writes:
I am writing this because our pastor said somebody should, and because I am the only one in our congregation who types fast.
I am an accounts clerk. I have never held a hammer for longer than it takes to hang a calendar. So when the storm passed over our district last October and the men at church started talking about going to help Mr Levi, I assumed my part would be to pray and maybe send up a pot of soup.
Mr Levi lives three houses up from the church, on the corner where the road bends. He is somewhere in his seventies, a Rastafarian, keeps goats and a big pumpkin patch, and for as long as I have been going to that church he has made it clear he has no use for it. On Sunday mornings, when our sound system is loud, he plays his own music louder. Some of our older members call him “that man”. He calls us “the noise”.
The storm peeled the back half of his roof clean off. His kitchen and his bedroom were open to the sky. He was sleeping in the front room on a foam mattress with a tarpaulin tied over the doorway, and his radio and his papers were in a bucket to keep them dry.
Deacon Morris walked up the next morning and came back to the church yard and said, “We have to do something.” Not everybody agreed. One sister said, quite plainly, that there were church families who had lost zinc too, and charity begins at home. She was not wrong that there were. In the end we helped both, but Mr Levi lived alone and his was the worst on our road.
Within an hour of the men getting started, it was obvious nobody was keeping track of anything. Who bought the nails? How many sheets did we need? Who was coming Saturday, and who was only saying they were coming? So somebody pushed a clipboard into my hands. I turned it into a spreadsheet on my phone that same evening. I listed every donation: a carpenter from another congregation who gave three Saturdays for the price of lunch, a member working in Florida who sent money, a hardware owner’s cousin who dropped off two boxes of roofing screws. I kept every receipt in a plastic folder and read the totals out after service. I learned that people give more easily when they can see exactly where it goes.
The first Saturday, Mr Levi stood at his gate with his arms folded. He did not want “church people” on his roof. Deacon Morris sat with him under the mango tree for the better part of an hour. I don’t know everything that was said, but I know Morris promised him nobody would preach at him. We would just fix the roof. Mr Levi had one condition: no gospel music on his house. We agreed. The teenagers kept their music in their earphones.
It took three Saturdays. The carpenter found rotten rafters and insisted on replacing them, and on putting in proper hurricane straps. “No point putting back what already failed,” he said, and that became a sort of motto for us. I learned words like purlin and fascia. I carried sheets with the youth group and my arms hurt until Wednesday.
I would like to say I was full of love the whole time. I wasn’t. I was irritated with the sister who complained. I was irritated with Mr Levi for making us feel unwelcome while we were on his roof in the sun. And I was irritated with myself, because I noticed I cared more about my spreadsheet balancing than about the man whose house it was.
At the end of the second Saturday the numbers did not balance. We were short for the last few sheets and I had no idea where the rest would come from. I sat on an upturned bucket by his water drum and, to my shame, cried. Mr Levi came round the side of the house, looked at me for a while, then went and cut a jelly coconut and handed it to me. “Daughter,” he said, “the roof going finish.” The next morning there was an envelope under the church door with no name on it, and on the third Saturday the last sheet went on.
That same afternoon he cooked for everybody. Ital stew, pumpkin, dumplings, no salt. Half our older members had never eaten at his table in thirty years of living on the same road. Some of them turned up their noses at first. Most of them went back for more.
He still doesn’t come to church. He still plays his music on Sunday mornings, though I would swear it is a little lower now. He nods to me when I pass. Last Easter he sent a crocus bag of pumpkins down to the church kitchen with a note in pencil that said, “For the noise.” I laugh every time I think of it.
I thought the church’s gift was the roof. I think now the roof was the least of it. I had to learn to be useful without being the hero, to serve somebody who had no interest in our religion, to keep careful accounts without letting the accounts become the point, and to accept that kindness does not always get thanked on your timetable. For years I have prayed, “Change me, Lord.” I did not expect Him to do it on a roof.
— Shauna-Kay, Portland
Editor’s note
Shauna-Kay’s congregation argued over whether to help “one of ours” first. Paul answers that tension without choosing one side: “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10). Two practical lessons stand out. First, rebuilding well matters: when a roof fails, it is worth getting a qualified carpenter or contractor to find out why, rather than simply putting back what was there. Second, not every helper needs a hammer. Someone who keeps honest records, organises volunteers and handles receipts carefully can be what keeps the whole effort trusted, and finished.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
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