heartbroken

Habitat Dallas has started a new area of service..Rehab. This happens in two ways. One is the most unfortunate circumstance of having to essentially foreclose on a Habitat home, refurbish it and sell it to a new Habitat Family. The second is to acquire foreclosed on non-Habitat properties, refurbish and resell them as Habitat properties. Several of us worked on the first kind today. A home built 5-7 years ago by Habitat, that will now be known to 9 of us as the poo house.
As I enter the last portion of my second year of AmeriCorps service and a lifetime of service in general, I have seen my share of undesirable living circumstances, by both lifestyle and disaster. I believe today's to have been a disaster of lifestyle and my heart hurts still for it (along with the odd muscles used to scrape 1-3 layers of extremely gluey vinyl of the floors). At random in the house were bits of poop from a small dog and/or cat, mice; the smell of rotten milk and chicken; and I'll leave the gifts of the bathroom and the toilet we removed to your imagination.
I spent a lot of time in what I decided by the objects and pictures I found to be at the largest a 10x10 room shared by two boys- a small toddler and 5-7 year old. If they actually slept in the room, I'm not sure where as there were no beds, nor room in the mess to have been two beds. After several trash can loads of toys, books, shelving, etc I began to scrape. My heart was wrenched at this point. I began to pray. It was all I knew to do.
I prayed for those boys, for the sister(s), for the rest of the family, for the new family that will move in, for this generation. I will continue to pray for them. Where are they now? Is it better? Could it possibly be worse? I will continue to wonder where CPS is in places like this, only to then wonder if their life in a home such as this is a better one then foster care or orphanages could provide and my heart hurts more. So I pray. And I'll keep praying. I'll keep building houses. I'll keep praying.