A few hours ago, Emma sent this email out to our friends:

After long thought and a lot of heart searching, George & I have decided to take in a family from Louisiana. We are now starting to look for someone who can help us make arrangements to get people here. Meanwhile, we need anyone who wants to volunteer to help us clean out our basement and fix it up to house people. We have a guest room on our first floor, but we also need to rearrange the entire house to allow us to add 4-6 people to our lives for up to the next year.

At the very least, we need anyone who can donate money to help with travel costs for the family we get, to buy supplies to make our basement livable, to donate beds/bunk beds and other bedroom furniture (tho' this can wait on when we know the make up of the family we get), etc. Whatever family we get is going to became part of our family. We don't want them to feel like refugees being tolerated in our home in make-shift conditions, we want them to feel like FAMILY and that our home is their HOME.

If any of you have contact with a poor family that needs a new start, please let us know. We'll be looking for a way to get a family here.

Blessings, Emma Bartholomew & George Reilly

This was Emma's idea. I've always known that she had a big heart. I'm particularly proud of her this time.

She later sent this out:

Thanks for everyone's responses so far. George & I have contacted various groups about providing housing and are waiting to hear back. Meanwhile, we've come to the conclusion that we need to get some professionals in here to bring our basement up-to-code for housing a family. Does anyone know of a reputable contractor/firm that we could hire to do the work? With a good, fast firm, we can add two to three bedrooms with escape windows to our basement, while upgrading the basement bathroom to be able to handle the additional use.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Emma & George

It's going to be a busy few days around here. We have a lot of crap that we need to shift around.