Helping the Lightfoots rebuild

Goal:

 USD $100,000

Raised:

 USD $6,035

Campaign created by Elizabeth Lightfoot

Campaign funds will be received by Elizabeth Lightfoot

Helping the Lightfoots rebuild

Our house burnt down on Tuesday, August 6, 2024.Everyone is safe, but the house is a total loss. (Edit: The main part of the house may be salvageable. We were able to get some of our clothes out of the dressers, which gave their lives valiantly protecting their contents.) My computer, tablet, and Kindle are burnt, everything at one end of the house is gone, everything else is either water or smoke damaged, maybe both. 

We'll need a place to stay, as well as someplace to store what we're able to salvage. We'll also need to rebuild and replace what we've lost. 

For the past year we've been without house insurance, and have been saving up to be able to purchase it again. We would have been able to do so next month. So this is hitting us extra hard. 

https://open.substack.com/pub/jasinikc/p/our-house-burnt-down

https://open.substack.com/pub/jasinikc/p/video-walk-through-of-the-house?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=kihoy

Updates to follow. 

Recent Donations
Show:
Karen Schuster
$ 50.00 USD
1 month ago

Stephen Westbrook
$ 100.00 USD
2 months ago

May God continue to grant His grace and peace for the days and weeks ahead..!

Ian Bruene
$ 25.00 USD
2 months ago

Anonymous Giver
$ 60.00 USD
2 months ago

Praying.

Anonymous Giver
$ 200.00 USD
2 months ago

Hannah
$ 50.00 USD
3 months ago

I hope everything works out for you.

Anonymous Giver
$ 50.00 USD
4 months ago

Praying God gives you all the things you need to get back in your house.

Anonymous Giver
$ 25.00 USD
4 months ago

Uwe and Tina
$ 100.00 USD
4 months ago

Mimi
$ 10.00 USD
4 months ago

Anonymous Giver
$ 90.00 USD
4 months ago

Anonymous Giver
$ 50.00 USD
4 months ago

Anonymous Giver
$ 50.00 USD
4 months ago

Anonymous Giver
$ 25.00 USD
4 months ago

thomas Monaghan
$ 200.00 USD
5 months ago

Good luck! It's been years since we met. I'm down in Mountain View MO. now.

Writing Observer
$ 250.00 USD
5 months ago

Finally able to send this off. I hope that things are getting better for you, Lori. Continuing to send prayers your way.

Anonymous Giver
$ 500.00 USD
5 months ago

Read the blog and some earlier postings, Prayers sent as well...

Anonymous Giver
$ 100.00 USD
5 months ago

Len
$ 200.00 USD
5 months ago

Anonymous Giver
$ 105.00 USD
5 months ago

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Psalm 3:5-6 Continue to lean into God and I pray that this little bit helps.

Updates

Car trouble: Update: We won't get the car back until tomorrow.

December 18th, 2024

Well, we didn’t manage to get to the auto parts place that people suggested to get our blinking engine light looked at. After a couple of days, the car started deciding it didn’t like going up hills on the highway. We’ve previously had that issue when I’ve delayed changing the oil too long, so I thought changing the oil early might stop our issue, but if anything, it made it worse. Suddenly the car slowed down about 30 mph on the highway, and not even on the hills. I was scared to drive it.


Interestingly enough, it worked almost fine on the back roads. It would go faster on the back roads than it would on the highway, which confused me. It still grumbled and complained on the hills, but within the range of traffic.


We had it towed to our normal service place, and got word back that its catalytic converter disintegrated, and messed up the exhaust. I didn’t know catalytic converters could do that.


Anyway, another repair that we need that is taking money out of our rebuilding budget. I hope that’s it for a while.


It should be ready to be picked up this afternoon, so we should no longer have to depend on generous family and friends to take my son to and from work.

Further Car trouble

Update Car trouble: Update: We won't get the car back until tomorrow. Image
We are so grateful

December 11th, 2024

I wanted to tell everyone how grateful I am for everything we’ve received. Even when I am specifically asking for help, as in a couple of posts ago, I wasn’t asking in the expectation that anyone would, or could give. I know that it is at the end of the year, and people’s wallets are wearing thin. No one is required to give.

And there are all the people who were hit by the hurricanes, and are in far worse shape than we are, so that anyone with a limited budget could reasonably be expected to give to them first.

But just because others are worse off than we are doesn’t make our own situation any less real.

And so, we thank everyone who has helped, in any way, from the bottom of our hearts.

Substack Blog.

Update We are so grateful Image
Google Maps Update.

December 8th, 2024

It looks like Google Maps had their Street View truck go by sometime in October, so now our burnt house shall be shown into infitintum. Or at least until the next update happens, in a few years. Though the head-on shot shows hardly any damage. Just a bit of blackening around the front light, and the tarp on the roof.

Hopefully by the next time they roll around, we’ll have the house back at where it should be.

Update Google Maps Update. Image
Where did it all go?

December 7th, 2024

First, I want to thank everyone for all their help. We would not have made it this far after the fire as we have without people’s help. I appreciate everyone’s generosity.

That said, at the moment the place we are staying is taking up all of the money that normally comes in for us, leaving us little money for other things. (Food and medical care is fine at the moment).

I’m looking ahead for the rest of the month, and figuring that we are going to need:

  • Phone bill: $100
  • Car insurance Bill: $200
  • Water Bill: $50
  • 12 tanks of gas at $25 each: $300 (and apparently using the “at” sign for tags means it isn’t available for just a character?)
  • Missouri Personal Property Tax: $90
  • Our car has a blinking check engine light showing up briefly once a trip or so, for about as long as it takes to say, “Look! The light is blinking again!” This may not be anything, but still it’ll take over a hundred to have it looked at. 
  • Total (not counting car diagnostic): $740, make that $750+ for any unforeseen incidentals.

Continued in blog post, Where did it all go? Substack

Update Where did it all go? Image
Invitation to Lightfoot Lights back on Open House

November 30th, 2024

Update Invitation to Lightfoot Lights back on Open House Image
Adding Injury to Insult

November 23rd, 2024


I’ve really been falling down on posting. I’m hoping to get back into doing it during the next two weeks. I don’t think it was laziness on my part. I think that me saying “I need to treat this as a job” turned off my creativity. So I’m not going to say that again. (And, naughty naughty, beginning four sentences in the first paragraph with “I”!)

But we have had a busy not so good week.

Monday night there was a windstorm. When my husband got to the house to work on it, he discovered that our heat pump was in pieces. At first he thought that the wind had done something to it, which really didn’t make sense. after all, we’ve had worse storms that didn’t touch the heat pump. 

Continued in blog post


Update Adding Injury to Insult Image
Thanking people who have helped, again.

September 14th, 2024

We have been amazed at all the people who have been remarkably generous with us after we found ourselves homeless after the fire. These include, but are not limited to, the following: (Update post)

Andrew across the street, who is storing some of our stuff, including our chest freezer (plugged in)

Violet (church friend who let us stay for 3 days)

Couple at IHOP that first night, who gave us $60

Friends of my sister, who gave us $200

Donnie, who let us stay at Harrah’s Hotel for 4 nights.

Craig, $600 and advice. He has also volunteered to help pay for fixing our car.

Braxton, who has been doing a lot of work around the house (as well as being the reason that everyone survived!!!)

Ana, who went with me and helped me navigate the laundromat, when neither one of us had been to one in years. She also took me on a shopping spree to help replace some of my clothes

Gracemor Christian Church, who provided several meals, as well as buying me a new Chromebook computer.

Carolyn, my sister, who let me use their washer and dryer, and volunteered to help us rent a storage unit

My parents, who also helped replace some of our clothing, and helped in other ways

If there's anyone I've forgotten, I'll try to add you next week. 

And then of course, there are all the fine people who have generously supported us on GiveSendGo (Once I have time to figure out how to send notes there, I’ll thank you all. 😊)

Thank you for going along with us on our rebuilding journey. 

Blog post, thank you to everyone.

Alas, not the landing we were hoping for

September 13th, 2024

After not being able to write for a week, we find ourselves back at the hotel until a week from Friday.

It’s been a rough, busy week.

The friend had promised us that he’d have the basement ready in four days (which seemed a bit fast to me, but he assured us it could be done). So all our plans were set up for that.

We arrived on Tuesday (I think, my days are getting messed up), having rented a Uhaul to bring over some of our furniture, only to discover that in the six days after he told us he’d be ready in four, he hadn’t even started.

Now, I could understand him beginning the job and finding out that it was bigger than he thought it would be. But not even starting it, when he knew when we’d be moving in, that’s just carelessness and disrespect.

Then we came to find out that he was going to be charging per week what we had thought he’d be charging per month. Note: the claimed reason for doing this was to help us out. So he would be charging us near hotel prices for an unfinished, unfurnished basement. And not even offering breakfast! My husband talked him down to just a bit more than we were thinking in the first place.

Then, until he had finished the basement, we would be staying in the back room of the house, with an exterior door, and walking outside and through another door to use the basement bathroom. Note: I’d seen nicer rest rooms/outhouses while out camping. It didn’t even have a working light!

And the back room still needed to have everything taken out of it, and to be vacuumed. Once again, it was about an hour after they said they’d be done with that before they even started. Close to midnight before we could start setting up the mattresses and try to get some sleep.

But they decided to leave their tv running full blast in the living room, with no closable door between it and the back room where we were staying. Note: I said leave running, not watch. No one was in the room with it. My husband eventually got up and turned the volume down to a dull roar, and we could rest a bit.

In the morning, I went to get our son from work, and my husband went down to the basement to use the bathroom and work on some things. He discovered that they had put two dogs (and not their own dogs) into the basement. Now, we know these dogs, they are a couple of sweet and loving pit bulls. But we had rented the whole basement, and no one had asked if they could let the dogs stay there. So my husband remonstrated with our erstwhile landlord that he wasn’t supposed to put dogs in there. Thus he disrespected the guy who was supposed to be renting to us.

The guy physically attacked my husband, and hit him multiple times with some sort of wooden post with a jagged metal piece attached to it, as well as pulling a gun on him, and kicking him off the property.

Note: We had moved all our clothes and furniture there, since we were going to be staying there. I was afraid that we had lost everything again. As well as the money we paid for the first month’s rent.

 The rest of the day was spent signing up for an ex parte hearing (apparently being covered in blood and bruises wasn’t enough to get a temporary one set up until the hearing), getting back into the hotel we had been staying at, but a different room. That evening we had a friend come over, we got another Uhaul, and got our stuff back, under police escort. Honestly, we were a bit surprised that he hadn’t taken any revenge on our stuff, especially since he knew that our son had an expensive computer. Although he might not have been able to tell which of our four computers was the expensive one.

I must say that Wednesday night, when we were back in the hotel, and had our stuff back, I felt much better than I had on Tuesday night, even being out the money for the rent, and having rented two uhauls, when we should have only needed one. I felt that they were giving us a bait-and-switch, stonewalling, and gaslighting us. Probably several other nasty terms as well. I had been wondering Wednesday morning, before the final blowup, how to write up my frustrations without burning any bridges. After the blowup, I didn’t have that worry anymore. Just too much to do, and not enough energy to write.

Anyway, we’re back in the hotel again. We’re here for two more weeks, then we really need to find some place cheaper.

This isn’t as well written as it should be. I think that even after a week, I’m still shaking with rage when I think of it.
Coming in for a landing

September 1st, 2024

By Jonathan Lightfoot

Well, it looks like our days of roaming hotels after the fire may be coming to an end.

We still have a long ways to getting back into our house. cleanup and restoration are just starting to truly get underway. But in the meantime it looks like we will soon have that interim place to stay while we do work on that massive project.

An unexpected offer from generous and nearby friends will allow us to stay in (rent) their basement while we work on the task. And since they are going to need longer than originally estimated to fit out their basement for our use, they are even offering to give us rooms on their main floor to stay in while they finish their renovations. It will mean another temporary phase of transitions before landing in our new digs, but will give our son the private space he has been deprived of since the fire, forced into close proximity with his parents for most of his non-working hours.

And this place will also be just a little more than half a mile from our house we need to work on, which will make it easier to get back and forth to do the work, and allow us to keep the same local stores and recreational activities that we are used to.

It sounds almost too perfect to be true. I am sure there will be a minor rough spot or two, but those are always opportunities to learn more about each other, and to understand each other better — if we all stay wise enough to realize we aren’t adversaries but allies.

At the Rainbow

Here come the raccoons!

August 29th, 2024

We came into the house to do some more cleaning and packing, and discovered this on the pantry floor. Pasta, beans, and rice spread everywhere, as well as the unopened bottles and cans having been knocked about. This looked far more like a critter than human destruction. We figured it had to be a raccoon. The stuff on the floor was way too big for it to have been mice that got into it. Presumably some of the dried pasta, beans, and rice was eaten. Or at least gnawed on.

And coons have hands, so they can make a lot of mess. All the more annoying since we had already swept that floor after the fire. Not that it was clean yet.

Remainder on my blog.

Update Here come the raccoons! Image
Update #5

August 22nd, 2024

 Many people have asked what we need. I’m going to try to repost this once a week as we continue to work through figuring things out.


Right at the moment, what I need most is a healthy husband. We had gone to the emergency room the morning before the fire because of an infection in his leg. They dithered about whether they should admit him or not, and ended up just sending him home with an oral antibiotic.

Continued on Substack


Which then got burned in the fire. So we went back to the ER the next day, because the Red Cross representative helped us get our medicine refilled, but she couldn’t help with the antibiotics.

Yes, it was arson

August 15th, 2024

Yes, it was arson--Blog post

Several people have asked about the cause of the fire. It seems that it was indeed arson. Several of our neighbors have footage of a tall blonde woman stealing a ladder from a house a couple houses above us, taking it around back, and then running away just as the first wisps of white smoke are visible. We think that the woman was after the person who we allowed to keep two dogs and a bunch of stuff under the back deck. But she may have been aided and abetted by someone who thought he had something against us. There have been a few things that happened that shot him way up our suspect list.

Little Blessings

August 14th, 2024

Unexpected Blessings (Blog Post)

Excerpt from blog:

In spite of everything that has happened, there have been little blessings, unexpected things that show us that though we may be hard-pressed, perplexed, and struck down, we have not been forsaken.


One thing was finding the above message in my phone from Give Send Go. I knew that they advertised themselves as a Christian organization. I had not realized that they assigned you a prayer partner to pray with you. I was touched to listen to the above message, and so was my husband.


Another thing was finding my husband’s accordion in the wreckage. Since it had been in the burnt part of the house, we assumed that it was gone. But just as the dressers gave their lives valiantly defending the clothes within, the accordion case defended the accordion. My husband found it yesterday, in a spot we had looked over several times. The case was both burnt and moldy, damp on the inside. The firefighters must have thrown it out the window, since my husband found it outside. It’s a good thing he found it when he did, because it might have gotten moldy soon otherwise.

The Goodness of God

August 11th, 2024


“Things seems to happen to us that we don’t seem to provoke.”


NoLynch Atlas, From the Oracle, Hammerspace Publishers, 2024 Ed.


The above observation is known as the Lightfoot Luck, and it hit us pretty hard this week.


For the past five years we have been knocked down, again and again, and every time we think we have gotten momentum to start moving forward, something, usually the thing we expected to help move us forward, knocks us further down, and we have to pick ourselves back up and try moving forward again.

Read the rest :

https://at-the-rainbow.blog/2024/08/09/the-lightfoot-luck/

Chronology of the fire

August 10th, 2024

As far as we can tell, this is what happened the day the house burned down, and our lives changed.


At around five pm, I woke up from a nap in our room which opened to our deck. Everything seemed fine at the time.

Somewhere between 5:15 and 5:30, my husband and I drove out to the local amusement park for supper (we have season passes and dining plans, which is quite cost-effective if you go multiple times a week over the summer).

Shortly after we left, a friend who was staying with us used the restroom towards the back and heard crackling sounds, so he went to investigate, thinking it might be a little fire. It wasn’t, it was huge, so he did the sensible thing. He started yelling, and ran towards the front of the house, apparently shutting the French doors between the extension and the main part of the house.

Our son was sleeping in his room and woke up from either our friend yelling or the smoke detector going off, or both. He verified that it was a real threat, looked around his room at all his computer equipment and other valuable items, and decided the thing to grab was his phone.

Someone walking by saw all the flames and called 911.

Continued here:

A Chronology of Tuesday's Fire

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