We are in Montgomery Alabama and this week is about the Jordan family and their service to a community. When it comes mom Monica, her service comes from a very tough place. She¹s lost two children, one child to drunk driving and another to domestic violence. She has taken that grief and all that goes along with that, losing not one child but two, and has turned that into a very positive thing for the city of Montgomery Alabama. She is an advocate, teaching people ...
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This week the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition bus rolls into St. Meinrad, Indiana. Located in the southern tip of Indiana, St. Meinrad is home to one of only two Benedictine Monasteries in the country. I feel like a broken record when I write these each week, but I have to say that once again I've been overwhelmed by the support from the community. Not only did the locals come out in droves to support the Extreme team, but they also came to support something greater than this show, The American Cancer Society's Relay for Life.Shawna Farina, mother of three and a survivor, shows just how strong and resilient the human spirit can be. As a child, Shawna watched her mother struggle with beat breast cancer, and now for the past year Shawna's three children (Lacey, Brian, and Summer) have had to watch her go through the same ordeal. Through it all, she has managed to work, raise money and organize the local Relay for Life walks. Now a survivor, Shawna, Steve, Lacey, Brian and Summer, strug...
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Smack in the center of farm country is where the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition bus stops this week. Beautiful fields of corn arranged in perfect rows stretch as far as the eye can see. We are in Gladbrook, Iowa, and we are here to join the community to help a local family rebuild their home and farm. The Kibe family: Shawn and Amy, Kody (13), Blake (10) and Christian (6). Theirs is the story of a young family who leave big-city life and move to the country to introduce their children to the wholesome, hardworking and rewarding life of running a farm. These kids have thrived, learning the lessons of hard work and reaping the rewards of working together. The boys' grades began to improve and they began to spend a whole lot of quality time together tending to the livestock and scraping by running a working farm. A few days before Christmas '05, the family was out picking up Mom from her job at a local department store when they received a frantic call from a neighbor: Their house was ...
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This week I found myself just 30 miles away from the Canadian border in beautiful Minot, N.D. I love small towns and great communities with people who all know one another and will do anything to help a neighbor in need. That was truly the story with this wonderful family, the Blivens. The Blivens are as loving, sharing and close a group as I've ever had the pleasure of meeting: Bill, Michelle, Kristen, Aaron, and Taylor. Aaron was born with a disease called Cerebral Palsy and this family has worked so hard to make Aaron's life as ordinary as any other 14-year-old's. Michelle even managed to start and run a great organization called Dream Catchers. Imagine that. This woman, who has to care for, feed, bathe and raise this remarkable young man, managed to find time to start a program for other children with similar limitations to be able to enjoy our national pastime — baseball! Let me explain Dream Catchers. They are a baseball league specifically for kids with disabilities who...
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This week the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition [Sundays at 8 pm/ET on ABC] bus takes us to one of my favorite parts of the country, a place where country music is a way of life: Hendersonville, Tennessee. We experienced a quintessential Southern community when we visited this town just 20 miles outside of Nashville, with its famous landmarks the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman Theater and the Country Music Hall of Fame. It's a community that embraced us as one of their own. The Hawkins family... what a story. A little over six months ago, an F-3 tornado (over 175 mph sustained winds!) ripped through Hendersonville and completely demolished the Hawkins family home. Jerrod, dad and a firefighter, was out on call helping his neighbors and only could watch from afar as the tornado headed right towards his home, his two boys — Jair, 6, Cole, 4 — and hid lovely wife, Amy, who were inside taking shelter in the basement. Now, Amy will tell you that what she did to protect her boys was s...
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