Home-care nurses are God's loving hands. Nurse Samantha knew that for sure on the cold rainy day when Mrs. Cook finally opened her door.

"I rang the doorbell, pounded on the door, checked the address and pounded some more. Knowing that Mrs. Cook had just come home from the hospital, and that I had talked with her on the phone a few minutes before, I knew she was there. So I pounded some more."

Mrs. Cook finally opened the door a very tiny crack.

"Hello, Mrs. Cook. I'm Samantha, your home-care nurse, and your doctor asked me to check on how you're healing from your surgery. May I come in?"

"No. You cannot come in."

"But, Mrs. Cook," nurse Samantha laughed, "I can't check your surgical wound through the door!"

Mrs. Cook chuckled too, but maintained a closed door. The discussion went back and forth until they finally found a compromise. Mrs. Cook squeezed through the crack, sat on her porch chair, and hiked her blouse up to expose her slowly healing abdominal wound.

Traffic roared by just a few yards from the house. The postman tried to deliver the mail—and learned to whistle while he worked. And Samantha came for 45 minutes every day to care for her patient. Always on the porch. In all kinds of weather. With whistling.

Then winter came, and Mrs. Cook finally allowed nurse Samantha through the front door into her dark house.

Unopened junk mail, all sorts of trash and millions of industrious cockroaches filled the rooms—floor to ceiling. The kitchen was black with cockroach droppings. The cabinets were cluttered with canned goods whose labels had become roach desserts.

"I didn't always live like this," Mrs. Cook wept. "I was a professional woman with a good job until my mother and my son, who were both living with me, got sick. They died ten years ago, and I haven't been able to live a normal life since."

The two friends cried together, and then Samantha asked if she could help her clean the house. Mrs. Cook agreed, and shared her dream of someday having a beautifully clean, totally white kitchen.

"But I have no one to help me," she said. "And no one would be willing to tackle this filthy challenge."

Samantha's teenage son Jeremy and his friend Eric willingly became the "clean-up" crew and started scraping off the kitchen wallpaper and killing cockroaches. Samantha called three pest extermination companies, but none were willing to attack the roach army. So she bought a case of "kill 'em dead" spray and started fumigating at the kitchen door.

Once the bugs abandoned their palace, Mrs. Cook asked if maybe the windows could be replaced so she could see outside her house. So Samantha took her to town to choose windows, cabinets, a stove and a shiny new refrigerator.

It took many months for everything to come together, but just before Christmas there was a party in Mrs. Cook's kitchen. A neighbor joined the "clean-up" crew, and everyone shared pizza, popcorn, root beer, Christmas cake and laughter. Lots of laughter!

That night Mrs. Cook went to sleep watching the night sky through a new window and smelling the fragrance of fresh paint. She was smiling. Happy. Loved.

Dick Duerksen is the official "storyteller" with words and photo for Maranatha Volunteers International. Readers may contact the author at dduerksen@maranatha.org.