Mary Fast Wolf would love to make dinner for her family Thursday night in her new kitchen, in her new house, using groceries to be donated and delivered by two Rapid City Rotary clubs Thursday morning.

"Just yesterday the kids were asking, 'When can we go home? When can we get into our rooms?'" Fast Wolf said of the 15 children she and her husband, Varden, have fostered or adopted. "It's been too long, and the weather is going to be getting bad soon."

The Fast Wolfs lost their Red Shirt Table home to a July 29 fire. In August, volunteers from Mission of Love, Inc., moved two surplus duplexes from Ellsworth Air Force Base to Red Shirt Table and renovated them into one 7-bedroom, 4-bath home. The fire destroyed everything the Fast Wolf family owned, and the Black Hills area responded with an outpouring of cash and donations, including a $25,000 check from Stan Adelstein of Rapid City.

But finding qualified plumbers, electricians and other professionals needed to finish the home, including installing two wood-burning stoves and hooking up to a septic tank and water lines, has proven difficult, Fast Wolf said. On Monday, an electrician brought power into the home so she could at least plug in her new freezer, which was donated earlier by the Rushmore Rotary Club and Rapid City Noon Rotary Club.

A caravan of Rotarians will deliver groceries, household items and a freezer full of frozen foods to the Fast Wolf family in Red Shirt Table on Thursday. Members from both clubs will travel to the school, where they'll meet some of the Fast Wolf children for lunch, according to Judy Olson Duhamel, a member of Rushmore Rotary. Then they'll go to the Fast Wolf home with Dona Ross, a school speech therapist who helped organize the donation.

Duhamel said the experience of going to Red Shirt Table, meeting the family and seeing their situation firsthand may lead to a long-term relationship between the Rotarians and the Fast Wolfs.

"How they've suffered and how they're making do, I think, will be an inspiration to us to adopt that family," she said. "We do a lot of international things in Rotary. … But we felt kind of a special warmth for this family because we consider them our neighbors."

Adelstein's cash donation has been spent on building materials for the home renovation or other expenses, Fast Wolf said.

More than once, the Fast Wolfs paid people for services that were either not done, or not done correctly, she said. "My husband hates to say 'no' to anybody," Fast Wolf admitted.

"A guy volunteered to hook up our plumbing and stuff, so he came out maybe three times a week. He fiddled here and there - put a piece of pipe here, a piece of pipe there. But I'm not a plumber, so I didn't know. Finally, I told him he was fired," she said.

That "volunteer" cost her more than $200 in gas money, she said.

"People thought that we were rich," she said.

The large family is currently living in a cousin's two-bedroom home, but quarters are cramped.

"The older kids are sleeping on mattresses on the floor," Fast Wolf said.

She hopes to be in the new home within days, but must wait for tribal housing to finish water and sewer lines to the house. A call to the Oglala Sioux Tribal housing department seeking comment was not returned Monday.

Contact Mary Garrigan at 394-8424 or mary.garrigan@rapidcityjournal.com