Robert Bentley was familiar with struggles and poverty long before this latest recession came knocking on everyone’s door.

He and his wife Jessica have fought with hard times for years, hard times made worse when Robert fell off a roof in 2004 and shattered his right leg.

“I was totally disabled,” he said last week, pointing to the artificial limb that is now a part of his life. “We have six girls and a boy, and when I lost my leg things were already bad. Then they got worse.”

Earlier this year, the Bentleys had a utility bill of more than $1,700 — a bill they couldn’t pay. So Robert Bentley did something thousands of people in West Louisville do each year: he turned to the Sister Visitor Center for help.

“And then,” he said, his eyes growing watery, “a miracle happened.”

That miracle was all around him last week as 60 young people from the Boston, Mass., area — and some local volunteers, too — roamed like ants over his frame shotgun house at 2536 W. Main St.

They were ripping rotten siding from the house’s exterior. They’d already taken down its interior walls to get to the 110-year-old wiring hiding inside. They were stripping the house down to its framing, adding walls and new siding, and even adding a new room at the rear of the home.

“When I think about what they’re doing, I cry,” Robert Bentley said. “Can’t help it. I cry every time. They’re saving my life, really. They’re giving my children a chance, a chance I couldn’t give them.”

Bentley said the help from Sister Visitor, from the outreach ministry at the Church of the Epiphany, from the Boston youth and from dozens of others has changed his outlook, his beliefs as well as his future.

“The house wasn’t insulated at all, so the furnace would just run all the time in the winter,” he explained. “I’d started to gut the house by myself, but it didn’t take long for me to realize I was in over my head. I didn’t know what to do. I was at the point where I thought the best thing I could do was put a bullet into my head. Really. I didn’t know how much longer I could go on.”

Then the angels that now surround his life came to his rescue.

When he called the Sister Visitor Center, it was Mount St. Joseph Ursuline Sister Michele “Shellie” Intravia who answered.

“Mr. Bentley and his family had been here for help on several previous occasions,” Sister Intravia recalled last week. “I realized from the little bit of conversation we had that there was a definite need here, and the more we talked the more it seemed to me as if everything had just crumbled for them.”

From there, hard work and serendipity took over to lend a hand to the Bentleys.

Sister Shellie, as those who know and work with her call her, realized the family needed a lot more help than Sister Visitor was able to provide. She called her friend at Epiphany, Mount St. Joseph Ursuline Sister Larraine Lauter, and Sister Lauter enlisted the aid of youth minister William Mezzetti from Boston, along with Epiphany’s St. Vincent de Paul conference.

Mezzetti ministers to young people at St. Paul and St. Anthony churches in the Boston suburbs of Cohasset and Hingham, and in past years he has brought a group of them to Louisville to spend a week helping individuals or agencies who need it. Last summer, for instance, the volunteers pored over Catholic Charities’ offices, painting and repairing and, in general, sprucing up those heavily-used facilities.

This year when Mezzetti heard from his friend Sister Lauter about the plight of the Bentley family, he knew where their help was needed.

“There’s a lot more to be done than we can finish in a week,” he said last Thursday. “But we’ve already made more headway than I thought we would. The kids have worked really hard, and Mr. Bentley has been right there working with them.”

In addition to his work as a youth minister, Mezzetti owns a building and construction company, so he knew exactly how much needed to be done on the Main Street house — and how daunting it could be for someone such as Robert Bentley who might be trying to do the job all by himself.

“We got here Saturday (June 20) and assessed the house on Sunday, then started work on Monday,” he said. “There’s a lot to do, but it’s all doable.” The group left town on June 27, and Sister Lauter and others are busy lining up additional volunteers to help finish the work the young people from Boston have begun.

While the work on the house is being completed, the Bentley children and their mother are staying at the nearby St. Anthony Community Care Center.

“This whole thing has been a blessing for us,” Robert Bentley said. “The family is able to stay at St. Anthony’s, so I know they’re safe and being cared for while all this is going on.”

The Bentley children are Maria, 10; Brittany, 9; Stacy, 5; Sharon, 4; Rachel, 2; Robert Jr., 1; and Melanie, an older daughter from a previous marriage.

Sister Intravia said the refurbishing project has given Robert Bentley a new lease on life. “He’s really gung-ho about all of this,” she said. “He keeps saying, ‘we’re going to make it,’ and deep in his heart I believe he really feels that way. Through the grace of God and the work of these volunteers, this is certainly going to make a change in the life of Mr. Bentley and his family.”

“It’s been a real spiritual awakening for me,” Bentley said last week while ripping wiring from his house’s interior. “I was baptized a Catholic at birth, but I’ve been away from the church. Now I’m going back. I’m going to Epiphany because they’re the people who’ve made all this happen.

“If it wasn’t for them, we’d be at the end of our rope.”