Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Rain, Rain, Come This Way (At night, if you please!)

Laura

Day 4: today we began work on the sites. At first we kind of just stood around baffled because we needed a plan of attack. What I mean to say is, us kids did nothing while the adults planned everything. While we waited I got to talk to our homeowner Lois, and I met her dogs: a pit bull and two Chihuahuas.

We finally decided that the most necessary repairs were to tear down and rebuild the bridge over the creek that leads to the house, to reshingle the back of the roof, and to dig a French drain in the back. I chose to work on the bridge, and it was pretty fun. It's about a 20ft drop to the creek, so the main challenge of the bridge is not falling off when screwing, sawing, and hammering. I really like all the people on my site, and I'm especially fond of the others doing the bridge. We didn't accomplish too much today, but we stripped away enough rotten wood and rusty bolts so that tomorrow our job should be easy.
No one fell in today, but we dropped lots of tools. It's kind of a funny sensation to watch the tools fall for a second or two. Joe did crack a board when walking across the bridge today, but he stayed on. It's good no one has fallen at all, but I don't pretend it wouldn't be exciting. But for now safety first.

Today we went to Kmart and the dollar store. I'm starting to doubt I'll ever get to see my dragon friend again. So sad.
I forgot what we had for dinner today, but we had this delicious ice cream cookie thing for dessert. The only sad part about that is that it's all downhill from here. Nothing compares to ice cream for dessert.
I still am not fond of the games we have to play together. However, the bible studies are starting to grow on me. We do this thing where we pray in partners after devotion, and I like it a lot. You can learn a lot about a person in five minutes.
I'm also still super fond of the little church service things we do. I just kind of wish we'd sing hymns rather than contemporary stuff. I might suggest to Steve that we do both.
I have lots more to add, but I'm getting yelled at to go to bed. So I'm going to submit to authority because otherwise I would be breaking my servant covenant thing.

Vici

Today was pretty a pretty important day. We had to get up at 6:15 so we could eat and leave for the work sites. (Anyone that knows me know it's like impossible to wake me up. Let alone at 6:15 in the morning.) Anyway I was on site one which meant I had the site that had a house leaking really bad. Once we met the home owner we got to work on tearing the ceiling and insulation out in 2 rooms and 3 closets. We also had to pull nails out of all the trim. We were given body suits, face masks, and gloves so that we wouldn't get fiberglass, mold, or dust on us too bad. The suits were very helpful.

Mrs. Fox, our home owner, is deaf. Cole, a guy on my site, and I both took ASL classes and 2 other girls know a little ASL. Me and Cole really try and help translate the best we can so we can talk to our home owner and ask her questions. She is a very sweet lady and I can't wait to get to know her more through out the week.

After all that we went to a college and took showers. When we got back to the church we ate dinner, played some games, and worshipped.

I'm really loving everything I get to do here. It's such a blessing to help these people out and to be able to worship with all the teens, adults, and pastors with us. I really love being able to do this work and I hope I can keep doing it.

Nikki

It is much easier to get journals out of the girls, because we sleep in the same room and I can remind them at bedtime. I must endeavor to remind the boys earlier in the day. Michigan did have kitchen clean up after dinner today, which consumed the most convenient time for them to journal.

Solomon and I are both on the septic site this year. It is a new drain field and not a full install. We are hand-digging 200’ of trench for the new field, 3’ wide and 18” deep on the lowest spot. Keep in mind that we are digging in the mountains, so 18” on the low side might be 36” on the high side depending on the lay of the land, since the bottom has to be level. Our inspectors are good to us, recognizing that we are hand digging, and do their best to work with the natural terrain to our benefit. This year that has given us some very curvy trenches. It has been very dry here just like at home and the digging is difficult. We had a nice thunderstorm here in Asheville tonight, so I am hopeful that we got rain out at our site as well. You can’t always tell in the mountains, because the storms often follow the ridges. In fact, we watched a storm chase the ridge and go around us this afternoon. In addition to the dry, we are running into a fair amount of tree roots and rocks. So far nothing too large, just pesky. I pray that it stays that way.

and a late addition from:

Solomon

Today was quite a day! We had our first day on the work site! It started off a bit slow because the soil where we're digging is rather rocky and has tree roots. Also it hasn't rained in months, although it's raining as I write this, so I hope that will help a little bit! Although it took us a little while to get going, we made great progress today overall! Me and my digging buddy Patrick made it about 12 inches deep through about half of our trench. I think that's about 90 square feet, give or take. I found a really cool red rock today when we were digging too! I did get several big blisters already on the first day, but it was worth it! I really enjoyed digging again! It's hard to explain how digging can be fun to people that haven't done it, but the exertion combined with a big group of people who have become family is really an enjoyable experience! we joke around a lot and talk in horrible accents (at one point today there was some sort of Irish/Minnesota hybrid accent) and really enjoy ourselves while we're working for a good cause!

As is usual with the great cooks here, we had a wonderful dinner, after which Michigan had our first clean-up duty. It was pretty painless. We also had our first K-mart run! I bought some gloves since mine had holes in them and some fun things for my secret servant, although I can't tell you what or else it wouldn't be much of a secret! The discovery of lemon Oreos did very much brighten my day as well! We played a new game in community life today that was pretty much a variant of capture the flag, only it was better because one of the teams was ninjas! All in all, it was a pretty great day!

Dennis

Hi again I'm back, today was our first work day and the people on my site spent most of it digging a trench then around midday we were told by the homeowner that the trench was too close to the house so we filled that in and began a new trench slightly further away from their house. I am working on a site where the main project is rebuilding a bridge and there are various side projects which we need to complete also such as re-shingling the roof and creating a french drain in their backyard. I really am beginning to like the people in my group I don't really have a lot of people from my church who I know or many people whom I already knew from past years so it is really fun to begin interacting and finding out everyone's story and their plans for the future and such. I had a good day today I just hope tomorrow will be better.