Day 4

We decided to work an extra day because the need is great.  We continued to work at Jim and Pat's houses in an effort to finish both locations.  Unfortunately we didn't get Jim's completely done.  We were hover able to get Pat's front room completed!  We were so happy to be able to leave him with one room in his house that is truly livable.  We also did some community work, and helped sort and organize the large quantities of donations that have come in to the various churches since the floods.

The completed room at Pat's house!

The massive amounts of donations to be sorted and dealt with!

Day 2 and 3

Sorry we weren't able to post anything while we were there beyond day 1 but the internet went down and never came back up.  That's pretty common there and all the mountains don't help with the connections for the internet or phones.
We had incredibly amazing days yet again.  It is beyond humbling to work every day with people who have lost pretty much everything and yet show so much faith and fortitude that they will get through this, that they will rebuild their lives, and that most of all God is with them and will provide for them what they need.
We have been moving the kids to the various job sites each day so that they can have a variety of experiences both with people and also job skills while they are here.

We continued our work at the mission site. We worked on putting in flooring in the bathrooms, and dry walling and painting the rooms to be used for sleeping. We continued with building kitchen cabinets as well. We built shoe racks (since there is always a lot of mud here it is good to have a place to put shoes when you walk into a building) put up trim and took out carpeting.  Everyone worked hard once again.  We have been able to accomplish a lot!

We have been working at Don's house diligently. Pretty much every wall in his house needs to be removed as well as the cabinets and eventually the floors.  He will have to completely rebuild from the inside out because of all of the water that was in his home.  He took us out back and showed us the markings on his shed of past floods.  There were 3 previous floods and the highest marking on the shed was at about 6 feet.  This time there were no markings because his shed was under water with this flood.  It gave us an idea of just how high the water was. It is amazing that he can have such a good attitude, telling us stories and such as we dismantle his home and he faces months of rebuilding. The strength is incredible.

We have been at Pat's house every day working to get at least one room put back together for him.  When we walked in on Monday he had not one single room in his house that was finished and really livable but he's been there living anyway. After working on trying to fix the mud and drywall job of the team before us we decided that the best thing to do would be to texture all walls and ceilings.  So we have been texturing like fiends! We also worked on sanding the floors to get them ready for new flooring.

We picked up another new job site.  We are working at Jim's house.  He is a volunteer fireman.  His wife is a social worker and they foster children.  Right now they have 5 children they are fostering but due to a flood in their home (although not from the river thank goodness) they have been unable to live there for the past 6 months.  They are living with family and have been working on getting their house back together so they can move home.  We came in to help him accomplish that goal.  There was a lot of detail work that still needed to be done.  His home is about 100 years old and has been in the family for generations.  They have tried to keep the integrity of the home and maintain as much original work work as possible. We worked on flooring, dry walling and painting there as well as trim and plumbing.

Day One

Well we had an absolutely amazing day today.  We were on 4 different work sites today.  A group of us worked on a mission building.  This is a building that in the future they hope to use to house groups such as ours that travel here on mission programs.  They also hope to use this building as a temporary emergency shelter to house individuals and families that have been displaced from their homes due to natural disasters.   They certainly could have used it over the past few weeks.  WE had many different things we worked on in that building.  We put up drywall, taped and mudded.  We built base cabinets for the kitchen. We trimmed out windows, built shelves and we also tore out carpet and then put down new vinyl.  We worked hard but had a great day.

On another one of our job sites we were helping a man whose home has been completely gutted and is being put back together.  We taped, mudded and sanded drywall.  We hung drywall.  We put up window and door casings as well.  WE had a great time getting to know our homeowner as well.  He is a great guy.  

Our other job sites were flood relief.  We worked at 2 homes where they basically lost everything in the floods and now their homes are being gutted, cleaned and put back together.  We saw first hand to utter devastation of water.  There is mud everywhere in the homes as well as on everything that was in the home.  Families lost all of their appliances as well as most of their personal possessions in these floods.  Our families that we helped were no different.  We helped take down solid chestnut walls in a basement that was built by the homeowners father and the only place the homeowner had ever lived.  He is in his 70s right now. He and his wife were amazing.  We not only took out all the basement walls and hauled the wood up to hopefully dry, but we also hauled up the sawdust that was between the walls that was used for insulation. We spent a lot of time bleaching and cleaning the mud on the wood floors, walls and ceilings in their laundry room so they could get their new hot water put in. We also spent a lot of time bleaching all their kitchen things that were under water during the flood. AT the other home we did basically the same type of thing.  We began removing walls  and floors and we bleached the under layment and remaining walls.  We hauled a lot of things out.  Words can not describe how difficult it has to be for these families to see all their personal possessions picked up by a back hoe and dump truck as they are hauled to the street.  It has been a very moving day for everyone. 

We all had an incredible day and are looking forward to tomorrow.

Here Safe and Sound

After a VERY long drive today we arrived at 6:30 tonight.  Experience Mission staff have been wonderful!  They had dinner waiting for us when we got here.  We ate a great meal, hung out while the chaperones met with the Mission staff to discuss rules and projects.  After they met, we all got together for a meeting to learn about our various projects and also to talk about they people and situations we will be encountering.  We will be very busy the next few days.  There are several job site we will be working on.  Two of the job sites are general work sites and two of the job sites are flood relief sites.  We are looking forward to getting out there and working hard tomorrow.

OUR 2016 PROGRAM AND TRIP

We have been working hard all year once again.  We have had monthly tool training and have done a TON of fundraising and community service. We were able to raise all of the funds to support our program once again this year. In only 3 short weeks we will be leaving on our trip. This year we are heading to West Virginia.  We will be gone from July 10th through July 15th.  We have not yet been told what we will be doing while we are there but we are excited to be going and are able and willing to do whatever we can to help those in need. 
While we are there we hope to be able to post nightly so everyone can keep in touch with us and what we are doing. Keep your fingers crossed that we have better internet service this year than we did last year. 
Thank you to everyone for all of your support throughout the past year! We are so blessed and thankful to have such an amazing parish! We hope you continue to support us and pray for us while we are traveling and on our trip.
Thanks again and we'll post when we leave!

Home Safe and Sound

We drove through the night last night and got home this morning around ten.  We decided to drive through the night instead of all day today.  The drive went pretty quickly.  We had a really good week.  We worked hard and accomplished a lot for our homeowners.  We also got to spend time together swimming and having fun each night. Everyone had an absolute blast yesterday white water rafting and doing the high ropes. Sorry we had such a hard time with the internet while we were gone and the posts were so few and the pictures even fewer.  Thanks for the thoughts and prayers while we were gone.  Thanks as well for all the support we received all year long.

Sorry we did not post anything the last couple of days. It rained really hard last night and the internet went down.  We have been working really hard each day.  On one site we repaired all the rotted areas of the roof.  On our other site we got the exterior walls built And sheeted and the interior walls built. We have gone swimming at the blue hole every day after work and have had fun at camp each night. Tomorrow is our fun day. We are white water rafting in the morning and doing high ropes in the afternoon   We voted and decided to leave tomorrow night after our night on the town and drive through the night so we will be home late morning. Sorry we can't post pictures but are having major issues with the internet and computer and are posting from a phone.