Month: May 2012

We’re on the road again.

It went from cool to cloudy to non-stop raining. During that time, we packed up our tools to wait out the storm. Some of the guys worked under the decking on the posts. The rest of us stood around with a lot of ideas, opinions and other “helpful” chatter.

Coffee and donuts = fellowship, so we took our 10am break during this time and enjoyed the hot coffees went out to get. Stories of life and faith were swapped as the rest of the team were sledgehammering away in the background.

But now we’re on plan B. Paul, our friend (and second boss) has a friend who recently lost his job and is relocating. Paul offered to paint his home so his friend can rent it out. Paul “put it out there” to see if we’d help, but he kept saying “I know you’ve already done enough for the Habitat home, and you don’t have to feel obligated….”

Given that we can’t work on the Habitat site today, we’re more than willing to help Paul in his personal act of service, and it’ll give us an opportunity to bless the home with our hands.

Jim and Shirley were only too eager to join us and are part of our caravan. Uncle Roy says that we’re like a minstrel band, going from gig to gig.

Personally, when preparing for this mission, God said to be true to purpose, but to have no agenda. I’m glad that God’s plans are good. I love this team. We are different, have different talents, personalities, but at the end of the day, we just (as Jim said) want to help “make God look good.” It’s our band of brothers (and sisters) and we’ll take this show to the next place, the home of someone who could use a reminder that God loves him even though he might feel forsaken.

There have been predictions of rain on the horizon, and they have come true.

It was pouring rain a moment ago, now it has broken and the skies are cloudy. Either way though, it’s humid. Have we mentioned it’s humid down here? Oh, well, compared to Southern California, it’s humid? Yep. Humid.

The first week’s moderate weather has changed this week to a heat that sapped the strength of every man into a van-sleeping volunteer, then today with the rain, we’re reminded of the first year we came out here, when the framing was barely up and the job site was covered with water. That very same day of thunderous storms and pouring rain, then an afternoon of clear skies and rising heat. Well, that helps explains the humidity….

With that in mind, we don’t know exactly what we’ll be doing on the job site today. If raining, presumably, we’ll be working indoors, much better than atop a tin roof in a thunderstorm. Habitat usually has backup plans for situations like this, even to the point of doing administrative work back at the home office. There’s always the chance we’ll be doing some touch up work in an existing home.

No matter where we end up working, we’ll try to take heart to Kelly’s devotional (his first!) this morning, to not only use all of our abilities and gifts, but use them as to the Lord. He encouraged us to try to move past doing a job “good enough” or saying “that’ll do” and to approach our efforts pursuing excellence. Each member of this team has an unspoken contract with every effort of this home. There are so many nails, joints and other small elements of the home that we will touch, that no one will probably ever see again. But that’s probably why it’s so important to do them well, because we will be the last human that will know if it was done well, helping this home last a little longer.

Thanks Kelly, for that reminder and encouragement, and in line with Jim, we’ll try “to make God look good today.”

It was a long day on the site.

First off, Jim and Shirley/Nannie work hard. They know their limitations, but they work hard, right up to it. Kinda like Uncle Roy, but maybe a bit more.

We arrived on the site to be greeted by Brad and Paul, warm hugs for Craig and Gary, and meet and greet with Jim and Nannie.

Jim and Steve, the hobbler, went to work on the stairs. All day, well, we had several job assignments, but here are the highlights:

Craig and Chris were tasked with moving the portapotty. We had to move it and the sign so that an electrican could have access. Without a blink of an eye, they went to work. You should know that it had yet to be emptied. Put (number) two and two together, and well, it was an unpleasant smell all day.

This dynamic duo was then tasked to go under the house and tack up some plastic sheeting. Somewhere in the process, Craig accidentally hurt himself. It looks worse than it is.

Hot hot day on the site, on the roof.

Finished the day and went to Quakes, to celebrate Uncle Roy’s Bday with Frozen Custard. As usual, he treated.

Jim and Nannie joined us for Quakes, and had a good talk with them along the way, sharing faith and stories. They’ve been a good presence in our lives.

We’re off for dinner off site, and will recap later, in the meantime, here’s a video and some pics