May 2014 – Page 2 – SGVServe.org

Same site as yesterday, with Jose and Adrian

For today’s slide show, click here

We opened with Kelly’s devotional on being a sweet fragrance (2Cor 2:15)

Jose joined us for the devotional, he really is quite sociable after you get to know him 🙂

Soon after it, it was a day of joist hangers, rat runs, subfascia and roof decking.

At the end of the day, it was likely the last day on this site, tomorrow, we are scheduled to work with another group at another location. A quick prayer, and we were on our way to meet with the Samaritan’s Purse group

Samaritan’s Purse

Samaritan’s purse (SP) is most often know for “Operation Christmas Child” as well as rapid response to natural disasters with their disaster relief projects. Members of our team have worked with them in New Jersey and several times in California.

Rebuilding communities is more after-disaster support where approved applicants will have their homes rebuilt by Samaritan’s purse. The program in the US works only with homeowners (not renters), and often all this work is done for free.

Teams are limited to 10 at a time, so our larger groups might have to be adjusted should we work with them. Also, since their focus is more about disaster relief and rapid response, they might pull out of an area within a year or so as they feel the recovery has taken hold.

We had dinner with SP Volunteers and staff at their OKC facility and spent some time trying to gather information. We also had the opportunity to pray with them Program Director Michael and his wife Gianna as well as volunteer director, Karen.

Jam packed with lots of building goodness!

And the Photo Show… click here to see the photos from the day

We had a new site but same leader and team, and more injuries.

Habitat is building over 200 homes in an area called Hope Crossing. Apparently the 59 acres of land were donated.
When we drove into the neighborhood, we were taken aback at the quality of the homes and neighborhood. So much space and well maintained, lived-in homes.

We consider it as our Connor’s Garden (North) (Connor’s Garden was a HFH building development in Mississippi)

It was nice that so many homes had so many variations, and development of news were interspersed with existing homes.

Jose and Trusses

Jose was our lead again, and today was all about the trusses.

We started in the morning with Paul giving us a devotional on how all our efforts have lasting impact, sometimes on those we don’t know and will never be made aware.

The trusses are the structure and support for the roof. We’ve done this before, and it’s been a few years since we’ve done roofwork, but Jose had a very efficient system for executing raising the roof.

It was a busy time for the entire team, Habitat and Americorps alike, but we finished all of them in the one day. That’s moving a good clip, and this was not a simple roof.

One more mishap of the day, Paul, our professional construction guy, injured himself, and it humbled all of us. He’s doing okay, but Roy isn’t the only one that injured his hand while working; apparently pros can do it too.

We talked about how we need to be more careful, especially as we get tired.

The team is pretty beat today. Hard work. Jeff was up and down the ladder so much and worked the roofline a lot.

Nhi Nhi

A young Vietnamese girl came into the site. not wearing a hard hat, not Americorps. I actually thought she was a friend of someone on the team and came to visit. Turns out she is the partner family. Sweet and efficient, she was at work on the caulking cheerfully. Pam and Millie took to her immediately. She’s only a few hours away from completing her sweat equity hours, required by partner families. She’ll fulfill them this weekend.

The Ants!

Part of the Americorps/Evergreen team went to another house to lay some sod/grass.

Unfortunately, the sod had been sitting on a practically-completed house site for a while, and fire ants got into them. Fire ant bites later, people were anywhere from discomforted to plain old in-pain.

Touch-up

Roy and Millie worked on clean up and touch up painting on a home that’s moments away from handing over the keys. Fortunately, they were inside a home, and didn’t suffer the mild sunburn that some other members of the team experienced

Dinner

We invited our site supervisor, Jose, his wife and two children to join us for Dinner at Salt Grass Steakhouse. Peter’s OKC friend, Aron, also joined for a good time of fellowship and food was shared. Afterwards, we went to Rusty’s for frozen custard, and per tradition, Roy treated us on his own birthday.

A quick run for half the team to Walmart and we called it a night.

Last points of interest:

Tyler, a HFH staffer, spoke about how started with short term missions trips, and eventually ended up working full time building homes for people in need. He considers it a ministry (as do we), and how driving up and down the streets of this neighborhood has so many good memories of the builds, the volunteers and the homeowners. He said in some way, when he enters the neighborhood, it’s like church.
Peter and Craig chose to do their laundry tonight. When putting their wash into the unfamiliar machine, they set what appeared to be the appropriate settings and then pushed the on button. It spun around but didn’t add any water. After a few minutes of second-guessing themselves, they were relieved when the water turned on. Fish out of water….