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Today was our last day on a work site.

Tomorrow it’s church, then to the airport.

Moore OK

Google Maps Streetview in previous years
Started the day a bit behind schedule. We had the right address, but just the start time we had was 830a, but there was a group already on site by 8am.


We were told that we’d be working on a tornado work site with another organization with a team of 30. We had no idea what to expect, but some of us were not looking forward to it.


Two things we quickly found out
a) our job site was only a few blocks away from Towers elementary
b) we’d be working side by side Crossings Community Church


To be honest, there was some feeling that it’d probably be a crowded site, but we were greeted with warm smiles, a free lunch and some incredibly great fellowship. They even gave us some of their tshirts

We met a number of people. including Steve, who was filming video for the church, and will be hoping to produce a video detailing all the work they’re doing for rebuilding OKC.


Many of our team spoke with their church members and were impressed with their kindness, heart and focus. They seemed like good people with good focus. And they were fun too!

Dawn

Another person we met was Dawn, the homeowner. It was humbling to see Dawn standing against a backdrop of the missing houses and big sky area behind them. She told us her story, that she had been at work, and the kids were in the elementary school right before it went down.


We toured the area and saw the rebuilt school. It’s gone from not having any tornado shelter to now the entire school is rated as tornado shelter.

Dinner and debrief

Later in the evening , it was time for a debrief. But first a dinner brought by pam’s uncle who lives in the area. He and his wife home cooked and brought us a multicourse meal at Hilltop Baptist. The home style food was much appreciate and a blast of asian cuisine! 

Today we  are working 3 blocks away from plaza towers elementary school where many of the elementary kids lost their lives during the tornado

Same site as yesterday, with Jose and Adrian

Samaritan’s Purse

Jam packed with lots of building goodness!

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….

Lunch prayer

Millie and Craig with homeowner Nhi