Friday - 1/11/13

Today was our last day working here in Joplin.  It was a beautiful Spring-like day -- 67 degrees and sunny with a brisk wind.  Coach Loveall's group headed back to Brenda's house to mud & tape the dry wall.  They got that done and it's all set for another group to come in next week and sand, texture & paint.  Coach Bolluyt had planned to go back & finish the fence, but I guess the home-owner thought it was too muddy & didn't want people there working in the mud.  So they were disappointed to not be able to finish that.  They ended up going to chop wood with Coach Profit's group.

My group went back to the house where we started re-building the shed the other day.  We met the little old lady who lives there - she's very sweet!  The frame of the shed was completely done from the other day, so we had to put the tin back on the outside.  This was kind of like a puzzle because we had to figure out how to make the pieces from the old shed fit.  We had a few new sheets of tin that we could use, but we didn't have very many.  Once we got it all planned out we were able to put it all up.  We got to use our drills again today! :)  Then we put up the roof and got some of the trim up.  We weren't able to get all of the trim on, but we got it started.  We also got one of the doors on.  Dave, the coordinator working with us, will finish the shed on his own.

 What the shed looked like this morning . . .

 Charlie's Angels, Spirit Lake style!

 Hannah and Josie sorting good screws from bad screws.

Our group with Dave, our crazy leader. :)

Tomorrow morning we're planning to leave by 7:00 am, then we'll stop in Kansas City for two hours & do some shopping, and hopefully we'll be back to Spirit Lake by 6:00 pm or so.  It's been a great trip, but I'm excited to be home.

Thursday - 1/10/13

Today was going to be our half day of working, but it turned into more like 3/4 day of working.  Coach Loveall's group went back to Brenda's house where they finished dry-walling and did some mudding and taping.  Coach Bolluyt & Profit's group went to do some work at Southern Missouri State University at the Baptist Student Center.  They had knocked out a wall, which left tons of drywall dust throughout the whole building.  So, they had to clean that up, tear out some carpet, do some mudding and taping, and wet-sand some of the mud that had already dried.  Hayley R. especially enjoyed cleaning out the refrigerator, and I hear that Bolluyt & Profit got in a game or two of ping pong. :)

My group went to a house where we stained the hardwood floors, painted some trim work, and attempted to sand some scratches out of the hardwood in the living room.  We can now add power sanders to the list of tools that we are competent at using!  The girls did a great job and the floor looks fabulous.  We hope to be able to go back tomorrow to polyurethane the floor and see it finished.

When we were done, Art (our bus driver) came to pick us up and he drove us to meet the other groups, all of which had finished at their sites and were working on raking a man named CJ's yard.  CJ is legally blind and lived right in the path of the worst part of the tornado when it hit Joplin.  He and his sister were in his house and survived, but were trapped under rubble for 7-8 hours until rescue workers could uncover them.  Since then, CJ bought a house in a different part of town and has a huge yard with tons of trees.  So, we helped him rake.  It took our whole group of 32 people a few hours to complete it, but we made it fun.  CJ was really nice.  When we were done with his yard, he asked us to do his neighbor's yard, who is an older woman who drives him places when he needs to go.

Cody & Ben are working hard.

Don't dump Ben in the ravine, Cody!

By that time it was 2:15 and we hadn't eaten lunch yet.  We decided to go back to Abundant Life, shower & make a sandwich if we wanted to, then go bowling & out to supper.  It was a fun evening.  Different groups ate at either Red, Hot & Blue, Outback or Olive Garden. 

It's hard to believe that tomorrow's our last day of working here in Joplin.  The students have been great - we feel very blessed to have such a great group of kids to work with! 

Wednesday - 1/9/13

 Today started out as an opportunity to practice being flexible.  Coach Bolluyt and I had planned on finishing the fence that his group started yesterday.  We got to the site, figured out exactly how we were going to do everything, and then realized that for half of the posts the concrete hadn't set.  So, we got to put everything away and figure out what else we were going to do. 

 Our awesome fencing crew that didn't get to put up a fence today.

We ended up splitting up - half of the group went to split wood with Coach Profit & Coach Bolluyt.  Four girls and I went to destruct and then re-build a shed that hadn't been built correctly.  We had to take the tin off of the entire outside, then remove the roof joists.  Our girls are now very competent with drills & saws!

Art, our bus driver, is getting to work!

 Then we used the same roof joists, but had to extend them to be longer so they would fit the opposite direction on the shed. 

Here's where we stopped for the day.  The roof is now on correctly, and we hope we get the opportunity to go back & finish the job in the next few days.  Tomorrow there's a 90% chance of rain, so we'll probably be working inside somewhere.

The other groups had a good day, too!  Coach Profit & Coach Bolluyt chopped a lot of wood.  Coach Loveall's group is almost finished dry-walling the house they've been at all week.  Tomorrow they can finish the dry-wall and start mudding and taping.



Tonight after supper we're going to go get ice cream and stop at Wal-Mart.   We're looking forward to the outing!

Tuesday - 1/8/13

Today we had another good day.  My group (which was different than  yesterday - 8 girls were with me today) went to work at Stevie's house.  Steve is a single mom who works as a respiratory therapist at a local hospital.  She has a 10-year-old son named Keagan.  Her house was right in the heart of all the destruction - her entire neighborhood was completely leveled.  She said that in her immediate neighborhood 10 people were killed.  Her story was amazing.

Stevie re-built her house and moved in two days ago, so we did some clean-up of construction debris, and we also took apart a tornado shelter.  The story with the tornado shelter was that they originally wanted a tornado shelter that they wouldn't have to go outside for, so they followed the plans from FEMA to construct one in their garage.  They later found out that it would not be FEMA-approved, so they had an underground concrete bunker built.  Destructing it was a big job, because there were several alternating layers of plywood and sheets of steel, and each layer had its own set of bolts holding it together.  So, several girls became very competent with a drill as they took out thousands of screws.

While they were working on destructing the tornado shelter, the rest of us cleaned up construction debris from her yard - everything from leftover tile and scraps of wood to shingles and cinder blocks.  We also cleaned up several huge branches, picked up thousands of rocks (some big and some not-so-big, the soil here is very rocky) and filled in some holes.  When we were done it looked much better than it had when we started!

The dumpster didn't have a lot in it when we started.  By the time we finished it was full!

Our group with Stevie (the home-owner) and Art (our bus driver).  Art helped out with destructing the tornado shelter all day and was a great help!

Doesn't Stevie's garage look great?

The other groups kept very busy today, too.  Coach Loveall's group went back to Brenda's house, where they put in insulation and got drywall up on the ceiling.  Coach Bolluyt and his group worked to put up a chain link fence for a family.  Coach Profit and his group split wood.

Tomorrow we'll go back to Brenda's house to continue drywalling, we'll continue splitting wood, and we'll finish putting up the chain link fence.  We're all pretty tired tonight after a big day of work.