I am home!

Well I am home and this semester flew by! It was bitter sweet to leave. I loved being in Mississippi, but missed my family and Daniel! To finish out, we had a week without volunteers so Leah and I worked hard on the church. We then had a week of volunteers, who almost finished roofing the house, but unfortunately ran out of shingles, and they also almost finished siding the Smith house! For my last week in Mississippi, we did a little bit of work, but my Mom came on Wednesday, to help me pack and drive, and then Thursday we went to Ocean Springs, which was just a fun little downtown place. Thursday night we went to a restaurant where they had a fireplace and we got s’mores!! Being in Mississippi was great; I learned so much and grew up some too! Thank you everyone for all your prayer and support!

In His Name

~Sarah

Leah, Matt, Me, Jesse, Annette (The McBrides)

Volunteers on the roof

S'mores!!!!

Sorry it has been so long!

So I haven’t updated in a very long time! Sorry about that! Well what has happened since I did last update? First I went home for a week and got to see everybody, which was great and the break was needed! The week that I came back, Leah and I just worked on the church and some other small projects. It has been cool to be able to be in the field and at a desk as much as I have! The next week we had a group of volunteers from Pennsylvania working on both sites, oh and Leah had gone to Virginia, to work on things for the design build studio, the first of that week so I was running both sites. Thank goodness for Annette! She really helped the first day because I couldn’t be at both sites at once! It was a crazy couple of day, but good and it is good to know that I am prepared for this when it comes my turn to run it all. Then my parents came on Wednesday! We got to build a deck of the back of the Smith’s house. It was so much fun to work with them, so now next summer when they want to build something I can design it and tell them how to build it. Ha ha just kidding mom and dad. But they had to leave and go back to the real world. So the Saturday they left, the McBride’s had a small thank you party for the people who had helped build their house. I made a fruit creation, see picture!

The next week the same volunteers were here, which made it very easy! They got a lot of work done on both houses; it was exciting to see both houses getting worked on! As I had mentioned earlier Leah and I are working on designing a church, Trinity Episcopal Church. This past Sunday, since Leah left me again, I presented our design proposal to the church. I was very surprised to not get nervous! I felt that the presentation went very well, and the church body is just excited to get back in their church after 3 years. Oh and a side note. Jesse, Leah’s brother, got a puppy because he just got a new house. So there is a picture of Sadie here too! Well I think that catches everyone up! I have less than three weeks, but I will be coming back for Spring Break with Daniel, and the BCM!

In His Name,

~Sarah

Volunteers!!!

The deck! It only two and half days!

My fruit creation!

SADIE!!!

Nothing much

I just wanted to to post and say that nothing much happened this week. I did office work since we didn't have any volunteers. Although one cool thing that is going on is that Leah and I are working on a church down here. It has been fun to go to the meetings with the building committee and then put what they want into plans. It is a rehab, so we are using what was left after Katrina. Well I go home on Tuesday for a week to see my family and Daniel. I am super excited, so pray for safe travels.

In His Name
~Sarah

Week at the Spa, Kinda

This was a great week! I spent all week in a bathroom, tiling! I had never tiled before and so it was good to learn and it was a lot of fun. The volunteers this week were great! I have to commend them! Even though they didn’t have a lot of construction experience they got a lot of work done. They got the whole house wrapped, the window put in, the felt on the roof, and started on the shingles! So Leah has a 1989 truck and it seems as though it is on its last leg, well Thursday I took it Lowes to go get some supplies. Well it needed gas, so I stopped to get gas and it wouldn’t start. I called Leah to come help. We decided the battery was dead and tried to jump it with my car. That didn’t work and since it is a standard we realized that if the truck go enough speed then you could just pop the clutch and it would start. These guys tried to help us get it going fast enough. The funny part to the story is that the only problem is that the battery cable was loose. Philip and Jeanine left this week, which is sad! Well that is really all for this week. I go home for a week, next Tuesday and I am super excited to see everyone!

In His Name,

~Sarah

The guys pushing the truck

Yak-a-Du

This Saturday I competed in a duathalon, with Jocelyn another volunteer coordinator down here. It was a 2 mile run, 2 mile kayak, 2 mile run. It was a lot of fun and my official time was 1:06:24. I was very happy with that time! So for the houses this week, we got so much done! All the OSB is on the roof, and the interior walls are all framed in. The volunteers this week were great, because they were all skilled and so I just observed what was being done. Although I did help Philip and Jeanine with the stairs this week! The stairs are just OSB covered and so the first time that we nailed some of them down they were done wrong, the squeaked really badly. So I had to take them up and redo them, but when they were redone they didn’t squeak at all! The other house got painted and whole house got bamboo floors put in!! After the race on Saturday I went to the Hardrock café for dessert. It was so cool seeing all the famous people’s guitars, clothes and stuff! I am well rested and ready for another week to start!

In His Name

~Sarah

Jocelyn and I on the Kayaks before the race, we borrowed

Our Stairs!!!


Interior walls!!!!

Wind and Waves!!

We got a lot done this week despite the hurricane. The group that came in to work on the house was from Maryland and they were a group of 4 guys and so it was great to have them because we needed the sheathing put on the roof. And it is almost all done, they would have finished if Ike didn’t come through. So when Ike came through the waves in the Gulf were huge! Usually the Gulf is really calm, but the waves were big because of the wind, and there was lots of flooding. I was on my way to Leah’s house on Thursday morning and I see a sign that says road closed because of flooding. I think to myself, it is not raining why would there be flooding, so I ignored the sign and lo and behold there really was water on the road. Leah and her family actually spent the night in the house I am staying in on Thursday night because they were worried about there cars more than anything. They did end up with a little water under the house, but nothing bad at all. I have been having a lot of fun actually doing office work, because I now understand how everything works together that I can figure things out and I actually have fun drawing on CAD. Well hopefully there will be no more hurricanes!

In His Name,

~Sarah

Here is a video of the crazy wind and waves from Ike!

Back, for now

I made it back to Mississippi and there was very minimal damage. The house that we had put on 5 trusses on, all of them stayed up! One of the other houses that is complete now, had a small tree fall on it, but it ended up putting a hole in the roof and there was some water damage from that. You can see though that some boats came ashore. Other than the hurricane, it was a nice week. I worked on getting some plans ready for a job and it was just a slow, short week. Oh, I did run into a ditch, because I was losing a load of lumber that I had on the back of Leah’s truck and my goal was to keep the wood out the road so I ended up in a ditch. Saturday we got all the rest of the trusses put up on the Smith’s house, which was really exciting! That was pretty much the whole week, but I ask for prayers again as we brace to see where the next storm, Ike, will hit.

In His Name,

~Sarah

Here are the boats that washed ashore

Me in the ditch with the lumber

Sam and Jesse, Leah's brother, working on the trusses

All of us piled in Leah's truck to go to a Mexican place, it was very fitting

The trusses all done!!

On the Move!

So I write this from my cousins Jeff and Melanie’s lake house. For those who don’t know Hurricane Gustav is in the Gulf of Mexico and it is going to hit the Middle of Louisiana. I live in Long Beach, MS and work in Pass Christian, MS, if anyone wants to look those up, and the east side of the storm is going to hit there, which is the strongest side. Yesterday when I realized that the hurricane went up to a category 4 I knew that I wanted to get out, it has since gone back down to a hurricane 3. So I packed up all that I have and I left. Philip and Jeanine came with me, so that I am not all alone. Which is really nice! Other than the hurricane this week was a lot of fun. We didn’t have any volunteers so we just did a lot of small things. We also got the trusses up on the Smith’s house, well not all of them, and hopefully they stay up! So it was a restful week too. Oh and I also started running this week! Philip and Jeanine run so I decided that I would start running with them. They run for an hour, which I did on Tuesday but it was too much for me and so I biked the next day and ran only 30 minutes the day after that. This week there was also a group staying in the house. They are from Arizona and were really nice, always inviting me out with them and visiting with me. They left Friday, which is good because they got out way before the storm. This week I ask that everyone be in prayer for the Gulf Coast, the three year anniversary of Katrina was this past Thursday and Friday, and to relive it all so soon has got to be hard. But God is good and knows what he is doing!

In His Name

~Sarah

This is Leah, who is technically my boss, but is more of a friend

This is Leah's mom Annette, she is lots of fun!

So this is a great picture! Leah is at the top then Sam, Matt's employee is hanging, then Philip is in the green shirt and Matt, Leah's dad is the guy in the yellow hat.

Annette also trying to help, but just being crazy!

The house with the trusses!!

Long week

So this was the longest week so far! Normally the weeks go by very fast, but not this one. We had a group on Monday, but got a different group for Tuesday. The group was from Massachusetts, three of which had gone to MIT, so needless to say they caught on very quickly even though none of them were skilled. The week from then on was much better. On Wednesday two of Leah’s friends, who have come down many times before, came and they are both skilled so it is great to have them here. Their names are Jeanine and Philip, Jeanine just graduated with a degree in interior design. Philip is one of the craziest, sarcastically funny guys that I have ever met! They are here for a month. We don’t have volunteers again until September 6^th so it will be nice to work and have fun! So I am including some pictures of the house I am staying in and as you can see I can see the ocean from my house! Ok, so you may have to strain your eyes but hey, it is the ocean!

In His Name

~Sarah

View of the Ocean

The House, my room is the far window on the right!

My Room

From where I was in the shot above I just turned around and there is the sink which is huge!

The door you can see above leads to the bathroom!

And folks we have walls!!!

This was a tiring but great week! So last Friday I learned how to hang joists, so that I could learn and then teach the volunteers how to do it this week. Not only did the volunteers hang all the joist on the house for the Smiths, but they also put up the exterior walls. The volunteers this week were two different groups, from New Jersey and New York. The group this week was a good mix of kids and adults and was all very competent. The fact that they did so much meant that I was on site all the time and that they had many questions, so they kept me hopping all week. For a little history on the Smiths, they live further back off the coast and are not on a flood plain. They left when Katrina came, her niece came and took a look at the house after the storm, and said there was no damage. Well, all the damage was on the inside. So they had to live in a FEMA trailer, and now lives in a Mississippi cottage. Mississippi cottages were designed by architects, to solve the problem of the lawsuits against the FEMA trailers. So MEMA, bought them to replace the FEMA trailers. So a lot of the health problems people had from living in the trailers got better. But the Mississippi cottages have to be gone by March and so all of the people living in them have to have houses. So now we are in the process of building them a house and Mrs. Smith is so excited and bought the group this week oranges. I have been learning so much and just love this experience!

A Mississippi Cottage

Smith's House at the beginning of the week

Smith's House Friday morning



Smith's House Friday afternoon

First week for real this time!

Wow, what a week. This was my first full week and it was great! We had a group of middle schoolers from Florida. They finished up the dry wall on one of the houses as you can see in the picture. Usually Leah, my boss, just gets the volunteers started and mostly lets them work without much supervision. But recently we have had to stay with the groups all day and supervise them. The middle school group was great and got a lot more done than I thought they would. Friday I spent all day with Matt, Leah’s dad. He is a contractor and so I spent the day hanging joists, 19 feet of the ground. Sam, Matt employee, and I hung about a third of joists. So now Monday I can show the next volunteer group how to hang joists, this time they are only 3 feet off the ground. Yesterday Leah, Jessy, and I worked on one of the houses making sure that the house is ready for the dry wall guy, Bubba, to come and finish it. Well I am excited to start another week.

In His Name

~Sarah

First Week....Kinda

Hello,

Well I finished my first work week. It was two shorter days. I worked with a volunteer group who was from Wisconsin. They were a youth group, and the kids were great! It was great though because I have learned a lot already and have helped too. Right now Leah, my boss, is gone for some meetings and so Jessie, who is the intern over the summer, is here and I am learning the ropes down here from her. She is the same age as me so it is great to just hang out with her. I am having a lot of fun and can’t wait to start again Monday!

In His Name

~Sarah

The Gulf Breeze

So, I am here! It took sixteen hours, two days, to get here. And one of the first things I see when I get here are Palm Trees. I was super excited! Also, you can see the Gulf from the house I am staying in, which is a really nice house and the neighbors who are my landlords are really great. They have a little puppy named Petal, who is 5lbs, 13 oz. Mom and I got me settled in with food and set up my room, which is really big and I have my bathroom! I have seen the two job sites that I will be working on and one is to the point of hanging drywall and the other they have just started, so I am very excited to see that one through for the next four months. Well, I start tomorrow and can’t wait to get all hot and sweaty in the heat of Mississippi. Oh and a side note if you are a food network fan I went to a place that will be on Dinners, Drive-ins and Dives. It is called Darwells, so look for it. Ok so hopefully I will write tomorrow and let you know how the day went.

In His Name

~Sarah

Thanks!!

I would like to thank everyone for their prayers and support. I am leaving in less than three weeks. I am super excited but will miss everyone very much. Again thank you!
~Sarah