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!!