Well, another round is coming to an end. And it seems as though we just arrived here in Lake Charles, LA. Today is Tuesday the 23nd of February and we leave on the 25th to head back to campus in Vinton, IA for a few days of transition. Then we'll head off to our next project in Coralville, IA on March 4th doing invasive species removal and getting trained to do controlled burns which will also include a pack test (firefighter training) which is pretty cool.
Patrick writing little messages for Griff and Trisha on the ceiling haha..."Griff stinks"...."Trisha bites the big 1 "
Now, on to the last post for this project. We've been gaining numerous amounts of experience in how to take apart a room and rebuild it. A few different houses, but our main focus has been on Ms. Mary's house. This lady is in her 80's and acts like she's in her 20's haha. She always has stories that make us laugh and we're gonna miss her deeply. A few pics i'd like to share show the progression that we've made in this one room in her house (see my facebook account for a whole lot more photos).
These 2 pics show how the room looks while the flooring is in progress. We are laying down the flooring in preparation to place the "stick n' peel" tile down.
Shannon is making some cuts for the walls while Michael (our TL) and Daniel help with supporting.
Griff and Shannon placing parts of the wall together.
These 2 pics kinda show you the big progress that we've made.....the walls are in place with insulation, the floors are in with the tile down, and the trim on the top and bottom of the walls. We are actually pretty excited and proud of ourselves for this room because it is something that we started and we finished with some pretty good results. We were so excited at the end of the day yesterday when all of our hard work these past few weeks have finally paid off. And Ms. Mary was pretty grateful as well.
Ms. Mary is opening her birthday present from all of us (card and framed picture). She's definitely been a joy to work with, with all of her stories about her life.
Children's Day in Lake Charles at their civic center was an ISP that we did. And this pic here is Lyndsay with a cat face painted. Her and a few of the other girls helped work the face painting booth that was set up for the kids while the rest of us worked running the games.
There was a band there to keep us all entertained and even a man that had his trained birds. He did several tricks that were pretty cool.
And finally, the Community Day that Shannon and I set up with Friend Ships finally came. We generated a few volunteers to help us out and we had a pretty successful day. Packaging, taping, labeling, and preparing food and clothing for the next shipment out to Haiti. This is something that all of us were pretty excited about since we couldn't personally go to Haiti to help out. We wanted to do something. And this was definitely one way to go about it.
These 3 pics show us boxing up clothing and food and even some already prepared for shipment. It was pretty fun and exciting knowing that the work we were doing would help out soooo many people in Haiti that needed it.
Us walking onto the ship at lunch time about to get a tour.
A few other ships that Friend Ships owns and a little van that we saw on their land that I just HAD to take a pic of. I thought it was pretty awesome :)
And now this will conclude our stay here in Lake Charles, LA and a new path for us to take opens up. I wish I could give all of you a better idea of just how much this project has touched me. Not just the work being done and the impact I know i'm making....but the people. The people here are so grateful for everything. Someone even asked if we would ever come back. Doing this type of work you definitely have the opportunity to reach out to people, and in most cases, they end up reaching out to you even more. I've learned a lot about myself and my relationship with God during this past project. And I expect to learn even more next project since we will be working and living in the middle of nature. Staying at a Church camp for 7 1/2 weeks I'll have plenty of chances to just get out on my own and be one with God and the nature that He created. I hope these past few posts give you just a glimpse.....maybe a glimmer of what we do. Expect more posts that talks about our next project in Coralville, IA. But this next one may not come for another week or two until we get up and going. Thanks so much for reading and please continue to. Have a blessed week. "My time is up, I thank you for yours." God bless!
