Instead of our traditional morning devotional, one of the care-a-vanners shared his personal story about how Habitat for Humanity changed his life. While people in the communities thank us, it is really the care-a-vanners that should be thanking them for the opportunity to serve. It was a touching story, and it rings true with the entire team.
We made headlines in the local newspaper! I can’t believe it’s been a week since the groundbreaking. The days are so busy and rewarding, that it doesn’t seem like it could be Friday already.
Today’s task list was a repeat of yesterday. Our goal was to get all of the exterior walls built and secured by the end of the day. As part of that goal, we needed to move all the pre-built interior walls and the pre-cast fiberglass bathtub into the house before the exterior walls were complete.
As our first task, Joe and I were on bathtub pickup duty with two others from the team. The tubs are not heavy, but they are very awkward to carry. These tubs can crack easily if they are twisted or bumped. With four people, we were able to easily maneuver them onto the trailer.
The tubs were in Gene’s workshop, about 30 minutes away. Gene is on the Board of Directors at Habitat and is one of the most patient and knowledgeable people I’ve met at Sullivan. He’s mayor of his town, and captain of his local fire company. I also just heard over dinner yesterday that he completed a triathlon. Gene has plans for his workshop that is right next door to the fire station. He wants to have half as his workshop, and half as a community room for seniors. He is truly inspirational! I’ve heard a lot about his workshop, and was looking forward to seeing it first hand. Most of the workshop is taken up by the creation of large sunflowers made by hand from plastic barrels. There must have been around 50 sunflowers in various stages of completion. I understand that they are cut from the barrels, heated and formed, painted and then assembled. Some custom orders have even had sports teams painted on them. Certainly seems like there is a lot of demand for them!
There were also a few other creative pieces of art made out of tools! It reminded me a bit of Santa’s workshop :-).
After safe delivery of the tubs, we carefully lifted them into the house. It was then time for our team of 4 to move all the interior walls inside the house. Some of the walls were quite long and heavy, while some were very short and light.
After having another delicious lunch at a local church, we got back to work helping to erect and secure the remaining walls. It’s a fun team effort to lift the walls, but as they say, “many hands make light work” (we are the ones in the grey shirts).
Yeah! All the exterior walls are up!
We then secured all the walls to the deck with 16 penny nails. Joe helped with adding interior braces and cutting out some of the openings for the doors.
Well, mission accomplished for the week! Looking forward to sleeping in a little late on Saturday :-).