Tuesday of Mission Trip

With our site manager, "Cousin Eddie" as Linh named him, nowhere to be found we proceeded to dig holes for the wheelchair ramp posts. Several rather dense and hard rocks prevented us from accomplishing our task very quickly, but eventually we were successful in creating eight 18-inch holes in the hard dirt and clay.

At left Dylan uses a misshapen post-hole digger as Jamie supervises (photo by Ginny).

Soon the girls got in on the action and dug some holes of their own!

Ginny poses for several pictures at right and Jamie shows off "her" hole below.

After a lunch of PB&J, chips, and apples the crew traveled to another site to work on a house that was not nearly so completed. There we worked on installing Soffit again and preparing the F channels to hold the Soffit.

This second site is in a Habitat neighborhood. There are a number of Habitat houses in this plan that are in various stages of completion: from only basic foundations to nearly completed.

Acclamation to West Virginia

We arrived at Almost Heaven Habitat for Humanity in Cherry Grove, WV Sunday late afternoon. After making spaghetti for dinner we gathered for orientation in the common room and met the other groups: St. Edward's Catholic Boys' School and Piney Parish Episcopalian Church. To the left you can see the view from the Volunteer Center (picture by Ginny).

Monday we set off on our first day of work. We were assigned to the Simmons' house in Ruddle, WV which was about 35 minutes from the Volunteer Center where we stayed. Betty Simmons was there to greet us as we arrived in our two large white vans. She is currently living in a trailer right next to the Habitat house. Betty has lived in a trailer her whole life and her home was washed away in the mid-80s flood that is still fresh in the minds of people in this area. Betty's husband is disabled and the house will have a 16 foot wheelchair ramp for him.

Betty has one cat named Misty and two dogs: Bear and De-oh'-gee (D-O-G). When we heard that De-oh-gee was tied up around behind the house we expected a large and ferocious canine. Instead we were greeted by a medium-sized people-lover who held perfectly still when petted.

On our first day of work, one group (Ben Dempe, Chris Barr, Gary Grabowski, and Linh Quach) set up scaffolding and proceeded to install Soffit to the underside of the roof overhangs. The first couple of pieces were less than perfectly straight, but they were experts by the time they reached the second side of the house! The picture on the right shows Zach, Jeff, and Jamie hard at work digging holes for the wheelchair ramp posts (picture by Ginny).

Another group (Zach Leasure, Dylan Burke, Jeff Tissue, Anthony Quach, Dan Chalons-Browne) hung an interior door with the guidance of Eddie, our site manager. Another group (Jamie Martina, Ginny Harkins, Julia Michael, Kimberly Greway) smoothed out and painted about 700 windows and doors in the interior of the house. They also touched up the spots missed by other painters throughout the two-bedroom, two-bath house.