The dream of every Habitat volunteer is to frame walls and see a home rise around them. The dream came true yesterday for our crew - we built and raised four outer walls and several internal, in 7 hours. Lots of pounding! Our house is built on a cement slab and the bottom of the walls are attached by bolts.
We are working in Gautier (pronounced "Gau-shay") MS, 25 minutes east of Biloxi off Interstate 10 in an existing small home community. The area is cleared of debris but individual homes are still unoccupied. We expect to make great progress this week with our crew of 12 (ten from Madison Cares plus Carolyn from near Harrisburg, PA plus an Americorp volunteer). Brad is our construction manager - a good and patient teacher!
Although the temperature was around 80 yesterday, the sun is quite warm by the afternoon. We chugged gallons of water and bought a case of Gatorade for today. Everyone ended the day in good shape, except for a couple of bruised fingers.
We found out that the Habitat activities will be moving to a new site, in Ocean Springs, in January to free up the stadium for the Salvation Army community center. So this operation is committed to building many more houses - the need is still large.
Thanks again to everyone who is supporting us in making this trip, including Larkins Run for my dog and Carolyn's friend who is taking care of her three children for a week!
- Maureen Lopes
- Maureen Lopes
2 comments:
Wow-great job!
Thanks for the updates, it is exciting to be able to follow your progress.
elaine
That's a lot of progress for a day's work - you guys ROCK!!! Thank you for giving of yourselves so generously :-)
Martha
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