Day One at Apricot

Our day began together at the offices of Project Homecoming. We heard about the history of the organization, where they are now, and where they plan to be in the future. We were then introduced to our site managers. We split into our two groups and we were on our way to Apricot St.

You never know what kind of house, or what condition it's in, that you'll be working on until you get to the site. My team pulled up to our house and surveyed the scene. Part of the roof is still missing in the back, the stairs to the front door have not yet been rebuilt, and they were reframing the rooms inside the house. Our assigned task for this week is to work on the siding of the house. Once we got the low down on a few things to think about and some safety advice we split our team into smaller teams and each got to work on a section of the house...it was a typical day on a construction site.

As the day wore on and the sun moved higher in the sky, it started to get really hot. The students were climbing up and down ladders carrying tools and long sections of siding all day. Some of our skin was getting a little pink. Long story short...there were any number of things that your average person would complain about. The minutes went by, then the hours, before I knew it the day was over. Not a single negative word was spoken on the site all day! These students came to New Orleans with a purpose. As I said in prayer with the group this evening, our work is just another drop in the bucket of Katrina recovery. Let's make sure we do everything we possibly can to make our drop as big as we possibly can.

Tomorrow we pick up where we left off. Hopefully today's experience makes us a little more efficient and we can get a significant amount completed tomorrow...now off to bed to reenergize.

Good night

Mr. B