Goodbye, Set-Up Week, Hello Volunteers!

So first of all, volunteers show up tomorrow! After a long, busy week of finding homes, setting up the center, and planning programming, it's going to be very exciting. All of our projects for the first few weeks are officially signed and work orders were written today.

I'm very excited for my contact homes for the upcoming week. One is a small single-wide trailer with 7 people living it! First up project wise this week is a brand new roof! I've never worked on a roofing project before, but after writing my work order and studying up a bit, I think I've got it handled. Just have to convince the volunteers that I'm an expert! Later in the summer, we'll be building a large room addition to the trailer to accommodate all the people living in it. There's three adorable kids in the home that are just hilarious and they'll be very entertaining to volunteers. Two of the kids are with me in the picture above (they were taking me for a "ride"). My second contact home involves building safe exits for the family, both in the back of the home and off their front porch. So we'll be building lots of stairs up a large hill. This home houses a friendly older couple, who when we went to sign the house, cooked all 4 of us staffers a HUGE and DELICIOUS kentucky meal. Meatloaf, cornbread, potatoes, jalepenos from a jar, it was awesome. They'll be a pleasure to work with.

Last night was a great night with my staff. After a busy day signing homes, we celebrated by buying multiple 6 packs of Ale 8, and driving to Kingdom Come State park. We just relaxed and hung out, looking at the beautiful views at the overlook (picture also above). We had a great night just having a good time.

Everyone here is so great. Our hardware guy Butch, is hilarious. He's a Baptist priest, coal miner, ex-army, school bus driving hardware worker. Our hardware runs will take longer since he LOVES to talk, but we'll have a great time goofing around with him all summer. Our cook, Alice, is SUCH sweetheart. She's going to be like a grandmother to us staffers. Plus, I heard she makes the best food, so we're looking forward to eating her cooking starting tomorrow night! Despite the fact that our center is located in a relatively bad part of town, we haven't had any trouble with the people around, and we have a lot of community members looking out for us and supporting our cause.

I have so much more I could talk about, but I'll get it all out in time! God has been great this week, I'm so thankful. Wish me luck tomorrow with our first group of volunteers!