This week I have been at Lagniappe working on their first attempt at blitz building a house. I arrived Wednesday and settled in. Thursday I spent 3 hours at Lowes picking up lumber for the house we were going to work on and watched a crew pour the foundation. Friday I helped build the subfloor on top of the foundation (from 9am to almost 11pm) our teams also arrived friday afternoon. Saturday our teams helped build the frame and start sheeting the sides of the house. Sunday I rested. Monday we began sheeting the roof, I built a deck, and we passed inspection. Tuesday we wrapped the house, put on shingles and siding, and installed windows and doors. All of the exterior of the house is complete in only 4 days!
The teams were composed of college students who are all involved with RUF(reformed university fellowship) on different campuses. I supervised the painting of siding and other things, screwed in boards for the deck, but mostly ran around getting stuff/supplies that were needed on the worksite-even meals.
My favorite thing about this week was seeing how we had an impact on the community. The house we built is on one of the main streets in town and people were constantly driving by and cheering us on. The fire trucks would drive by, honk, and turn on their sirens for us. The local paper and news station came out to do a piece on our work (I was interviewed for the paper). The community is so encouraged to see people still coming and caring about them and in turn want to do what they can for us. Many people stopped by to check out our work. Some construction workers even stopped by to tell us what a great job we were doing! Other people stopped by to bring us donuts, coffee, homemade bread, snacks, etc. My favorite part of it all, was being able to talk to the sweet neighbors who came out when we were working late into the night to tell us to keep hammering away and don't worry about disturbing them because they just wanted this family to have a home.
This week has been wonderful, but I can't wait to be home with my family and get some much needed rest.
