Hometown special

Yes, they came to conquer whatever we had for them and conquer they did!

All of these photos are of our hometown team, mostly football players. And they came in all sizes, thank goodness. They total 40 so we divided them into 2 teams.

One team had the task of "deconstructing" what had been a small garage at one time. They needed to salvage as much of the material as possible. They started from the top and worked their way down. At one point, when they thought it was torn apart enough, they tried the "let's all line up on one end and push it down" idea, which failed! A few more of the 2x4's needed to be removed, along with some of the plumbing pipes. They managed to finally get the thing down, within an inch of the back fence!!! Think God might have had His hand on the building when it fell?

The other half of the team had the task of removing the roof of a home. Sounds simple? Not when the temps are above 90 and the humidity is the same -- and--- the roof is black! But up the ladder they went (they had decided ahead of time that any players weighing in around 300 pounds were not the candidates for being on top of a roof) -- smart call! So some of the "smaller" ones got the roofing job. They started on half of it and worked until they were about to drop.

They very quickly realized that our mandatory water breaks every 20 minutes were for a good reason. There are a few of them who are a bit "pinker" than at the beginning of the day. There are quite a few of them who I am certain will sleep good tonight. Especially after the spaghetti dinner they all had! Even though their plates were running over with food, I think they had already used up all the calories before eating!

It was an amazing day! When Pastor Teresa showed up she was amazed that there were 40 football players staying in the church! They are great at cleaning up after themselves and actually on the quiet side (compared to some we have anyway)! They did have the opportunity to see quite a bit of the city as we traveled from one job to another. There were some very big eyes after their first trip through the city! Reality hit -- big time!

For Monty and I, having home here is priceless! We may not know them personally but that doesn't matter. They are a part of home and that does matter! Not to mention that our Pastor's son is among them and our daughter, son in law and grandson's backyard neighbors! We'll take whatever small pieces of home we can get!

Tomorrow they will be helping set up for "Feed the Multitudes" that will happen on the 4th. Be sure and stay tuned as the week is only getting started.

Not to slight our other two teams here (we total 68 volunteers), the WA team was divided between 3 homes doing sheetrock finishing, painting and trim. They also looked a bit wilted at the end of the day. Our Angola, Indiana team of youth were all at one home and with that many they were doing a bit of everything it's going to take to get the family back home again.

We thank all of the families for entrusting their loved ones with us for this week. God is going to touch them and return them to you changed people! Guaranteed!

Until tomorrow . . . Susan and Monty