Wednesday - HUMP DAY!!!

It's hard to believe this is the middle of the week already.  Projects are in full gear, however we did get a lot of rain this afternoon that rained out a couple of teams who had nothing but outside work.  Even rain sheltering canopies designed to keep both people and tools dry couldn't compete with the downpour.  Several of the teams had to quit early.  That's tough for a Wednesday, which is usually our most productive day.  It just makes tomorrow all the more important in completing most of our work.  Here are the thoughts from the teens:
Today, when waking at 7:15, I thought that it would be a fun, ordinary day. At the beginning, it went as usual: we had breakfast, packed for the working day and went on our way. The first couple hours were running smoothly while we were working on the roof, putting in new tile on the floor, and working on underpinning. For those of you who aren't professional contractors like us - underpinning is attaching metal sheathing to the base of a mobile home to keep animals out and the pipes from freezing during the winter. At about 1PM, after eating lunch, I noticed dark, gray clouds approaching, so I thought "Hmm... it's going to storm." And we got nailed. It started to storm out, so we had to take shelter in the van and house after packing our tools as quickly as possible. In the dry home, we continued to glue and place tiles to the floor. At around 2PM, we headed out and decided to go to Sonic for some hot dogs. It was a good time; we ran into another group there, and my group brainstormed what we were going to plan for our family's nephew, Billy, whose birthday is on Friday. He's always there to lend a hand and share some laughs while we're working on his cousin's house. After Sonic, half of my group and I went to the grocery store and we got Billy a cake. It was a baseball cake (because baseball is his favorite sport) decorated with a pitcher, batter, and catcher, a Phillies logo and red icing that said, "Happy Birthday Billy!!" I am so looking forward to seeing Billy's long grin when he sees the cake. I hope he likes it!
After facing a day without enough supplies and no room for everyone to work, Team Homorphous finally had a very productive day! The kids were out of the way and the cat was a house down, leaving our team without any distractions to continue our work. The stairs were completed and have yet to be connected to the almost-finished porch. The porch railings were put into place along with spindles connected to them. Bathroom tiles have finally all been placed, and we will soon be moving onto the living room floor. After this very productive day, our team leader, Mark Kratzer, was inclined to leave our family with a functioning toilet. The problem with this though, is that not only can a few people work on the toilet at one time, but he started at four in the afternoon--when we're supposed to leave the site. This left almost all the kids and a few adults sitting and waiting for at least an hour for our leaders to install plumbing. We competed against each other in rock-throwing contests and almost shut the back door of a car on four of our kids--needless to say, it was a bit reckless. Nonetheless, our work day was very successful, and our team managed to get back to the base in time to take showers before dinner.


Hi this is Mia from the Duro team, we made great improvements on our projects today. Although there were thunderstorms for most of the day, our team worked on Debby's home, which is a well kept trailer in the deeper part of the woods. We came close to finishing both of the projects on her home that include building a porch in the back and attaching railings, stairs and spindles on both the front and back deck. Wile working, we got our first chance to see and talk with Debbie and Anthony,  her energetic grandson. Anthony got to show us his ninja turtle shoes, how fast he can run and tell us all of the fun things that he likes to do around the house(like riding his dirt bike!).We also talked to Debbie learning about her life, home and family. Soon after lunch the rain clouds started to roll in. Somehow we were able to fit our whole crew, a 5x5 deck, a table saw and stand, along with the rest of our tools. Despite the rain and lots of mud, we were able to finish most of the deck today and Debbie really appreciated all of our hard work on her home. We started to head back around 4:45 we stated to head back, and decided to try and find the waterfall that Mumbles, Debbie's neighbor, told us about. When we got there we saw a beautiful waterfall and small river. The waterfall was over 25 feet tall, that we were supposed to jump off of. It was a little intimidating to see the height, and my legs were shaking a little as I convinced myself to jump. Before this trip I never would have taken a risk and jumped, but throughout this journey I have learned to take risks, speak up without worrying about what others might think, taking interest in the worksite and all of the blessings that we have in our everyday life that we take for granted. We have all learned about how God acts through us, and because of your generosity, we are able to help these people. ASP means so much to them- so thank you so much!
Summer 2014 has been a major life changing year for me because of ASP. I am absolutely thankful that ASP has given me an opportunity of serving Morgan County's wonderful families. Today at my work site was one of the best days of my life, despite pouring rain. My work group was halfway done with our goal by morning due to our family helping us. By early afternoon, it was heavily raining, but that didn't stop us having fun with our family's grandchildren and pets. I have never been so happy in my life being wet. My ASP family is truly unique, caring, and loving. I will always be happy knowing that I spent my summer volunteering for Morgan County's families. - Sam Aguilar, group protégé
Today was great, we loaded up the van and headed over to the site. Our project for today was to take out the carpet in one of the bedrooms. We then put in the underlayment on the bare floor and nailed it down. by the way we used like 200 nails. This way we can lay the tile. Tomorrow we will start our new dry wall project. Can't wait for tomorrow -from the Serpensortia Team
HI from team homorphous this is Tatum Scheibler, today we actually got the supplies we needed to finish the deck and bathroom tile, Shawn Sam an I got all the tile done today and the toilet in which was a cool accomplishment cause we thought we wouldn't be able to finish. The last part I did alone because it was raining and I was the only one without wet boots so I finished the last part of the bathroom which was rad cause I got to finish a project myself, also the homeowners Lonnie and Bev where very excited about their bathroom being able to work again and it was a really productive work day and I think we are all very excited for the rest of the week!
Hello, this is Janine from the Incendio team!!! Today was the best day so far. Along with the weather being less hot, we bonded with the family even more than the day before. I'm sure most people who have written today have complained about the weather, but I thought it was amazing. Our group took about a half an hour just to run around in the rain, get soaking wet, and splash around in some super muddy puddles. Sounds fun, right? It was. Boy, I didn't think I could appreciate rain as much as I did today; I'm pretty sure when the rain started, it sizzled off my 200 degree body. Besides the weather being awesome, we made a ton of progress today. Honestly I was pretty worried if we were going to even finish our projects on Monday, but after today, we look pretty well-off. After taking about an hour to pull nails out of a rotting support beam in the back porch and screaming at spiders under the porch and ants crawling throughout the damp wood, we yanked it out. We got the new support beam in and got situated for putting in the actual stairs tomorrow. We also are almost done with the guard rails in the front, and will be putting in guard rails in the back. As for the family, they are doing amazingly. I feel like every day we are getting closer to the family, and the mother Amber is just so kind and generous, always making us feel at home. She lets us come in the house to cool off, and while we eat lunch inside we watch movies with the girls. Today we watched Monsters University, and the girls watched Frozen again (of course). The kittens and dogs are as cute as ever, and are doing well. After the muddy work day, my group and I decided to go to the store to get a gift for Amber and her family. We planned to be back by 7:30 (didn't happen), and we also went to get hot dogs (as a snack) and pizza (as dinner). So healthy!! I think the shopping trip was a huge bonding experience for our group, I am so thankful for every one in my group. If there was one thing to describe our group, it would be a bundle of laughs. I don't think we go without a good laugh for 5 minutes. I think I will have some serious abs after laughing this week. My stomach hurts just thinking about all the laughter. For example, today we came back to the school (at about 8:45, oops) and we all had paint all over our faces. There was Harry Potter, an avatar, moustaches, and more. We are crazy!! Well this has been like the longest entry of the day, sorry! I just had so much fun today, hope the next three days are just as fun!!!