WPC Blogs

On our last day we began working early and hard.  The weather is beautiful, cool (for Texas) and brilliantly sunny.  Although it was evident that we would not finish all the items that need to be done, we were happy to leave Miss Lilllian’s home in much better shape than we found it.  We were all feeling a little disappointed to leave with some jobs unfinished until Marley showed up.  He is the manager of the team that will replace us on Monday.  His team is composed of retired people who bring their RV’s down to Galveston.  They work anywhere from a week to four weeks.  It felt so good to know that another team will finish up the home soon.  As we prayed for Miss Lillian and God’s blessing to be with her and her new home, we were filled with gratitude for the opportunity to be here.  We say goodbye to Galveston tomorrow so we are signing off.

Jacquie Zoolkoski                     Jason Wroten
Chuck Ackerman                       Rick Johnson   
Dee Fairbanks                           Mary Chandler
Bruce Fairbanks                        Apryl Hurley
Harry Chandler                           Lenore Robb

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Thursday, October 22

Well Wednesday lived up to its name and turned out to be a challenging day.  We arrived at our new assignment, a home that was supposed to be near completion.  After many frustrating starts and stops we made progress by sorting tools, prioritizing needed work and identifying material and tool needs.  Cleaning out the garage turned out to be more excitement than expected.  We finished the day at the Olive Garden in a driving rainstorm.  We awoke this morning to sheets of rain blowing across the compound.  The sidewalk flooded quickly making us stay in the breakfast room for awhile.  We finally got the call from Galveston saying it was safe to drive over to the island. 

Today was a good day of accomplishments.  Thresholds were installed, spackling on every wall was done, baseboards were painted, drywall mudding was done in the bathroom, and appliances were installed.  This second home is on the far side of Galveston Island, which received the worst of the flooding.  Many of the houses have been bulldozed or abandoned.  Unemployment in Galveston is at 50% so we see many men sitting and waiting.

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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Hello from lovely Texas City,

We put in another day of tremendous work at the Salinas home.  Today we finished up gutting the inside. We removed the remaining linoleum, pulled down the remainder of the wallboard and wallpaper, removed the bottom half of the tongue and groove boards, finished the front steps, hauled all of the trash off of the porch, and then sprayed the first of three applications of bleach solution over the lower four feet of the walls and all of the floors. The reward for all of this hard work was that Mrs. Salinas surprised us with homemade tortillas, beans and meat and fresh avocados to thank us.  What an awesome treat!  We said a sad goodbye to Jason who did a huge amount of work removing the linoleum tiles-a very hot and sticky job.  Tonight the Pennsylvania team is cooking meatloaf and mashed potatoes for us.  Rick and Jason fed us well yesterday with Swedish pancakes for breakfast and beef brisket at dinner.  We are eating well!!!

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Monday, October 19, 2009

Greetings from Texas City. We had an awesome day today. The team was united in patience as we had a very slow start to the morning from a prolonged orientation. But once we finally arrived at the worksite we were unstoppable. The first house that we are gutting is a two-story structure that sustained major water damage to the first floor. After removing the contents of the downstairs rooms, we tore out sheet rock up to 4 feet, scraped up linoleum tiles, removed decades old wallpaper, started building a new front stairs and tore out window frames. Our team would like to ask for your prayers for safety and health. We wear masks, eye protection, gloves and earplugs. But we are working with termite shavings, mold, dust, animal droppings and other noxious materials. Tomorrow we will return to the same home to hopefully finish up the process.

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Hello Send Team,

We are sitting in the Break Room waiting to start our first orientation. Everyone arrived without any problems yesterday. We met the 6 people on the team from West Newton, PA and settled into our bunks. Because there are only 7 women and 9 men, there is plenty of room to spread out in the trailers. We also met Pat and Chester who are our Presbyterian Disaster Assistance hosts. Today we woke up to beautiful clear, cool skies. We all attended church at 10:30 in their lovely sanctuary. After church we headed out to see Galveston. We had a great lunch at Gaidos, a restaurant on the Seawall. After a stroll on the beach we drove around the island to get oriented for our work tomorrow. We will start working tomorrow at 8:30 am. Everyone is ready and excited to get started. We have been told that we will be removing drywall up to four feet. Our hearts are filled with gratitude for this opportunity to serve in Galveston.

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We started our day in a different manner today as we joined up with one of our hosts named Merle and we visited a dinosaur track site at 7:00 a.m.  The early morning shadows on the tracks made them easier to see.  They're estimated to be 167 million years old!  We then ate breakfast together in Greybull before eventually making it to the jobsite at 9:30.

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Today was the midpoint of our trip and we all feel exhausted.  After an 8:30 a.m. delivery of concrete to finish off a sidewalk alongside the church, we then pressed forward to complete the hanging of sheetrock inside the multi-purpose room.  In addition, we installed the doors and trimmed out the windows outside.  Now the siding awaits us.

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Hi Everyone,

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The construction site at the back of the Shell Community Church was very active today as we built forms for a new sidewalk, installed insulation, began installing soffits, and started hanging sheetrock on the ceiling.  Tomorrow we hope to finish the soffits and complete all the sheetrock, except for the utility room which still needs to be plumbed.  Overall, the job has been very enjoyable with a variety of tasks and a lot of productivity.  Although we were warm throughout the day, it was never overbearing and a lot of our work is indoors or in the shade.  Just before we stopped work for the day, our missing load of siding and windows/doors arrived.  That means Wednesday we will likely begin our anticipated task of installing siding - our original assignment.

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Our team of five members arrived just in time for dinner on Sunday, July 19th, at the construction site in Shell, WY.   [Many thanks to the Stoner family who loaned us their mini-van that now has another 1,037 miles on the odometer.  We plan to drive in reverse all the way home to return it to its original mileage!]   The town is settled in a valley with a descent through the Bighorn Mountain Range about two hours south of Billings, MT.  Just after we arrived, a brief thunder storm greeted us to cool off the evening.  We then met up with our leader at the nearby eatery called "Dirty Annie's" where we ate dinner.

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On Saturday, July 18th, five of us will begin our 900 mile drive east to the small town of Shell, WY.  We've been invited by the Shell Community (Presbyterian) Church, pastored Becky Anderson previously from Quilcene Presbyterian, to assist in their summer construction project.  By the time we arrive, we'll be the third team to help out and our job will be to install windows, doors,  and siding on their church addition project.  The original building is over 100 years old and this project will finally bring indoor plumbing to the church.  The outhouse behind the church will no longer be needed.

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