Wasps, roofing, and CPR, Oh My!

Today was the first day of work, and we began the day setting out to our two worksites.  A team of 9 began removing shingles at Miss Carrie’s house, while the other 4 team members set off to Mr. Price’s house to begin work on the front porch (not deck-as corrected by Dr. Mike). 

The work on Miss Carrie’s house began with removing asphalt tiles from the roof, which were melted together from years in the hot Mississippi sun.  A wasp’s nest was uncovered at one edge of the roof, but Ron saved the day by pushing the nest off of the roof.  Thankfully, no one was stung!  We almost finished removing all of the tiles from the biggest part of the house, and we will finish that part of the job first thing in the morning.  Only 3 places of rotten wood were found, so far, and just a couple of soft spots where the joists underneath were placed too far apart.  The men will begin determining how to fix these spots in the morning.

The team that went to work on Mr. Price’s porch had to do some planning and sketching before beginning work on the porch.  The roof over the porch was held up by posts anchored on the porch floor, so one wrong move and they’d be crushed! They came up with two ideas, neither of which worked, the third plan, however did work. They put in wood planks that were put near the roof and were also put in the ground at a slanted level. The posts that held up the roof were suspended on cinder blocks as we tore out the old porch flooring and picked up the trash beneath it. Luckily and thankfully, no one was smashed by the suspended roof!

After lunch, 15 kids arrived (between the ages of 8 and 18) for our life-skills tutoring sessions.  We began with first aid, where Lisa taught the kids how to help someone who is choking and how to perform compression CPR.  The men in the group were graciously volunteered to play dead while the kids were taught how to appropriately perform compression CPR, just without applying as much pressure as they would in a real circumstance.  After the first aid lesson, the boys went to learn how to cook from Head Chef Jeff and his Sous chefs Jeanne Marie, and Nate.  The girls were sent off to a sewing lesson lead by Madame Seamstress Gwen and her assistants Ashley, Megan, and Ginger.

Over in Iron Chef Hattiesburg, the boys tackled the basics of running a kitchen to produce delicious snack’ems.  They took a journey through the wonderful world of setting the dinner table, preheating ovens, and understanding nutrition, and produced some scrumptious (but perhaps a bit overseasoned) baked tortilla-garlic cream cheese-vegetable snacks. Perhaps we should call them tortgarcrables. Or maybe Crunchy Peters. What do you think? Sound off below!

The girls learned how to sew seams and hems today and practiced by sewing together a pouch, which they will finish on Thursday.  On that day, they will learn how to sew on a button and sew velcro to fasten their pouch.  We felt the girls had a lot of fun, and enjoyed learning how to put something together.

Supper tonight was once again amazing, and we all thoroughly stuffed ourselves with beef brisket, potato casserole, beans, fruit, more amazing rolls, and a delectable spice cake (this is not a mission trip to lose weight on…).  After supper, one of the elders, his wife, and a member of the Hope for Hattiesburg committee met with us to discuss how the organization got started and how they choose what projects to work on.

After supper, a Walmart run was made, and then Ginger beat the completely bumfuzzled Nate in game 2 of Horse with only an HO to her name.  Series tied 1-1, stay tuned for game 3…

Tomorrow, every team member will be working on Miss Carrie’s house to see if we can get all of the shingles off and begin work on the rotten spots on the roof.  Please continue to pray for team health and safety and that we will be hydrating well in the Mississippi heat and humidity!

(General Quackington will be able to be found in 1 picture each day unless stated otherwise in the blog.  Did you find him in yesterday's post?)