Eight Days o' Hope

Hey Y'all! I'm writing from the church that is the main host for Eight Days of Hope in Cedar Rapids Iowa. It's only the second day of work for me, but it feels like I've been here for a least three now. There's 1400 of us trying to rebuild as many houses as we can. So far we've completed 66 projects! We invite all the homeowner to come eat dinner with us, and this evening we had one lady come who told us how, for the first time in four months, she smiled all day. I'll tell you what, hearing her say that made sleeping in a room with 70 of the loudest snorers in America worth it all. There is a shortage of people who have the training to lead the construction projects, so I've had to lead three so far. My first two went really well (thanks Dan!) and my third is a huge, complicated rebuild so I'm probably going to be on it for the rest of the week. My team is working for a couple (and all of us for a city) that really needs to see the love of God, so please pray for us. I saw the inside of a house today that has not been touched since the flood. I would try and describe the immensity of the destruction, but words are escaping me. Even pictures cannot portray the smell and the oppressive atmosphere. We are making tremendous progress, but I doubt we will even touch a quarter of the flood plain, so do pray that these people would be able to rebuild quickly even after we leave. If I get another chance to get online, I'll tell you about my schedule and other cool stuff, but don't expect it for a few days yet.

Here I am again

For my little-more-than-once-a-week post. I've been painting for the last four weeks. You'd think I'd be good at it by now, but I can't seem to finish a job. Oh never mind, I just remembered that I've finished three jobs, left one half done, and will hopefully finish another by the end of this week. I am sooooo looking forward to this weekend! I get to go out to visit Stacey in Iowa and then I'll go on to participate in the Eight Days of Hope project in Cedar Rapids.
But for now I'm off to get enough sleep so that I don't paint the walls with my trim paint.

Work

has been really draining. My body forgot what it was like to do manual labor for 8-10 hours a day. My muscles don't have any problem with it (I expected that they would) but my calorie burn just can't seem to conserve enough to get me all the way through. I've started to eat a ton again, but I think it might be another few weeks before my body catches up to me. When I'm not working I'm looking for a car. I emailed five people about cars that were listed under Indianapolis Craigslist and have been told about cars in IL, UT, NM, somewhere else, and SPAIN. The guy in IL told me he wouldn't be able to show me the car even if I drove out there. So I'm giving up on craigslist and trying to find some other search method. I looked at the Star classifieds today but I got lost in pages of uninteresting ads. I think I'll go to bed now.

Good Grief!

my life must be getting busy again. Right now I have to quit and google Michael J Fox for my roomie.

Cell Phone = Dead

Charger = In Indy
Good thing I'm heading back there pretty soon. Right now I'm eating rice and prepping for Bible study tonight. My service engine soon light has been on for a while and I finally took the car in to get it checked. After a little bit of a hassle because the car was built before 1996, somebody showed me how to find the service code on my own! It ended up saying that it's running lean (good considering the price of fuel these days) and I bought some additive to clean the injectors and intake ports, so that ought to help out. It says I should add the additive to an empty tank, so I'll use my drive back to Indy to help me out there.