Day Five: Our Very Last Day

By: Katie Kernen, Emily Kunz, Cullen Horstmann and Tyler Krimmel Exactly 13 months ago today, a devastating tornado disrupted the friendly community of Joplin, Missouri. With that in mind we woke up this morning to the aroma of left over breakfast food from the previous days of our stay. The breakfast was a grand feast of pancakes, biscuits and gravy, bagels, pizza, and an array of assorted pastries and doughnuts. After we all finished gorging ourselves we loaded up the bus and drove to our worksites. The painting crew painted a second coat on the back of the house and put a first coat on the side of the house. The siding crew finished the siding. But, the fencing crew….wasn’t so lucky. After the Thursday’s rain, the holes that the team had been digging, and re-digging and laboring over all week were now full of mud. The fencing crew had to re-dig yet again those blasted holes. But, some good did come out of it all; Tyler unknowingly wounded the giant insect monster that had been terrorizing us all week, known as….Tina. Tina was a large black and white stripped winged insect that terrorized the skies and dragged other insects into the dungeons of her burrow, where they were feasted upon. With one mighty swing of his shovel, Cullen killed Tina. There was cheering and then… more work. The pickets that had been put into place the day before we now discovered to be unlevel and crooked. We had to rip them out and start again, by this point our moral was diminished and Roxanne (Mrs. Ziess) was at wits end! But then Michael, our supervisor, gave us a little speech about integrity, telling us to stay focused and not give up but to complete the job to the best of our abilities. With this we pressed on while Mrs. Dann and a few others set fence posts in concrete. Then, it was noon and we were let out early! Our work was finished, it was time to play. We headed back to the house for yet another feast of leftovers. We packed the bus, changed into our swimming suits and headed off to the water falls. It was beautiful! The water falls sparkled blue and we went swimmin’. Bikinis and tennis shoes were the fashion and we were styling! Dodging snakes and other reptiles in the water we made it to the top of the falls and though we all wished we could take a leap of faith down the falls, we couldn’t …it was a rule. We still sat up there and enjoyed the view. While up there, we ran into a guy that was with his team. They worked for USA Today and had a blog called, “The Best of the Road”. Anyway, this guy had a small water video camera and he jumped off of the cliff into the water. We were cheering for him and the blog people said that our picture was taken while we were cheering and that we would be featured in the blog, which is exciting!! After more swimming and sun we were on the bus, this time headed for home, stopping for dinner and going back to our normal lives. We won’t forget our trip though. The stories that we were told, the people we met or the memories we’ve made. We have all learned from this experience and are fortunate to have had the opportunity to go and help in Joplin. Devastation so close to home, we didn’t think much of it until we came down here. It feels good to pay it forward and we can only hope that we can do it again next year. Bye!