2nd Work Day at Joplin

Today started out as almost a mirror of yesterday, we woke up early and were served egg casserole, bagels, and fruit. We left for the work site around eight even beating our work site leaders out the gate because we were so eager to work. The work itself went smoother than yesterday because everyone knew what they were doing. The paint crew managed to apply a second coat of paint to the entire interior including the safe room and garage. The siding crew made a lot of progress and covered an entire section of the backside of the house and filled the cracks with caulk so the siding will be ready to be painted tomorrow. The work was a lot more enjoyable after the work site leader, Rebecca, dropped off a radio to replace the broken record of Allen Speckhals’ greatest Christmas hits. We discovered a lot of hidden talent in students like Torrie Roodhouse who managed to sing over the radio loud enough to entertain the siding crew outside. Noelle, the home owner, and her neighbor relieved some of their built up stress by venting to the students during breaks about their concerns towards their contractors and expressed their gratitude for all of our help. Noelle even went so far as to running out in the middle of the street to stop the ice cream truck and treated us all to Bomb Pops—which were delicious! We are so lucky to have a kind homeowner like Noelle, who always made sure we had what we needed. The fencing crew got into some dirty work while cleaning out the holes they drilled yesterday for the posts. They learned many new things today like the word plumb, which means that they had to make sure the posts were leveled up and down. They also got to use mini jack hammers to break the rocks at the bottom of the holes. One of the students on the fencing crew, Katie Kernen said,”Using the jack hammer was interesting and it was really dirty work.” They were rewarded with chocolate chip cookies from the homeowner, Misty. At quitting time Misty’s neighbor followed suit by bringing oatmeal cookies as well. After all our hard work, we came home to a lovely dinner. Mrs. Vieth proved to us that she could challenge Rachel Ray in a cook-off and most likely win. She served us pork steaks, mashed potatoes, salad, cornbread salad, and corn. Mrs. Vieth knew just what we needed to refuel after our long day so we had enough energy to head over to the laser tag arena for several epic battles. It got more competitive after each round. Mrs. Dann proved her tenacity by chasing and “accidentally” hitting her prey while running through the arena. It was questionable whether or not we sweated more during our eight hours of work or two hours of laser tag. Some people may have forgotten one of the rules that “it is just a game” and laughed at their victims as they fell to the floor and their guns were deactivated. One of the other leaders, Eric, decided to join in on the fun and show that he was more skilled than us when his screen name, Birthday Cake, showed up at the top of the scoreboard almost every time. All of the workers shouldn’t have any trouble falling asleep tonight after all the excitement from the day. Hannah Steinbeck, Valerie Hagedorn, MiKayla Engemann