One by one, the alarms went off and in a seemingly universal response, snooze buttons were pressed to squeeze in an extra fifteen minutes of much needed sleep. Eventually, the inhabitants of the men’s dorm could no longer ignore the beepings and buzzings begging them to wake up, and they slowly rolled out of their bunks in zombie-like comatose states.
The morning was met with the moaning and groaning of twenty-four exhausted, but eager and hard working, volunteers. The sweet aroma of waffles with one’s choice of syrups and toppings instantly woke the worksite warriors and sent them into a feeding frenzy to fuel up for the long day of work ahead of them.
Morning prayer was said outside as usual and the day began. The volunteers piled into cars and departed for the worksite. This time the roofing and fire crew joined the ‘demolitioners’ in order to get more accomplished on the new work site. Several walls were pulled down using the proven chain gang method. The ground which had been overgrown with weeds and vines was raked and cleared. The debris from the downed walls was shoveled. And finally, the intact furniture and wall segments were loaded onto their corresponding trucks and shipped off to the dump or back to the compound to be incinerated.
The group broke for lunch at around 11:30 and this time several vehicles stopped at the famed slushy and coke station. Back at the compound, those who made the stop pitied the poor individuals who had returned without a delicious method of refueling.
The second half of the day was spotted with outbreaks of poison ivy and sickness. David, Susan, and Meredith, among others, were constantly applying creams and lotions to their spreading ivy rashes. Meanwhile Brian, Peter, Drew, and David (again) came down with some kind of bug with symptoms including sore throat, runny nose, congestion, headache, and exhaustion.
Carolyn, Ashley, Meredith, Allegra, Colleen, and Kristin remained at the HOMES compound, which now has a lovely new addition to its walls. A brigade of stick figures pass the words St. Francis of Assisi 2007 letter by letter across the expanse of the wall.
That night, a majority of the parishioners traveled to the famous coal church with an altar base entirely made of the former lifeblood of Neon, coal. Alex, Peter, Charlie, and David took the King’s car to Walmart to get markers to reproduce the story of Wally Amos and his Famous Amos cookies on the kitchen wall. As the adults filtered out of the room, the teens remained to conclude the night with a friendly game of mafia, ping-pong, pizza, and BLOKUS TRIGON!
PHOTO ONE: Dennis Meighan and Jim Smith remove part of the wall as others, including David Aaro holding the shovel, shovels debris.
PHOTO TWO: The men prop a large portion of the structure’s right wall onto the bed of a HOMES dump truck.
PHOTO THREE: Charlie “Free For All” Smith, a St. Francis Knight of the Sledgehammer, in mid-swing.
PHOTO FOUR: HOMES coordinator, Greg Hawkins, thanking the crew on a job well done.
PHOTO FIVE: David Aaro, relaxing at the compound after dinner.
PHOTO SIX: Honorary Moral Officer and Mission Mixmaster, Greg Beutler raises his boom box for one last blasting of the mission trip’s official fight song, the Mission: Impossible theme.
1. Demolition piece by piece
2. Take that!
3. Rake, shovel, dump
4. Loading the truck
5. By Friday, the teens directed the adults
6. No more pictures
7. Music man
8. Dance to the music
9. Relaxed
10. Friends
11. More friends
12. Greg from HOMES
13. We did that
