Wednesday, June 27, 2012

"The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience."

Eleanor Roosevelt

Volunteers enjoyed the last day of comfortable weather today, by putting in a hard days work. We had four crews spread throughout county today continuing on a previously started sites.

We had a group go back to St. Vincent DePaul to help with distribution and organization at the warehouse. When we drove by around 10, there was no place to park since there were so many people there to pick up items.

A group headed back up the road to finish the underpinning and continue painting.  The underpinning is complete and looks fabulous. Big progress was made with the painting. The living room is almost complete as is the kitchen.

Another large group headed to the far end of the county to continue work on the roof that was started yesterday. The site is at the top of mountain, at the end of a road. They too made a lot of progress and should be finished up tomorrow.

The final site of the day was a site we started last summer with our volunteers and work was continued this spring with Northern Illinois University. The group worked at the old Itmann two room school house to help UGWA and Groundworks transform the building into office space as well as a visitor center. Today the group spent time removing knotweed from the front of the building and helping to rebuild a stone wall that is in front of the building.

We had another wonderful meal tonight. Tonight there was cranberry chicken over rice for the meat eaters and a black bean and tofu scramble over rice for the vegetarians. It was delicious.

In the evening we reflected on the idea of  being lonely and how important it is to reach out to others in their time loneliness. Afterward we were asked to share a "new and good" and/or a time when we were lonely and someone reached out to us. It was a very nice reflection and sharing.