Flooring, Glazing and Hot Water Heaters

We started off the week with beautiful weather and a busy, busy day. Unlike last year when we moved around pretty much as a group, this year we are spread around the area each day working with several different social services agencies. Today we started off working at St. Rita's parish, the home parish of our hosts. St. Rita's is a very diverse parish with people from all nationalities and languages being spoken. Masses are offered in English, Spanish and Vietnamese. The PVs will be helping around the parish for the week doing several projects. Today we started to tackle re-glazing the windows of the parish hall. The church was built in the 50's and true to that style there are a lot of windows framed in medal. To help weather-rise and be more efficient, we are scraping out the old glaze and putting in the new.

The other two groups worked with agencies we worked with last year, My Father's Hands and Hesed House. My Fathers Hands is a non-profit organization working in area.  They mentor at-risk workers by teaching them general construction skills using a hands on approach.  The projects they work on include safety repairs on the homes of local senior and disabled community members, as well as, collaborating with other non-profit organizations on larger construction projects. The volunteers working with My Father's Hands today helped to remove an old water heater and put in a new one at a residence.

The group that at Hesed House laid new flooring in one of the offices. Hesed House's mission is to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless and give people the chance to hope again. Hesed House is a national model for ending homelessness – one person, one family at a time. It is the culmination of nearly three decades of strategic evolution from a formerly acceptable model of "eats and sheets" to a Comprehensive Homeless Resource Center – a campus of centralized highly skilled professionals collaborating to provide the tools necessary to help individuals and families break free of the shackles binding them to homelessness.

After a hard days work we enjoyed our scrumptious and comforting Tuna Noodle Casserole dinner outside at the newly constructed picnic table. The atmosphere, the company, all was top notch!  We wrapped up the evening with reflection. The volunteer led reflection focused on our gifts. We were asked to identify a gift that we have that we can share. After reflection games were played and of course popcorn was popped : )

Below are a few pictures from the week. We will put a couple up each day, but at the end of the week will put a bunch up, so please check back for more.