We have a special guest and group visiting us here this week at the Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders. The leader of the group of 16 volunteers from Macon, Georgia is Chris Fuller. His group is from the Vineville Baptist Church in Macon. Their group has done other mission trips together, one just recently back from Haiti where they worked on building an orphanage.   Chris is the oldest of four children of Millard and Linda Fuller, the couple who answered God's call to start both Habitat for Humanity and the Fuller Centers for Housing. Concurrently, we have another group from Cottage Hill Baptist Church in Mobile Alabama who have come to work with us to complete our last two homes here in Plaquimines Parish, south of New Orleans. They have been to Port Sulphur before to help out with the Vacation Bible School that is being run by our host church, Port Sulphur Baptist. So half of the group of thirty mostly young folk are working with the VBS and the other half are going out everyday to the site to help us build and finish our last two homes here. Construction wise, the home for the Stuflets on Orangewood should be substantially complete this week. The electrican is installing the last of the light fixtures, the volunteers are installing the gate at the lift, doing final paint touch up and installing all of the bathroom accessories, towel bars, mirrors, ets. Craig, Brent and Kim are doing a great job wrapping that one up together with part of the group from Mobile. I have been spending most of my time at the home of Mr. Chauvin Buras at Jump Basin together with Chris Fuller's group. We are finishing off the stairway handrails outside and the last vestiges of siding that needed to be installed. On the inside, we are installing vanities, fabricating and installing window sills, installing the toekick and crown molding at the kitchen cabinets (sorry- cant help myself) It's the icing on the cake. We got a torrential downpour just after lunch today and I finally sent everyone home. I did that knowing that we have the two dedications firmly scheduled for a week from tommorrow, but I'm confident that we will have both completed on time even with the half day today and half day   tommorrow - the group are going out on the swamp boat tour to pet the alligators.
     Chris Fuller shared a beautiful testimony on tuesday night at "the face of God" (sharing and testimonials and shouts-out) after our dinner about his dad, Millard Fuller . The Fullers were inspired to go to what used to be called Zaire (now Congo?) when Chris was a teenager. He attended a boarding school 500 miles away from his parents while there and actually wasnt able to spend much time with his folks when he was growing up. Chris shared some of this missing with us over dinner. I think that the Fuller children must have sacrificed a lot because of the calling or mission that their father was on. Later, after college, Chris asked his dad for a sit down talk where he shared his feelings that he felt his dad may have loved Habitat more that his own offspring. Millard admitted that his kids received short shrift (?) and apologized and seems that through that conversation, some father/son reconcilliaton may have occurred. Chris said that he and his dad hugged more after that. Chris, in that conversation, had also brought to Millards attention that his three sisters had gotten all the hugs when they were young.
     In the mean time, Doug (in his own words) pulled a Doug. Bart told him we don't do sitework or landscaping- there's no money in the budget for it plus at this point we don't (or thought we didn't) have the time or volunteers either to handle it . Doug found some line on the general notes of the plans (what are those?) about grading at the houses and latched onto it like a pit bull and wouldn't let go until 8 truckloads of Doug's dirt shows up at two of the houses- Mr. Le's at Foster and Mr. buras at Jump. I was tempted to let my brother squirm a bit and just tell him- you ordered it, you move it, with no help from our precious and short supply of volunteers, but n-o-o-o- so while Doug was away for the weekend, we negotiated a trade with a local landscaper to let us use his bobcat in exchange for cleaning up a bunch of leftover, but usuable lumber from Orangewood. He's letting Doug use his machine for free- just the cost of fuel. So on Tuesday, a bunch of the kids from Mobile moved a bunch of dirt under Fosters and today went down to start on Jump Basin but got rained out. It's all going to work out just fine.
     Next week we get our last group of volunteers from Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Maple Grove, Minnesota. Also, word on the street has it that Steve Marksoff is due to show up Saturday some time and that will then set up for the grand re-union of the Frick and Frack show since Lee Struck and Alan Park will also be back next week to wrap things up here. . Someone said that it would be a boon to the staff here if that volunteer from Pennsylvania who worked with us all of June would join us for the dedications next week. What was her name?