It's amazing to see the way God works with people willing and able to answer His call. This past weekend, a group of folks from Akron, Ohio caravanned their way over to Tuscaloosa to help with the rebuilding of what the April 27 tornado destroyed here. A group of Episcopal churches in Ohio had gotten together (that's a small miracle in itself- churches working together) and raised $4,000, talked with Lowes, got a discounted rate and bought enough wood to build a house and then some. They also arranged with FedEx to supply the 53 foot tractor/trailer and driver to ship the wood as well as box fans, tools, tons of disposable diapers and other stuff. It was originally scheduled to go somewhere else. Sunday night, Brandon (my friend and new boss) gets a call that Habitat is to be the recipient of this material and also the group who is coming will be working with us for the week. As it happened, somebody donated the use of a 3,000 sq. ft. warehouse for us to use starting Monday morning. We were supposed to scramble and find a forklift also to unload the wood, but instead dispatched the NCCC Americorp team and between them and the group from Ohio, got everything unloaded. Having the use of the warehouse is a great blessing - it was shady ffrom the 95 degree heat all week and allowed us to layout the footprint of the house on the big open floor. All of the 2 x 4' s that they sent were 8 ft. long and had to be cut down to precut size of 92 5/8. We set up a cupla chop saws with jigs and off they went- cut, cut, bang bang and soon, by the end of the week had prebuilt all of the components needed for putting up all the walls of the third home, whose foundation had not yet been poured. It's a little bit risky to do it that way, but it's OK because I know the layout guy. The foundation work is subcontracted to a local man named James Shackleford. He had his 10 year old son John David out working with him on Tuesday cutting re-bar for the concrete footer. The foundation of all of the homes that we are building here will also include a "safe room", designed by FEMA- a concrete and block structure within the footprint of the house with about a ton of concrete and rebar but not attached to the house. It will act as the walkin closet for the master bedroom (see picture)
      Had a special visitor drop by this week also- Mr . Pete Berlowitz. He spent a few days in town doing what he does best- talking with people and making connections- trying to find places for volunteer housing. Couple of nibbles. But anyway- here comes the small world story- last night in town, Pete invites me to dinner so we go into the downtown area where all the restaurants are. U of A students are jsut arriving back, so a bunch of them were too crowded. We finally settle on a smallish off the beaten path one called Carmello. Had some great Shrimp over grits. The owner of the place is going table to table seeing how everyones doing and I overhear him say to the next table that he is originally from Biloxi. When he stops by our table, I tell him that I spent a little time there working with Habitat/NV. He says- Habitat rebuilt my uncles house. Who's that? Uncle Pinu a.k.a. Sal Taranto. So he calls him on the cell and says guess who's eating in my restaurant?   It's Peter! It is a small world..
      This week, the group who sponsored the third home (homeowners name is Savage) is from Direct TV and they are coming out en masse (50 or so for two days) to build this house. with all of the prebuilding we did this week, I bet we get the deck done and they put up all the walls on Tuesday before lunch. (what are we gonna do after lunch?) Stay tuned.   Peace out. Peter