We had only a small group of out of towners staying with us this past week. Seven came from the same church in South Carolina and a onesie came by herself from New York, New York (a place so great they had to name it twice). They all stayed at our volunteer camp outside of Tuscaloosa shich is called Y's Acres. The 70 acre camp is owned by the local YMCA (get it- Y's Acres?) and was rehabbed by Habitat so that we could house out-of-towners who come here to help, usually for a week at a time. Two of the South Carolina group, Serge and his wife, opted for a hotel instead. He had business at the University of Alabama during the week and volunteered all the rest of the week. The rest of the group of men were seasoned veterans of building.   Milo (the leader of the group), Fran, Richard, Lars and Deke all worked on punch-listy stuff on the Faith Build house and Stephen Scott's old house at 114 Juanita. They finished the retaining wall out back, built the access door to the crawl space, and made some fine diminished colyums for the front of the Faith Build house. Being so skilled and with us being short on staff (Joey Crimmins had the week off and Stephen Scott left to go to Colorado), the guys did a great job with minimal supervision, which is nice and makes my job easy.
          For the most of the week, I was assisting Nancy on the Women's Build house which is now a week old . Anna, the onesie from NY, worked on the Women's Build house.   She works at VH1 music channel in NY and took a week off to help us. She jumped right in and was a quick study at everything she was shown how to do- after the second day, I asked her to run the crew finishing the plywood sheathing on the roof and she took it and ran wid it. I believe that she has contracted a serious case of Habititus. She even extended her stay by a day so that she could work with the group again on Saturday. I suggested to her that when she calls to reschedule her flight back home that she mention habitat and see if they would waive the $200 fee. She tried "the ask" and guess what happened? That's right! Millard Fulller, the founder of Habitat, always said that he had tried both and he found that the ask works much better than the don't ask.
     On Friday, with the roof plywood done and most of the tar paper installed, some dark grey coluds blew in and I asked our Mennonite friends to jump over to the Women's Build and finish up the tar paper before the rain . They responded quickly and without complaint and finished it up in a timely manner, almost before the rain started.
      Anna and her crew also ran all the fascia board around, pulled all the toe boards off and cleaned em up, installed the missing first row of felt paper, and installed the metal drip edge at the perimeter of the mostly hip roof, so the the metal can start first thing Monday. Some ladies also predrilled all the holes for the screws in the long pieces of metal.
     I like having smaller groups staying at the camp with me. I live in a small cottage on the property that I restored called the "Lion's Den". If the groups are manageable enough in numbers, I frequently invite them all over for dinner or deserts, bananagram tournaments, or this past week we watched part of the NFL draft on my TV (the only one in the camp. I enjoy providing the hospitality as my unofficial or self-appointed role as camp ambassador.
      My sincere wish to all of the mothers reading this today that you have a great Mother's Day.
     See ya'll next week.   Love, Peter