I first met Crystal three years ago at the Millard Fuller Legacy Build in LaFlorida, Peru. Ran into her again a year later at the same event, but this time it was in Atlantic City, NJ doing hurricance Sandy relief repairs. And in this year, again at the MFLB, we worked together in Luuhhhville, Kentucky. Crystal has a great servant's heart, loves the Lord, is passionate in serving others and has been going on mission trips for over 20 years with her church that she attends in Opelika, Alabama.
       Usually when I go on trips such as these, I invite people to come volunteer wherever I am working at the time . Crystal, particularily since she lives in Alabama, a little less than 3 hours west of Tuscaloosa, took me up on the invite. She came a few times and helped with the restoration of Bill Taylors house and also the Women's Build on Juanita Drive.
      This past week, she led a group of 12 that included her churches new pastor, Paul Ferrell, Wayne and Charlotte Yarbough, father and son team of Ken and Nathan Wallace, Georgia friends Nancy and Ron Scroggins. Josh came a day later and was tag teamed as he left by sister Alli from Auburn.
     The group stayed at the Y's Acres camp during the week. One other individual, Jimmie, got adopted into the group as well. Jimmie drove from Cinncinatti.
      Wayne was a great help- humble yet highly skilled. He was asking earlier on in the week when the kitchen cabinets were going to arrive. I figured out that that meant he knows how to install them. So, we got that cabinets there for him on Wednesday and he did such a great job installing them that we let him install them twice. What happened is that the cabinet supplier switched the deliveries on the womens build and faith build houses . The finish on the cabinets was not that diferent- one was a medium dark maple and the other had a little more reddish color. No one on staff caught it and both sets were installed in the wrong house. It was not until Ernestine came along afterwards and said, Uh, that is not the cabinets that I picked. Oooops. Not that it happens that often, but if a mixup occurs or something is installed not to our standard, I generally will let it stay until the next group of volunteers shows up so that we are not tearing out something we just put. In this case, Wayne was more than gracious and without complaint (verbally,at least) set out and removed and replaced the cabinets.   Big kudos to Wayne, aka Santa.
      Nancy and Ron Scroggins who live just north of Atlanta also worked very hard this past week.  The weather was in the 90's all week. Ron, who is 71 and on his first ever mission trip, was doing the rough landscaping prep, moving dort around the house getting ready for sod and making sure that the rainwater would run away from the foundation of the house . Wife Nancy, who did go on a mission trip to Honduras with Crystal's church, did lots of painting on the faith build house.
      Small world story about Ron. I was asking him what he did for a living before he retired. He said that he worked in pharmacuticals. This somehow made me think of a project that I worked on over twenty years ago when I was working at MCMC, the ornamental plaster molding company. We worked on a house for a client in Miami on Star Island. Dr. and Mrs. Frost spent forty million dollars to build the house.   Dr. Frost was the founder and CEO of the genreric pharmaceutical company called IVAX. When I told this story to Ron, he said- You know Phil Frost? It seems that Ron had worked for Dr. Frost twice with two of the companies that he bought and sold. I suggested that we call him right then to say hi, but Ron said he didn't have his number with him but that we should send him an email to request a million or so to help Habitat in Tuscaloosa. Ron, make sure you cc me on tht one please. Like Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat would always say, he tried both the ask and the don't ask and he found that the ask works much better.
      A big thanks to Crystal and all group leaders like her that do the heavy lifting in getting all of the volunteers lined up and here safely to work with us. We really appreciate ya'll,   And come back and see us again.
      Project Children returns this week with a group of 27 students from the Emerald Isle. More on that next week. Gotta go watch USA/Portugal in the World Cup. USA, USA, USA!!!