Leslie County Ky - Tuesday July 16th

Leslie County Ky - Tuesday July 16th

Another hot day here in Leslie County, It's about 93 and those working on the projects with roofs are dealing with much hotter temperatures.  We had a bit of a crisis late yesterday when Bob Schieffer  found out his wife was in the hospital and it was serious so Bob had to leave. The logistics of getting him to the airport and splitting up his team to work at other areas was quite a challenge. We must always have 2 adults at all times with the youth so that was why we split up. We should be able to adjust by tomorrow but we ask that you keep Bob and his wife in your prayers. Word is she will be coming home tomorrow.

Tom Noller

TeamPadfoot-

Leaders: Alex Freyman, Ron Nickel

Kids: Evan Mazurek, Ethan Pavelske, Tatum Scheibler, Claire Bryant, Theresa Manfredini

  

We are the Padfoot team, or as we like to call ourselves, the "Freedom Fighters." We all say, as Ron would say in his new found southern accent, "Hey Y'all". All is good here in Leslie County, very hazy in the mornings and the temperature is cooler. 

 

We woke up yesterday (our first work day) anxious to work and quickly piled into our van to get to our site...45 minutes away from the center we are staying at. The journey to our work site is an adventure in and of itself with winding roads through the mountains. It starts off as a normal road, but then as you are going along the road suddenly becomes smaller and smaller, changing from two-lanes to a one-lane road, and then eventually turns into gravel, and dead ends at our owners house. Yesterday and today we were stopped dead in our tracks by road blocks and trucks that were removing trees and blocking our one-lane road.

 

 Eventually were got to our site though, and were able to meet the nicest person that most of us have ever met in our lives: Ted. Ted is our home owner, he is a 53 year old man who lives in a small trailer home with his sister in a house right behind his. Ted is a loving man, moonshine fanatic, (in his younger days) and self proclaimed "Hillbilly Fighter". He has a lot of pride in his home and everything that he owns. When we pulled up to the house we figured out why our team name was Padfoot; Ted owns eight dogs. Among Ted's dogs are pit bulls and German shepherds. One of the German shepherds hates men and anyone that wears a hat, so Ted recommends "you don't pet that one, because he'll probably bite you and rip your face off." The work on our site consists mostly of painting indoors and building a 5' by 5' porch in the back.

 

 We plan on taking on a few more tasks while we are at Ted's, like picking up the trash and humongous pile of dry wood and wet, ripped pieces of insulation in his front yard. Our tasks are not that difficult, especially when you have a home owner like Ted to pick up your spirits. He regularly shares his stories with us, among them one of a motorcycle accident that he got in when he was just 22. To put the story in short, Ted was driving his new motorcycle rather fast one day, and he hit a car head on. He was flung over 100 feet from the car, broke ever bone in his body, and was put on life support in the hospital for 2 weeks. He stayed in that hospital for a year and a half and is still traumatized by the accident. Since then he is still unable to work but he doesn't let that ruin his spirits. We rarely ever see him without a smile on his face. Among the things Ted has said to us are "I don't hate anyone, I love everyone", " Y'all can come back anytime you want." He continuously expresses his gratitude and thankfulness of having us here and at one point it he began to cry. It is extremely rewarding to listen to him express how proud he is of our work and willingness to help him. We've really gotten to know him through our walks to a creek near his house, adventures in the bear cave on the creek, and walks up a tiny waterfall. This is a great place to take a quick water break and cool off under the shaded trees. 

 

We aren't always relaxing and talking to Ted though, we continue to work hard on the work site. Painting was supposed to take us three days, however we sped through it in about a day. The hard work we have been doing was drilling, cutting wood, digging holes (which apparently Alex and Evan are amazing at!  haha) for the porch, and measuring planks. Day two we had a few setbacks due to the lack of  supplies, so we began picking up trash and loading it into an ASP staffers pick up truck. Although none of us really enjoyed picking up other people's trash and mess, it did provide a little adventure. We were surprised to learn  that Maddie Lombardo is a snake wrangler. As we were digging through the trash we found a small snake. 

 

 

While all of the boys ran away screaming, including our fearless leader Ron, Maddie casually picked up the snake by the tail and carried it away. 

We all thought it was a tiny, harmless creature, but later to our surprise, he informed us that it may have been a Copperhead snake, one of the most dangerous and poisonous snakes in the area.

Ted has shown a strong sense of community and love for all of those around him. He has embraced us as one of his own. From the moment we stepped into his home, he has graciously welcomed us and instantly became our friend. We are so thankful to be here and all of us can already tell that we are going to take so much away from this experience. We look forward to all of the memories to come in the rest of the week and can't wait to enjoy them with our team and the rest of our church. 

The mission continues........

From, 

Libertyville's favorite son, Evan Mazurek, Theresa Manfredini, and the rest of Padfoot team!

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Heyyyyyy evveryonneeee!  This is Ryan, Abbey, and "prongs" group. 

We are all REALLY psyched to be working this week.  So far it has been AMAZING! You can tell by all the uppercase words. Our group has also been working very hard so far and will continue to accomplish all the tasks at hand. 

At our project site, we are working on various tasks. Because of the inefficiency of the ASP group that came last week, we now have to fix all their mistakes. This includes underpinning, tiling, foundation work, fixing a non-closing door, ditch digging,  and a very poorly repaired bathroom with a crooked floor. 

So far we have fixed the door, dug the ditches, and completed replacing the foundation work at the house. Even though we are exhausted and sun-burnt out of our minds, we feel very accomplished and proud of the job well done.

Also,  the owner of the house has two dogs. They are both very small, one a Jack Russell terrier and one a chihuahua. Sugar, the Jack Russell, came upon a turtle today and devoured it. At first we thought it was chewing on bark or another miscellaneous item, but upon further investigation we found that it was a shell containing a turtle. We managed to confiscate the shell, and save the dog from breaking her jaw.

Another funny animal incident on the site involved the turkeys and chickens.  Charlie would call the turkey by gobbling at it, and then the turkey would respond every time by gobbling as well.  We were all eating lunch and out of nowhere charlie would gobble and the turkey would gobble back from across the yard. The funny part is that the noise charlie made was so ordinary and high pitched. We never thought such a masculine figure could made such a cacophonous noise.

As adorable as the animals were, the nicest person on the site was our homeowner, Kathy. She welcomed us into our home immediately. And has already been helping us with our projects. Even with a swollen ankle, she's managed to climb under her house and hammer in re-bar as well as advise us on the mistakes of the previous group. Kathy is a wonderful homeowner, and we're very lucky to have such a kind Appalachian welcome us into her home.

Despite the kind homeowner, bugs managed to rule the home and distract us from our work. Hayleigh, one of our workers, ran screaming from a bee and almost fell of a large Appalachian hill. Fleas continue to swarm us, especially as we eat lunch because they desire our deliciously well-made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bags of Fritos. Despite the bugs, we pound through and manage to do good work.

We look forward to completing our work at the end of the week, as well as contribute to our mission of spreading the Gospel.

The Prongs Team

So That's all for the day - Lights out in 5 minutes! We'll have more teams reporting tomorrow. We have been blessed so far this week - NO RAIN. Tomorrow is our Picnic with the families which should be fun.

Tom Noller