LSC

Friday, March 20th It was our last day here in Pittsburgh :(. The group at Jim's house was all ready and eager to go in the morning. The group was joined by Jonathan, another member of the Pittsburgh Project, as Dave had several meetings in the morning. It was a very cold day that required all layers to be worn for the whole day and many trips inside to warm up. Amy, Mallory, and Kenzie loaded all of the very heavy garbage bags from the destruction at Jim’s house into the van and returned to the Pittsburgh project dumpsters. The other crew helped them lift the bags into the very tall garbage dumpster at the project. Meanwhile back at the site, the work continued. Susan searched for and discovered the source of a plumbing leak by ... read more

“Rise and Shine and oooooooooooooooooooooooooh that’s sore…” After stretching out our sore muscles, grabbing breakfast, and making our sack lunches we met with more wonderful people from the Pittsburgh Project. Mark and Courtney are a couple who work with youth programming and came to talk to us about their newest project of Urban Farming. Their Urban Farming project is a lot different from the farming some of us are used to and has a completely different set of challenges. They have several plots around the neighborhood where they grow vegetables and fruit to for the community. This helps provide cheaper, healthier foods, and gives the youth in the neighborhood a new experience that many of them have not had. In the future they hope to have some small livestock like chickens, and GOATS!!! (Katelyn was happy ... read more

Our Monday objectives: To meet our home owners, learn about our week’s projects, and get all of our supplies ready for tomorrow. We began our morning with breakfast and individual devotions at 8:30. At 9:00 we met with Dave and Ed who work with the Pittsburgh project. They gave us our mission, should we choose to accept it, and described the homeowners we would be working with. Ed then took us to the two different work sites in Pittsburgh to meet our homeowners. Our group will be splitting up into two groups, one focusing on roof repair for Kim and the other with electrical and drywall in Jim’s house. After meeting with our homeowners, we headed back to organize our supplies. Ed made use of us by putting us to work putting together 33 tool boxes ... read more

Saturday, March 14th After a very long 15 hour drive (including the hour we lost due to a time-change) we were very happy to be out of our 15 passenger van and in the guest house here at the Pittsburgh project. Our group which is (4 short of 15) took about 15 bathroom breaks on the ride here. We were pretty squashed in the van but still enjoyed the bonding experience. Amy took over for Scott in driving just before lunch and knocked six minutes off of our arrival time! We rolled into town about 15 after 10:00 pm and were eager to get to bed after a long day. After a battle with the motion detecting light sensors we settled in for the night. Needing an internet fix, Kevin and Katelyn battled with a proxy ... read more

Thursday Word of the Day: FINISHED!!!!! We are finished with our brick patio!! No minute today was wasted as we raced to finish the patio before the end of our final work day. The morning was a little chilly, but we got to work as soon as we arrived. There were bricks to be laid, bricks to be found and cleaned, and a flower bed to be built. At the far edge of our patio, we used landscaping timber to create a flower bed, so eventually flower and shrubs could be planted to block the view of the parking lot beyond. Zan and Susan became master brick layers while they worked diligently to finish the brick laying and Kelly learned how to run a tamper. Morgan and Asel worked inside the house cleaning windows. We took ... read more