2025 David Kentucky "Learning Opportunity" - Day 3 - Monday

Monday,  Day 2.  

Chaos Day : ) 

And I confess I'm tired, so for those of you who like perfect grammar.....stop reading now : )  

It will be toooo painful for you. 

I did have Marika and Sam proof read this for me, but hey, they gave up : ) 

Up at 6:45 am.  

Our shoes are getting a bit out of hand : ) 

Jason is way too chipper this morning.  

Our faithful cooks were up a bit earlier than us. 

Some relaxing in the quiet of the room until breakfast is served. 

Tia is also toooo chipper in the mornings, but I appreciate that.  

Breakfast time, and also time to make our lunches.  

We were all supposed to bring our own lunch bag from home.  Not the paper kinds.  You can tell Tia doesn't read my emails : ) 

Another yummy breakfast. 

It was a frosty morning.  Ice on the windshields. 

This morning, we were assigned our first jobs. 

I placed everyone in a smaller group, so we had 6 of them.  

In the end, we combined four of them into two.  Cor and Chris's, and mine and Jason's.  

Cor and Chris worked on City Hall in Allen City.  

The flood waters came this high here.  This is the makeshift City Hall.  

Our group needed to wait until the other group of two got underway.  So we sat in the mayor's temporary office space.  

Jessica and Tia's groups were going to muck out a home each.  

They had to wait a bit for the owners to show up. 

The group started clearing out the debris in City Hall.  

Cor decided to squish the dumpster more so we could fit more stuff in it.  

While we were waiting, I took pictures of this group taking flooded furniture to the dumpster. 

Our group finally got to go to our place. 

A two story home with the basement flooded.  

Piles of garbage was already out there from other groups who started working here and then just left.  

Hard to see the house for the trees.  

While we waited for Jason to talk with Trevor, our person in charge, the group levelled out some gravel where there was lots of mud before. 

Then we go to work. 

Lots and lots of dry muck.  Rohan brooming it out of the car port. BTW, the car was completely flooded, and is a write off.  

Petra and Marika were assigned the task of washing lots of very muddy dishes.   First, though, they needed to clean out some bins to put the clean dishes into. 

Inside the basement there was lots of wall stripping to do.  Eben got right at it.  

Placing bricks back.  

Busy cleaning dishes. 

the metal pile. 

Before pic of a plate

After pic of that plate.  

More basement demo. 

What you aren't getting from these pics is the smell of the basement. 

A very strong, putrid smell.  

This room was very smelly, and Jason cleaned it out.  It came with live rats.  

Getting there. 

The smell was so bad Jason had to leave a couple of times.  

It's imprinted in our minds now I think. 

Lots of wet panelling to take off. 

Clean dishes.  

Pictures were found of the homeowner and her family. 

We dried them out.

It was nice to be able to do that.  

A couple of the other groups were done early, so Jess' group came to help us.  Nearby is a river.  In it is lots of garbage.  I mean lots, that flowed downstream.  Here is a fridge that was pulled out and emptied of its contents.  

Almost time to go home.  

Clean up begins. 

The piles of garbage, burning pile and metal pile are getting bigger.   

Pics still drying. 

Brett found flowers in the river and gave them to Jason.  

Jess' group cleaned out a carpet store of muck.  

And there are dumpters everwhere to take away all the soiled furniture, etc. 

Tia's group mucked out a mobile home.  Claudia worked hard today, and no Claudia I didn't work nearly as hard as you did : ) 

It wasn't easy work, as Sam and Gareth can attest to.  

Lunch time?   

Group shot of the 4 groups and the stuff that was taken out of the mobile home.  

More lunch

Taking a well deserved break. 

Pics of Cor and Chris' group taking out the drywall two feet up. 

Holden seems to be having fun. 

Messy work. 

Holden hard at work. 

Cor decided his group needed a DQ break at 3:30 p.m.  Holden was happy to oblige : )

As was Lewis. 

The groups all worked very hard today. 

I was proud of them. 

It was dirty work. 

Not like doing construction work like last year. 

A bit of getting used to.  

And we will probably be doing this most of the week. 

After some showers it was supper time. 

Another delicious meal.  

Hey, someone cleaned up the shoes.  Way to go!!!

Line up for supper.  

Cor is a happy man : ) 

Proof that Gareth and Sam worked hard today. 

Into the washing machine it all went.  

After supper we took a bit of time to debrief the day. 

Good conversation. 

The group is now chillin' and we are up at 7:30 tomorrow for devotions and to see what the day brings.  

Thanks for reading along.