Mission: Tuscaloosa 2012
The top of the Habitat house property, showing the steep driveway down. The house number sign is an old, flattened mailbox, presumably from before the tornado.
Habitat for Humanity's sign, showing what they provide to their homeowners.
In the morning, we had completed applying house wrap to the gable over the front porch. The soffit-building team had finished their work on the back side of the house. Note the perfectly straight line of the edge.
Working with a story pole in preparation for snapping level chalk lines to show where siding should go.
Nailing down the "field" of the house wrap, with small nails and large plastic washers one foot apart over the entire surface. That's lots of nails and washers.
Painting four-by-eight sheets to use as porch ceilings and in other locations.
David, the owner of the house, came by to see us. His house was here on this site, on the concrete slab that is the foundation of the current house. The first house was destroyed during the tornado, and collapsed on top of him. He's still recovering from injuries received then. We talked a bit about his military service and about the military service of some of our team members.
He described going through the tornado, including seeing some of his neighbors being blown away.
A lighter moment, after we had talked for a while.
David looked in the kitchen window to see how the interior is progressing. Before he left, the group prayed with him.
Pete, our Habitat For Humanity site supervisor.
Some shims for adjusting the story pole.
The interior, with the electrical, plumbing, and HVAC subcontractors at work.
Each team that stays at First Presbyterian Church of Tuscaloosa creates a sign to represent their mission team. We made ours from materials we have been using during construction: a piece of painted plywood as backing, glued down high-tech screws from the safe room walls ("FPC"), some pre-printed scraps cut from the house wrap and used like ransom-note letters ("Athens"), red chalk line glued down as script ("Georgia"), and a decorative row of the nails and plastic washers used to hold the house wrap. All the signs, including ours, stay in the second floor of the church's entrance hall.
Wednesday after working at the site and cleaning up at the Y, we joined the FPC Tuscaloosa congregation for their regular Wednesday-night dinner.
After dinner, there was a church service to mark the one-year anniversary of the tornado. Four congregation members who had gone through the tornado recounted their experiences. These two photos were taken as people were arriving for the service.
Strips of colored ribbon were given to those attending the service, on which we were asked to write a prayer, the name of someone to be remembered, or whatever else we wanted to say about the disaster. At the front of the church was a frame with a sheet of wire mesh (chicken wire). The blue areas shown in this photo had been filled with blue ribbon strips containing the names of all those killed by the tornado. The negative space remaining formed a cross, and we were asked to weave our own prayer scripts into that space, filling out the cross in multiple colors.
All of us received communion by intinction and then moved forward to add our strips to the cross.
The end result was quite moving.
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