Tuesday is a WRAP!

With prayer and teamwork, we accomplished much!  Our teams were bustling as we sheet rocked, taped, mudded and sanded and also painted.  We cleaned brushes and trash, trimmed, wacked weeds and mowed vacant and overgrown lots.  Some held tall ladders and some pulled electrical wire and of course, some made coffee and pancakes, piled together sandwiches and packed lunches.

We ate salads and chicken Alfredo with pecans with our new friends from Iowa.  For supper, it was sloppy Joes and the fixin's with pie for dessert.  I would say we lacked for nothing.

The new Castle Rock facility is looking great!  The sanctuary should be finished in about two weeks.  The administrative offices are almost all sanded and ready for paint.  Many of the classrooms are being painted and they look terrific!  The painting crew has really been hard at work on the upper level and especially in the outdoor walkway with its high ceilings and metal mesh.  It's all looking pretty spiffy.

The mudding and taping crew has been at work in the administrative offices and they are nearly ready for paint.  They've been mudding the the men's and ladies bathrooms.  Hopefully, they'll be dry and ready for sanding on Wednesday. And hats off the to hauling crew. They carried sheets of plywood and sheet rock up and down and all over the place.  And of the many jobs completed, I have named but a few....

After the workday, a number of us joined the 'Community Circles' bunch.  We took the bus to one of the neighborhood parks and there engaged some of the neighborhood kids in a game of football.  It was heart warming to see the smiles on the faces of the kids as they played with us.  Reaching out to them is a fun and important part of the mission of Urban Impact.

After dinner at the house, a number of us ventured out and took the world's oldest working trolley for ice cream.  We passed through some of the most beautiful neighborhoods we had ever seen; we went by Loyola and Tulane Universities.  Beautiful!  And the trolley was such fun, too.  The youngest among us kept calling out, "Hi, we're from Wisconsin," and it was comical to see how the people would respond.

Back at the yellow house, there were a bunch gathered around the big table playing a rousing game of 'spoons!"  There is often a game of cribbage going on, too.

I hope this blogger hasn't bored you to tears with my enthusiastic retelling of the day here in N'Orlin's.  It's impossible not to be caught up in the spirit of loving community here and I hope that you, dear reader, felt some of our joy, too.