Wednesday Wednesday Wednesday

It seems pretty sad that an update for this week feels like it should start with a "who's sick now" update, but that is just the way this week has rolled. Maybe we should make a table:

	Not Yet Sick (as of Wed)	Sick	Mostly/Better
Saturday	everyone else...	Alyssa Lori
Sunday	everyone else...	Alyssa Lori
Monday	everyone else...	Heather Rachel Tirzah Sara Christy Mike	Alyssa Lori
Tuesday	everyone else...??	Tirzah Jake Mike Jeremiah Walker	Alyssa Lori Heather Rachel Sara Christy
Wednesday	Tom Angela Gloria Antonio Colleen Jim Bob Messiah	Logan Ryan Paco Mike	Alyssa Lori Heather Rachel Sara Christy Tirzah Jake Walker Jeremiah Mike
Thursday	???		Logan Ryan

So yeah, it’s been quite a run! That being said – the kids really have had great attitudes and overall have enjoyed their time here a lot. It’s been neat to get to know the other group from Iowa that’s here this week, and have a chance to connect with kids, each other, and with God.
Today we had to bid farewell to 4 of the “grown-ups” (ha!) that have been with us so far – Tom, Lori, Christy and Jeremiah. They had to get back to jobs and other grown up things. Fortunately, 2 brand-spankin’ new ones arrived later to continue carrying the torch – Sue and Tim (yippeee!).
Normally our days go (roughly) tutoring –> lunch –> work projects –> supper –> Kids Club. But today we started before breakfast with tie dyeing the t-shirts we get from this week, and instead of our afternoon work project we had a 2 hour retreat of silence. That was a change for high schoolers who are used to going at a crazy pace: talking, listening to music, or sleeping. Andrew challenged us not to talk, or sleep, during that time, but rather to take time for quiet prayer and reflection. Neat stuff!
It was hard to wrap up Kids Club for the week. The kids just seemed so sweet and willing to connect this year. A couple of 20-year-old guys that Ryan was talking with live in the same complex as these kids. They told him, “it’s just so neat to see the children smiling and having fun. You brought them joy”. Just cool stuff! Tonight in addition to our normal game playing and dispensing of sno cones and popcorn, we handed out dental supplies! Alyssa had asked around with dentists in the Valley and rounded up a big supply that we were able to package and get to the kids. They loved them and kept coming back in line to get more for their brothers and sisters.
We wrapped up the day at the laundromat –hopefully we now have enough clean clothes to end the week in style!

Wednesday pics VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

flexi-cookies!

How do you handle it when things don’t go as planned? Do you carry a pack of flex-cookies with you and pull one out as things get crazy? It works for us! The super flexi-powers just flow and suddenly you can deal with pretty much anything the situation throws at you.
This flexi-cookies were needed much sooner than we anticipated. We were thinking we’d stock up, pull ‘em out toward the end of week as we got more tired, things got more crazy, and we were trying to process everything here and at home. Little did we know…
On Saturday, both Alyssa and Lori (separately) started feeling nauseous, and Alyssa was up multiple times during the night with stomach yuck. By Sunday night Alyssa was feeling somewhat better, but Lori fought to hang in there and eventually went to bed early. Three more girls (Heather, Tirzah and Rachel) were out for the count by this morning (Monday) – they also had been up through the night making good use of the toilets . By 8:30 AM, Christy and Sara were out as well.
It’s a big deal – for morning tutoring they match each high schooler with one or two students. With that many folks out, they went from man-on-man to zone defense; each tutor helped multiple kids – a pretty big deal given the, um, attention needed by some of the students (flexi-cookie power!).
We then broke into our work project groups for the afternoon and had fun meeting folks, helping with all sorts of projects, and generally doing what we had hoped to do. By 4 or so we were all drifting back to the main building and a fire alarm went off. Everybody (sick people included) evacuated and waited maybe half an hour before the all clear was given and we headed back in. We still don’t know what caused it to go off. (more flexi-cookies!).
Our next adventure was a Kids Club that didn’t happen – it had been storming and rain had been positively pouring down for hours and it was likely to continue through the evening. So – flexi-cookies! – we hung out, watched Night Servants (a movie by our very own Appleton True North group), ate popcorn, and debriefed experiences from the day. Aside from an emergency run to the 24-hour pharmacy for albuterol (have I mentioned it’s a very good thing we have a nurse and a family practice doctor here this week?), things wrapped up fairly calmly.

		monday pics VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

yesterday…

So – normally we try to get out picture updates throughout the day and a summary out at the end of the day for work trips. But yesterday took “work trip” to a whole new level. We got as far as taking pictures – but to actually get them out to Facebook or to the blog was just one step too many.

We had three main projects going on:

Dan Klein & his son Kevin worked on replacing a window with a door (to help The Fallout building meet fire code). They were successful – though there was a touchy moment there when the door might have been hung to swing the wrong way. Crisis averted, all is well, and folks can now easily egress via the back of the building thanks to a ton of hard work from Lori and others to clear out the hallway.

The Source has a new once-foreclosed-upon house that will be joining to their transitional housing network – it’s pink and is decorated with dolphins, flamingoes and cranes, so another group worked at “The Crane House”. Ryan and Sara worked on drywalling inside, while Jeremiah, Christy, Mike, Messiah, Alyssa, Myster, and Nate worked on hauling, making and pouring cement for a sidewalk and digging post holes. They made it! By the end of the day the cement was covered to protect it from the coming frost and the posts were mounted and aligned and ready for the next stage of a storage shed project.

A third large-ish group worked on building a wheelchair ramp into the Art Coop building. That may not sound like a big deal, but the ramp needed to loop through a deep alley so needed a significant support structure in order to be set up correctly. Todd was crew boss for that project with a great deal of help from Tom – and they were joined by Lori, Jake, Ramiro, Antonio, Nick, Ryan, Alyssa, Myster, Messiah and Angela. A bunch of folks circled around and helped with additional projects here and there, pitching in where ever it was needed. Mike’s nephew Walker joined in as well – he’s been on other trips with us so it was neat to see and work with him again. After an 11-ish hour work day, (added to all the setup work from Friday), the ramp was installed! It still needs a railing and finishing, but all things considered it was quite an accomplishment.

The exhausted group packed up the trailer and headed to the Y for showers, followed by supper at Pancho Villa – a restaurant near The Source that has become a favorite. At around 10:30 we headed back to The Fallout where Peter shared a bit about the history of The Source, as well as the story of how they came to acquire the Crane House. Then it was back to the church and it wasn’t long before the building was dark and quiet.

from Lori

It is Wednesday and we are TIRED!!!  Late nights, lots of work, no sleep all factor in. 

Mike Ziehr

enjoyed playing soccer with serious soccer players at kids club at the apartment complex where we’ve been hanging out. They’re from all over the world, and they’re pretty good.

Hannah Welk

is enamored with the way the children are waiting for us with our truck full of games, snow cones, popcorn and whatever else Mike brought with us!  And how the children come up and hug us and are so sad when we leave.