It Feels Good Beng Done Early.

With the end of this week brought the end of KHO in Campbellsville. This was a pretty good week. I had a small crew, and a small, simple roof.

Sunday afternoon everyone got their crew packets, which give details about each job. The more i looked through my packet, the more excited about the job i was going to be doing. my previous two roofs were 18 and 20 square, pretty good sized roofs. the thing that made those two difficult were the chimneys and valleys. This roof was beautiful... only 13 square, no valleys, no chimneys, no nothing, only two boots to work around and three vents to replace, neither of which are a big deal, only involve cutting a few shingles. for those of you that dont know, boots are the things that go over a pipe that sticks out of the roof in order to keep water from leaking back into the house, some are rubber, some are metal, it just depends on what the pipe is, their on almost every house, and arent difficult at all to work around. needless to say, i was really excited, i even asked Todd, our supervisor if there were any catches to the roof that would make it more difficult or something, and there wasnt anything that he knew of. i did my best to not get my hopes up on having an easy week because it seems that everytime that happens, especially when your working, you always come across a problem. Sure enough, i spoke way too soon thinking that this roof was going to be a breeze (if it wasnt for my awesome crew, it could have been a long week!)

Now that ive spoken about my crew ill tell you a little bit about them. I only had 9 people this week, which is several people less than the other weeks (12 and 13) but since i had a small roof it was plenty of people. When i first met them, i was a little bit skeptical of a few people, they seemed like the girly girl kind of people, or the kind of guy that isnt on the mission trip to work or serve God, just because going to camp is the right thing to do. Most everyone suprised me as to how well they worked, or suprised me as to how well they didnt work... one in particular her name was shannon, shes a 13 year old girl... a girly girl. i was also skeptical when i found out her age, after the first week, and one of my young female campers falling asleep on the roof, i pretty much swore off young girls on a work. a few of the girl staffers had met some of my girls before hand and expressed some concern, so i was a bit skeptical. Turns out, she was one of my hardest workers. needless to say i was pretty excited about the work ethic of my crew. i really enjoyed not having to work at motivating the majority of my campers.

now back to the roof i was so excited about.
This house was a 2 story house, which i hadnt worked on before, but the hight was no problem, it was just a little harder finding a sturdy place to put the ladder, no big deal though. when i got on the roof, the first thing i noticed was that the entire roof was much, much bouncier than any other roof i had been on, which is never good. i walked around the roof, never fell though, so i went ahead and got the campers up there, and started stripping off the old shingles. the contrators before used plywood as opposed to boards while building the roof, which is fine as long as you use thick enough plywood. As we started stripping the roof, i noticed that the plywood on the roof was very thin, and needed to be replaced in some places. since i had never worked with plywood before, i called Todd to see what he wanted me to do, when he got there, the first words out of his mouth were "oh my gosh, you have got to be kidding me." never a good sign when you have 11 people on the roof. todd explained that the minimum thickness of plywood that you can use on a roof is 1/2 inch, the contractors before decided it would be a good idea to use 1/4 inch plywood, and it had been a very long time since it was laid down, and had become even weaker. Not only did they use thin wood, they built what are called 'fly rafters.' fly rafters are rafters that are not supported by the house, and if you put any weight on them, you go flying. always good news to find out. end of story, we had to resheet the entire house. luckily we didnt have to take up the old plywood, and were able to lay the new plywood down on the preexisting wood, but still an inconvenience none the less. When todd returned, he brought a guy named Dale with him, dale is a pro services employee who helped us out for the day. by the end of the day, we were able to resheet the half of the roof we had torn off, lay tar paper, put new drip edge down and lay all of our chalk lines for our shingles. not a bad days work at all.
tuesday is when my campers really impressed me. we got to the job site about 815, prayed and i explained what wed be doing all day. what we had to do, was to strip the remaining side of the house, resheet and tar paper, we would keep on going from there depending on what kind of time we had left. Everyone had the roof completely stripped by 915ish, and then we had the whole house resheeted by 1115. i was blown away. it had taken us atleast three house the day before to resheet the roof, with dales help, tuesday it only took us three hours to strip, and resheet the house. we were able to tar paper, and even start laying shingles on the back side. wednesday, we finished shingling the back side, we did 1/2 of the roof in less than a half day, like i said, i had a great crew! our chalk lines were messed up about 1/2 way up the roof, and i even trusted them to go by the drip edge (a line on the shingles) rather than laying new chalk lines, which i hadnt done with any other group. Thursday, we laid chalk lines, drip edge, shingled the front 1/2 of the roof, capped off the ridges, and tarred by 1230. we did all the work they had planned for us, plus resheeting an entire day and a half early. it felt so good to finish early and not be rushed on the last day. We finished so early, we were even able to get summer snow on thursday, which is always a treat!

Friday we went and helped Whitney and Erica finish up their deck for about a 1/2 day. Friday was a good reminder of how much more fun roofing is than decking. im not sure what it is, roofing is just so much more fun than decking. i was glad we were able to help another group out though.

the friday night worship service was one of the best so far in the summer. i believe we had atleast 4 salvations that night, along with many other decisions, either being rededications, or descisions to actually do something with their faith and to pursue Christ. it was absolutely amazing looking around at the campers, and seeing the ones who you know are only there because they had to come, or are only there to talk to girls standing there with tears in their eyes simply praising Christ!! it brought an incredible smile to my face. I also realized this week that this summer has helped me to open up in my worship, it seemed like before i was hesitant to raise my hands in worship because i was worried about what the people around me would think. This summer, ive felt alot more comforatable singing louder, raising my hands, and just expressing myself in general while worshiping.

Valley Are The Devils Stomping Grounds

Week two of six is now over. Ive also got one more roof under my belt, this one however, contained those God-forsaken places called valleys. Bottom line, valleys suck, theres no real way around it. They're difficult, and what not.
My crew this week was alot of fun. I had 13 campers, three of them being adult chaperons. most everyone was very well motivated, and worked very hard all week. i had a few people who werent very motivated to work this week, but everything still worked out for the best.
My roof this week was two square bigger than last weeks, which isnt a huge deal. what made the roof more difficult were the two valleys we had to deal with. the two valleys were on both sides of an addition to the back of the house. When a roof has valleys, valley flashing has to be laid down, which isnt two difficult, and you have to tar paper over the valley, along with shingling over the valley, and then chalk lining and cutting shingles along the line. You also have to figure out which side of the roof will shed the most water. None of these by itself are all that difficult, and when you add them all together, and then start shingling away from the valley, it gets very easy to get off on your chalk lines and for the shingles to start slanting down the roof, which never looks good.
Monday we worked on tearing off a little over half of one of the back sides, so the kids could somewhat get a handle on shingling. this went pretty well, i was fairly pleased with the amount of work we got done. tuesday we tore off the rest of the back of the house, and started on one of the two valleys for the week. This went alright as well, i wasnt as pleased with the work we got done, but we did have to replace alot of the roof, which was very time consuming and put at a standstill. Wednesday was our half day, so the only thing we did was work on finishing shingling everything we had tar papered. we got the majority of it done, but werent able to finish because of the half day. Thursday, we had another crew come and help us. hatfield, one of the other crew chiefs, only had a 6 square roof to replace, so as soon as they were done, they came and helped us out. This made finishing the roof much easier. i was able to bounce questions off of hatfield, and we had more kids we were able to put to work on other sides of the roof. Thursday we almost finished three sections of the roof, one of them being a valley, i was very pleased. The only thing that happened on thursday, is as we were finishing up for the day, we noticed that the the shingle lines on either side of the valley werent following the chalk lines we had laid, they were slipping down the side of the house. One side was almost 5 inches, the other almost three. Thursday night i talked to dwight and got some suggestions on how to fix the slant, but when we got htere friday it turned out that out shingles were dipping in the middle rather than slanting, meaning we couldnt re-lay new chalk lines down. Todd came over and got us going in the right direction. While We were working on that, all the kids were working on tearing off the last section of the roof, tar papering it, and then shingling it. We had a little meeting before we got started working, explaining to them that we had alot of work to do and if we didnt want to be working late, we would have to really get after it this morning. FOr some reason the kids really responded to this, we were basically finished with the roof by 1130 that morning. I had figured wed be working till 2 or 3 that day, instead we were able to leave at 12ish, and take the kids to sonic. It was an amazing week working on the roof, and out home owner ms england, was the nicest lady ever, even though it was almost impossible to get her to stop talking so we could get some work done. Saturday, i went to louisville with several of the staffers for the day, which was alot of fun. One girl who was driving, amanda blew a tire while we were there, so i got to change my first tire which was fun. I also found out ill be roofing all summer, im really looking forward to that. Roofing may be alot harder and more time consuming than building a deck, but its definitely alot more fun than decking ever could be. Im looking forward to this next week of campers and seeing what job well be doing. I dont think ill have any valleys this week, which will be nice.

i just realized the title of this wont make much sense to many of yall, so heres the story: wednesday, most of the staff went to a sub shop called little philly for lunch, after we had finished eating, several of us just sat around talking for a while. Hatfield and i were talking about the valleys wed have to be working on, and we came to the conclusion that valleys on roofs are truly a God forsaken place, and therefore are satans stoping grounds. we had a good laugh about that.

Week 1

Week one of campers has come and gone. As most of you know, i was roofing this week. My crew consisted of 16 campers, three being adult chaperones. most everyone hadnt roofed before. All four of the Mt. Vernon kids i had had roofed before, and one of the other kids' dad was a roofing contractor so he had seen plenty of roofs as well.
Monday was so slow. We hardly got anything done, i was so frustrated with how i was motivating the kids and getting things done. Granted, this was the second time i had ever been on a roof, I was by myself, and had several 12 year old girls who were hard to motivate and keep working, and had to be constantly monitored to make sure nothing was messed up. We barely managed to start laying shingles on one side of the roof, we break the roof into sections, and finish that part before moving on to the next generally, we didnt even finish tar papering that side, but that was due to having to wait on a board in order to patch a hole that in the roof. Tuesday went better, we finished tar papering, tore off one short side of the roof, and then started shingling that side. Still not the most work accomplished, but definitely an improvement none the less. Wednesday we had a half day, and had to be back by 12. Our goal was to finish shingling both the sides before we got back to campus, we did manage to do this, but it did mean that I and three of the MTV kids had to stay behind for about 20 or 30 minutes in order to finish shingling. Thursday we finished tearing off the roof, and tar papered the whole roof, and chalk lined one long side of the roof, only to find out that we did them wrong. this was a good amount of work to be accomplished, especially considering we had to replace almost half of one side of wood in order to keep the roof stable. It was almost funny, looking for weak boards. It seemed like every time i hit a board, the roofing shovel i was using went straight through the roof. Friday morning, we were visited by the shingle faries who helped us lay a few shingles before we got there, while its frustrating that i needed the faries, it certainly helped and was a blessing.
Aside from the frustrations of the slow roof, this week was amazing and i know God touched many lives this week. Friday afternoon before dinner i was talking with one kid who was there, he was a pretty quiet kid, but just by talking to him i could tell he had an amazing time, he even got tears in his eyes talking about how much he had enjoyed this week. It was amazing to see his reaction to the week. MTV even had three people get saved!!! The worship was amazing, and i am loving being here.
i found out that ill be roofing again next week. this roof is a bit bigger than the one i did this week, but ive got a little more experience, and a returning staffer to help me. i dont think shes done many roofs before either, but it still be a big help. Even though im exhausted, im really looking forward to having kids come again and working some more.

And Thats a Wrap

Well training is officially over. Three weeks of late nights, early mornings, and a lot of hard work in between. These three weeks have been a lot of fun, and Ive gotten to know a lot of awesome people. Wednesday we split up into crews again, this time the crew i was on had 5 people, and we built another 12 by 10 deck, but this time we built the whole thing in one day. we got started working about 630 or 7, and were finished by 530 or 6. we got off to a bit of a slow start, but picked up the pace and were finished first. I thought we worked well together again. Im really glad that everyone can work well with everyone else, hopefully that means we will have minimal drama and problems between staffers working during the camp weeks. Thursday we went through all of the worship services. it was a long day, doing 4 full worship services in one day, but it was really good and im looking forward to all of the services, even though theyll probably get old after hearing the same thing 6 times in a row. Friday we reorganized the trailers and made sure for one last time that we had all of the tools we needed for the camp weeks. We were also assigned trailers for the summer, or at least the week. This week, ill be putting a new roof on a house. i went with one of our supervisors to take the trailer to the job site, and was able to look at the roof ill be putting on. it doesnt look like it will be too big of a roof, but it will be a full week. this house definitely needs a new roof. i only got a good look at two sides of the house, one has a big dip in the roof, which im hoping isnt a hole, and the other side already has a hole thats been patched with plastic or something. i just hope the roof is stable enough for all the kids to be up there at the same time. After lunch, we went and purchased all the food well be needing for the week at walmart. its amazing the number of chips, sandwich meats, bread, drinks, ect that it takes to feed 140 people. we pretty much cleaned out walmarts food section.

our first crew of staffers come tomorrow around 4. Im really looking forward to them getting here. I believe weve got about 140 campers, including chaperones. the week should be interesting. ill be incredibly busy, but i cant wait for everything to really get started.

Decking and Summer Snow

This week is decking. We have five decks that we have scheduled for this week. In addition to all of the decks weve got for this week, we also have alot of work that needs to be completed in order for everything to be ready for campers. This includes everything from making videos, to organizing more trailers, to all kinds of other stuff. its been a pretty busy week. weve got some pretty funny videos planned for this summer. if ryan is reading this, unless you want to ruin the surprise of the videos scroll down a bit. if not you can still read, just dont tell anyone about it. two of the videos are spoofs from old saturday night live skits. the first is called land whale. the old snl skit is actually called land shark. Its about a shark that lives on land and goes door to door, getting people to answer the door, and then eating them. its a pretty funny sketch, especially when you can hear the 'land shark' talking and luring people to the door. the second one is called mr jonah. the original sketch is about a play dough man named mr bill and he is destroyed every video by his arch nemesis sluggo. the only difference in our skit is we changed the name to mr jonah in order keep with the theme of the summer. another video is a countdown where all of the guys sing bohemian raphsody together in a car. im really looking forward to seeing these videos edited. they should be funny

back to the decks... weve had 5 decks to do this week. sunday night we were split up into three different crews, we each had a deck to do. we were given monday and tuesday to finish them, which isnt too much to expect. i had a really good crew. warren, the worship leader was our crew leader, and erica. everyone had a 12x10 foot deck to do. the deck crew i was on had a few extra requirments to meet because of who was funding the project. we had to meed KHC code in addition to state code, while everyone else only had to meet state codes. We had several extra steps we had to do, including two posts, lag bolting the deck to the house, putting extra supports under the deck, as well as digging out a hole for cement to be poured to secure the steps. some of these make a little sense, but others, like the cement, are just pointless. oh well, thats just how it works i guess. our grouped worked really well together, and we kept up the pace with everyone even with the extra stuff to do.. we still have two decks to do tomorrow, which well split into crews to finish as well.

thursday were going to run through all of our services to make sure everything meshes well together. ive got a feeling this is going to be a long day, but atleast it wont be too strenuous.

i have discovered two things thus far that are in kentucky. the first, being ski. ski is a sprite like soft drink with alot more flavor. its quite delicious, now it is in no way, shape or form im comparison with the divine-like sundrop, but it rather tasty. the second thing i have discovered, i love oh so much. two words: Summer Snow. oh if only words could describe summer snow. its kinda like a snow cone, but oh so much better. it will literally blow your mind. they have 60 flavors, some including : rug rats, frog in a blender, ken and barbie, the incredible hulk, spider man, rock and roll, and oh so many others. if any of you are ever in campbellsville, you MUST stop by summer snow, your life will be changed forever.
one more thing, the new mountain dew soft drinks arent all youd expect. looking at the packages, youd think theyd be the most delicious drink youd ever had, but its not the case. their not bad, but they arent that good either. just thought id throw that little bit of info yalls way.

im really looking forward to campers coming on sunday. its gonna get hecktic and im hardly going to have time to breathe, but it should be alot of fun.

5 days till campers come