What a day!

Trying to keep 280+ volunteers supplied and busy is quite a task. A couple of groups are traveling by bus or large van and had to be split into separate work groups today - which meant running around mid-day to move some of them from one jobsite to another. I put a lot of miles on the church van. I also pretty much ran out of tools. We want each group that is working in a moldy house to wear respirators, but we ran out. We only have enough to supply about 125 volunteers, and we needed almost twice that many.

Tomorrow will be better - one of the large groups is taking their bus out to a camp that is being built for volunteers and will be working outside all day tomorrow - that means I can re-assign their respirators and tools to someone else. We also had a couple of good sized groups finish up today and they are leaving tomorrow. By the end of this week, we will have had 250+ volunteers every day for about 10 days - and while they are getting a lot of work done, it will be nice to see the numbers back down to about 150 for next week.

Today was one of those days where there seemed to be several problems crop up - probably more noticeable because we were all a bit stressed trying to deal with so many work crews. Most of the problems seem to get resolved, but the stress is showing.

We had some great news tonight - our host from Ishpeming (last January) called and he and a buddy are coming down this weekend to spend a couple of weeks volunteering. Peter - we certainly look forward to seeing you again. We have met a lot of wonderful people down here - most from church groups (Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian) who are doing great work. The best part is when they come down, work for a week, then go home and either send another group or they collect money and other items and send them down. Once here, they see how real the need is and go home and do something about it. Most are amazed at how much damage there is and few believe that it really will take 7 years to rebuild - until they see it for themselves. As I said in an earlier post, pictures just don't do it justice.