BEAUMONT, Texas - Today was an exciting day as we welcomed 108 Rockford Master’s Commission (RMC) students. They arrived at 10:00 AM in 12 vans, excited to take part in our week of “Extreme Blessing” home make-overs.

Over the next 2 weeks, we will be rebuilding 2 homes: the first is for a East Orange, Texas couple in their late 60s who are both disabled and do not have any flood insurance. Without our help they would not be able to return home. The second, is a retired grandmother who lives on a fixed income and has been raising her two grandchildren ages 15 & 17 since their mother died. 
 
Today’s volunteer training was a great success. We set up 9 instruction stations in the parking lot of our volunteer headquarters at Cathedral In The Pines Church which were manned by OB staff along with other partnering organizations such as Billy Graham’s Rapid Response Teams, The Home Depot, and Med Stat, a local ambulance company.
 

Home Depot associates hosted 2 stations training volunteers on how to hang sheetrock as well as mud, tape and float. Our OB foremen hosted several on how to hang doors, use of personal protection equipment (respirator fitting, masks, eye protection, hard hats, boots), house gutting, care and use of tools, and more. Billy Graham representatives were on hand to help train on how to respond compassionately to victims in crisis and a first aid station was hosted by local EMT and Med Stat workers.
 

We divided the RMC team into 9 teams of 12. Each team has some students who have construction experience, landscaping, design (interior), media, demo (gutting) and general labor. There are 16 who have drywall experience which is great! 
 
Tomorrow the teams will head out to the two homes (rebuild projects) and four gutting jobs. The “Extreme Blessing” homes have already been gutted down to the stud and the electrical, HVAC, and plumbing is complete. The teams will rebuild the entire home (except the kitchen) and we’ll do the big “reveal” next Monday.
 

The volunteer camp is buzzing with energy, excitement and passion. We are all looking forward to an amazing week!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Disaster, Jody Herrington, North America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.