Leaving It Better Than We Found It

It’s the final day in Crisfield and once again we started with a big cooked breakfast but this time we said goodbye to Mr. Rawls.   It felt like Groundhog’s day as almost all of us headed to another roofing job.  We got to work immediately, tearing off the old shingles and sheething the entire roof.  We had felt paper laid and the start of shingles back on by lunch.  The job was complete by 3:00 so that we could return to home base, pack up the tools in the trailer and head for a dinner out.

What an awesome group of people we had this year!  Our new additions, Ms. Zelonis and Mr. Rawls, fit right in.  They both brought unique skills and traits that augmented our current team of leaders.  We cannot thank all the people enough that make this trip so incredible each year.  The first thank yous go to Teresa Carroll; Brian, Veronica and William Deiling; and Megan and Jarret Brightbill for giving us the time to do this.  A big thank you also to the staff, administration and students of Dauphin County Technical School that support our efforts.  If it were not for Mr. Hawke, Mr. Grierson, Mrs. Hoy and Mrs. Custer; Carpentry, Building Construction and the coaching team would suffer in our absence.  To everyone at Keystone Human Services, we appreciate being able to borrow Ms. Connie for a week.  We would also be remiss if we did not thank all the BC Cares alumni who continue to support, talk about and follow all of the projects that we have completed over the years.  And finally, thank you to Joining Hands and the Colonial Park Rotary for their full support in helping us teach the students the very real value of service above self.

Once again, thanks to all,

Bob Brightbill, Tim Carroll, and Sharon Deiling

Lots of Rot and Loads of Love

Good evening everybody! This is Whitney Faust and Clayton Early giving you the latest update from beautiful Crisfield, Maryland. Whitney is going to start us off.

This morning started out a little differently; our advisors actually slept in! So our breakfast was a little later than normal but I don’t think we minded much once we smelled the amazing aroma of McBrightbills. Once we all devoured our yummy breakfast it was off to work, we split into our two teams and we worked our butts off. My team finished half a roof. We tore apart, applied new sheathing, and shingled everything.

Now it’s Clayton’s turn to tell you about the work they did. Our team went hard today. We did a little bit of everything. We installed aluminum trim around all the windows. While we did that Zach fixed some broken bricks. Once we finished all our work for the day we all came back to the church and headed to the marina for showers.

Mrs. Deiling and Mr. Rawls made us a pretty amazing dinner to share with our special guests, the home owners and their family from the house we’ve been working on graced us with their presence. They told us their story and brought tears to all our eyes. Today was an absolutely amazing day ending with a bittersweet dinner.

Well that’s all we have to share for today.

A Big Workday Followed by an Evening Cruise

Today was an outstanding day! We woke up at around 6:00 this morning. Mr. Brightbill and the crew made scrambled eggs and fried potatoes. After we ate, Brightbill broke down what we were going to do today. I (Christian) volunteered myself to work on the roofing for one of our jobs. I was psyched to try something new today.

On our way to Brightbill’s work site, we stopped by yesterday’s job to pick up some supplies. We got to the work site at around 9:00 this morning.  Our job was to work with another small group to help get the roofing underway.  We had already stocked the roof with shingles. We started off by tearing of all the old roofing. Next we replaced some of the plywood. Then we laid down the ice guard and felt paper. After a quick lunch break, we laid the shingles down on the roof.  The other volunteers and the homeowner were very grateful for the help. 

Today at Mr. Carroll’s work site, we cut the hardened spray foam sealant off of the edges of the windows. We also had to cut the window opening so that the window would fit. We then went to a lunch break at 11:00 and went back to work at around 11:30. Then we built a small wall to support the window sill. Finally we cut and installed studs to support the wall and the floor above.

At around 4 today, we headed to the Marina to shower up, eat some dinner and board a vessel. This cruise was best part of the day! We were on the water for about 2 hours. We got to see some bald eagles, which was really cool. We caught a crab and played around with it. The sunset was incredible and it was awesome to be on the water after dark.  Everyone seemed to enjoy their evening.

By,

Patrick McCutcheon and Christian Traynor