Volunteer

there was a building completely abandoned. The roof suffered major water damage and the wooden overhang splintered. The windows were broken and the yard was filled with rotted household items. The damage got worse as we got closer to the panhandle. Most of the beach houses were empty shells thatgave off a ghost-town vibe and gas stations and restaurants were no longer on the lots because they were wiped out from the storm. Eventually, we reached the mission site. It was a house that suffered major water damage. We found out that the owner was a 70 year old veteran. He already fixed his roof on his own and planned to redo his plumbing. But, instead of focusing on fixing his house, he decided to help other people. His pastor heard what he did and decided to ask Team Effort, a non-profit organization, to help rebuild his house. There were teams before us that cleaned the house, removed carpet and insulation, and placed wall beams to section off the rooms in the house. So, our main goal was to install soffit and fascia for aesthetics and help the air circulate through the house. We thought it would be easy, but it actually took us four days to finish it because installing soffit and fascia is very tedious. There was a lot of downtime while we were cutting it, we couldn’t do anything else to the house except pull weeds in the yard, and it rained every day. Despite this, we had a lot of fun working together to rebuild the house. It felt really good that we finished installing fascia and soffit because it was our goal and the teams after us could focus on finishing other tasks. I think the amazing thing about mission sites is that we all work together to finish a goal by working in teams to finish smaller tasks. For us, it didn’t feel like we did anything to help, but we knew that the help from the other teams made a huge difference.