Our next First Friday Volunteer lunch will be held once more at Shoney's in Dunbar. BUT, we will be meeting at 1:00 instead of 12:00 noon. The date for this lunch is May 5, 2006 and, as always, is the first Friday of the month. We encourage you to attend! Hey, it's lunch and a little bit of construction talk, news and a few updates...we don't even have a quiz at the end.

Remember-Friday, May 5, Shoney's in Dunbar, 1:00!

Here's Amber and Milton with their daughters Mallerie and Caley at their dedication on Sunday, April 9th. They are already moved in but still working on the landscaping--volunteers may help them out some with this. The girls are thrilled to have their own bedrooms and so much more space than they had in their crowded rental where they had been living for the last 4 1/2 years. They want to thank everyone--especially the crews, for your hard work throughout the winter!

Star's dedication was a huge success as well--with a large attendance of over 70 and even a brass band. She should be moving in within the next 1-2 weeks. We'll get a picture of her up soon on the blog.

Here's a reminder that the dedication for Star Hogan's house will be this Saturday, April 15 at 12:00 noon. So many people have contributed to this house and we invite you all to attend. It's usually about a half hour event. Just think of how important a moment this will be for Star and her family. I believe Star has shown us all that she's a hard working and dedicated person. Come and celebrate this new chapter of her!

We are working hard to get Star's home in great shape for the dedication. One thing that is in our favor is that we have some old friends, Russ and Lori van Nest, here to help us. They are leading a group of great young people from Faith Community Chapel of New Castle, PA. We're really happy they are here to help us with the finishing stages of Star's house! Thanks to all of them.

Today we had our third "First Friday Dutch Treat Volunteer Lunch" at Shoney's in Dunbar. About a dozen regular crew members showed up along with Tiny, Tina Rhodes and Tim Bollinger. Tina led us through the topic of mortgage finance. I think everyone got a clear understanding of how it is structured and how it affects both the homeowner and Habitat. A lot of good, solid information was laid out. Several well-reasoned questions were asked and answered.
As promised, Tee shirts were distributed after the meeting. (Yes Rusty, I remembered.) If you are interested in Habitat business cards with your name, let me know. I'd also like to get accurate, up to date e-mail addresses for everyone. If yours has changed, again let me know.
It was a great lunch meeting. Mike McCready had some very important and late breaking news. Tina had some hard statistics on money. Tiny had a new challenge for the crews.
I had the fish.
Remember...the dedication for Amber Knuckles and Milton Haskins (house 103) is this Sunday, April 9. The dedication for Star Hogan (104) is Saturday, April 15. You're invited!
Can't wait to hear about the next meeting? It's Friday, May5 at Shoney's in Dunbar. In order to accomodate Shoney's regular noon lunch rush, what do you think about having our meeting at 1:00 instead of 12:00? Shoney's has been great to give us this space but at noon the place was jammed full. It would really help them out if we could meet an hour later. Let me know what you think. See ya there!

Two new families have recently been approved into the Habitat program. The first is Latasshia Davenport who is a single mom with 3 boys and a girl ranging in age from 10 to 15. She works full time as a home health aid and can't wait to get started working on her hours out on the jobsite. Despite her extremely busy schedule, this lady has such contagious enthusiasm! Lisa McClure and her 13 year old daught Emily have also been approved. Lisa is in school full time for nursing and takes care of her daughter who has severe disabilities. Her extremely positive attitude stands out to all who meet her.

With these two new families, we now have total of 10 families approved into the program and working on their sweat equity hours and classes. These families include: Star Hogan (House #105-the Apostles Build); Jason and Tamera Morgan (House #104); Tim and Angel Young (House #106 which will be starting the first week of May); Wendy Tipton (House #107 which should start around the end of May to early June); Jerry Burns; Sherman Bennett; Shirley Cole; Jen Spencer; Latasshia Davenport; and Lisa McClure. As you come out regularly to the job site, you will have a chance to work alongside some of these families and get to know them a little better. There are a few families who are primarily putting in hours at the ReStore because of various disabilities. We in the office have a chance to see all that each of them have gone through to get to this place of becoming homeowners--these folks are truly a remarkable group who have overcome many obstacles and are determined to achieve this lifelong dream. They are so thankful to Habitat and to the many volunteers like you who are making it possible!

Well, it seems like our work group from Chicago just left and here we have another one set to arrive. A group of 14 high schoolers and their 3 adult leaders will arrive late on
Tuesday, April 11 and work from Wednesday morning through the morning of Saturday, April 15. They are from Faith Community Chapel in New Castle, PA. Some of you may have worked with their leader, Russ van Nest back in 2003. He was here with another church from New Castle and worked on Dallas Call's house waaaaay out there on Derrick's Creek in Sissonville. He has changed churches but he hasn't changed his committment to Habitat for Humanity. It will be good to welcome Russ back and meet all of the new faces that have come to help. I get great feedback from work camps about working alongside our regular crews. They always mention how they have learned from you folks and how much they admire your year round committment. Of course, they have a few choice words about Tiny and Lavern as well. I swear, I think many of them return just to get another dose of those two characters.

Bob Peirson, our just returned Care-a-Vanner brought some photos back with him. It looks like things were well organized in spite of the extra hardships that Hurricane Katrina imposed.
I think it is inspiring to see
CON-struction instead of the all too familiar DE-struction. Notice the slab foundations. The rebuilding task is just plain immense and it looks like it will be years before the job is done. Thanks to Bob, the Care-a-Vanners and all who have stepped up to help win back the Gulf Coast. I hope today's enthusiasm will be carried forth until the displaced residents of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama can go home. The same thoughts hold true for those victims in Flodida who also

suffered heavy losses in last year's record shattering hurricane season. I am very, very glad that we don't have to worry about hurricanes in West Virginia.

Some of you may know that a regular Tuesday crew member, Bob Peirson, has been working for a Habitat affiliate in Thibodaux, Louisiana. Today we got an Email from Bob with some of his thoughts on working in the devastated Gulf region. Bob writes:

"This is Bob Peirson of the Tuesday crew. I participated in a two week Care-a-Van build with Bayou Area HfH in Thibodaux, La. They have a development of 56 houses, of which the first 12 are under construction.
These houses are Operation Home Delivery homes. Unfortunately, the OHD houses only amounted to 'frame panels'. That was it. So in the end, these only saved the local affiliate about $1200 a house.
All the homes are 1000 sq ft three bedroom, one bath homes. There are 4 basic designs.
We camped on site, which was nice. It was so handy to walk to 'work'. They have full hookups for about 12 RV's. The RV people number about 20. There are also three houses used as dorms for various groups, including about 12 AmeriCorps volunteers. The rest of the volunteers are from other groups, such as college or high school kids.
A pavilion at one corner of the development is the focal point for the morning devotionals and meeting, breaks and lunch.
Managementis a bit 'stretched'. One manager guides the 50+ people on site each day. In the end, the actual management gravitates to a few volunteers knowledgeable in construction.
Since there so many houses under construction at one time, one can find any aspect of house building somewhere on this site.
Construction here is 'on a slab'. Contractors do the plumbing and concrete work, then the electrical. Volunteers do the rest, except the dry wall finishing.
The land here is flat, cut by bayous. They measure distance above sea level in inches.
We made a lot of progress these two weeks and the affiliate took good care of us."

Thanks for the update and hard work, Bob. It's good to have you home!