Week 1 here we come

I cannot believe that volunteers are currently in direct pursuit of our center. I feel like this set-up week FLEW by! There are only 5 work crews/35 people the first week, which I never got the leisure of having last summer, but I think this will be a great way to ease ourselves into the summer and to get into the swing of things. It's funny, I've never volunteered week 1 nor would I ever want to because in all honesty, they're completely our guinea pigs. We're test driving out a lot of new things and are just going to grade our success by their responses, then adjust accordingly for week 2! The church coming is completely new to the ASP experience though, so I'm banking on the fact that they'll never notice the difference if we mess up horribly (haha, though I doubt any mess-up would be THAT horrible).

I'm so excited for week 1 also because we have so many visitors!! For the past two nights our Chaplain Scott Looney (great last name, eh?) has been staying with us, and he's been offering a helping hand and just some company while we get our act together. I feel bad because he must have been pretty bored during our meetings and center set-up... he's a trooper though. On Monday we have Dennis, the HEAD Construction guru of ASP, as well as our Construction Consultant for our county, DT, coming to visit us!!! This will be awesome because not only are they some pretty sweet guys to talk to, they both can provide a tonnn of insight on the projects that we don't even know how to begin. For example, we want to put a room addition on a home, but things are complicated because the owner of the home tore down two load-bearing exterior walls (bearing the load of the roof), so that section of the roof could collapse into the house at any time. It's these types of things that are pretty over our heads and it's nice to have Dennis and DT as resources. On Monday also our Program Manager Nicole is coming for the day, which will be interesting considering she's already going to be taking notes on our performance and effectiveness when it's only going to be the first and second day of runs! Anyways, Wednesday through Friday we have a few other visitors either staying to visit or just lend a helping hand-- hopefully all of this extra company will help this week run smoothly!

I hope that this week's volunteers are really open to the experience and aren't expecting too much. The best thing a volunteer can do down here is just to come into this with an open mind and heart, that way they can completely absorb everything going on around them. We have some amazing projects and families for them to meet and I just really hope that we can make their first ASP experience a great one!

Now, time to shotgun a monster and finish set-up. ETA time of volunteers is 2:00... WISH US LUCK!!!