Friday

Fridays on ASP usually mean one of two things.  Either you are rushing to finish your repair job or you are trying to find something to do until 4:30.  I guess you could say we fell into the latter category.  Well, except we really didn't need to try and find something to do.  Our homeowner had us covered.  Our homeowner was the sweetest, most hospitable woman in all of West Virginia.  Every day she made us a plate of brownies and something for lunch:  grilled cheese, pizza, hot dogs, macaroni salad.  Today it was brown beans and cornbread.  By 1:00 we had finished insulating (or installating: it's an inside joke we had) the span of the entire house.  Technically that was our job assignment for the week and we got it done.  But really, the week was about spending time with Irene and her husband Jerry, a soft spoken man who loved his word puzzles.  Oh, and their cats: five of them, the cutest little fur-balls.

Every morning she met us on her new (ASP) porch and made sure we had everything we needed for the day.  ;We would work hard for a few hours until Miss Irene forced us to take a break for lunch.  Again, this was a lunch that she prepared especially for us.  After lunch we would spend a good amount of time chatting with her and playing with the kittens.  Eventually we would mosey back and get a few more hours of work done before Quitting time.

I have to make it clear though, that although we took time to get to know her our crew workid incredibly hard.  We all had to conquer our fear of spiders by going under the house and swimming through cobwebs.  We all took turns with the spider stick (patent pending) to clear out the nooks and crannies of the crawl space and each of us built up our grip strength by stapling up sheet after sheet of insulation.  Its was a dirty and muddy job but I never heard one word of complaint from any of our youth volunteers.  I couldn't be more proud of any one of them.  As a group leader it is such a pleasure to have youth really give it their all.

Juliana "J-Dizzle" Powers, JT "the Hammer" Gindler, Matt "the Muscle" DiPierro, and Mallory "Marshmellow" Devine were a perfect combination for a perfect week. Matt Crawford, and Bill Dettelback for Team Olaf.  ASP 2017 Greenbriar county WV.