Saturday, December 20th

Saturday morning, early early, everyone was a little grumpy, but ready to get the job done. As we loaded into our 4 vehicles, no one really knew what to expect, we all just hoped the day would warm up. The houses we were going to fix up weren't far from the church where the Posada was held on Friday night. So we all kinda had an idea of the area we would be in. The first house we arrived to had a black gate surrounding the house. The yard was filled with cute little things and a family of dogs, which we all loved. But some, like Brad (our male chaperone) was all business. When we saw the small shed type we were supposed to paint, the boys started talking about how much paint they needed, who was going to do what and things like that. To our surprise we were off to another house after a few minutes there.

The next house we arrived to was a disaster. The lawn looked like it hadn't been cut since the early 90s! There were thorn bushes and random things in the yard. The house didn't look much better, but we were only there for the yard. But, the most surprising thing to me was the fact that her next door neighbor's house had a freshly cut lawn. Their house was nice looking. "Why couldn't those people take time to help this widow?" I thought.

This woman seemed so happy when we got there, looking at all of us just happy to have people around. We unloaded the lawn mower and other tools they would need and some of us came back to give them more stuff. Trish, Adam, Chris P., Matt, Ben, Clara and Daniella were the first to stay and later Mari, Adrianne, and Chris D. came to help.

The rest of us went to the third house and that was a big job! The house was in need of a good paint job. It was a dark green color and was very old looking. We all knew this one was going to take awhile. Brad, Kelsey, Yvette and I along with those in Leti's car went to McCoy's. That was an adventure-we got all the paint supplies and a weed eater. The paint was a challenge because the machine couldn't make the right color. So we had to make it a tad bit darker, which seemed to take forever!

After that we were back to work. The window guards and lights were taken off the house and we were off to work. It was some time after lunch when we were on our 2nd coat that the group that was cutting the widow's yard came over to the house to help out. They gave us some bad news though, the lawn mower they were using broke and they hadn't finished the yard at Maria's house.

At the end of the day all that was left was to paint the roof, touch ups and paint the trim. We still had a lot ahead of us at the end of Saturday.



- Berna Labrado
Student Leader