Frakes, Kentucky- Day 2

Day 2 began like every other day- with devotions on the side of the mountain. The misty fog rising in the distance frames an incredible scene on which to meditate each morning.


Once we arrived at the work site, our crew split into two groups- the siding crew and the gang building the additional room onto the rear of the trailer.

The siding crew first finished framing the windows and nailing 2 x 4s every two feet all around the trailer. After that, we cut insulation board and nailed it between the 2 x 4s, all the while battling the wasps which continue to bombard us. As we installed the boards, we constantly experienced difficulty with getting the nails to catch onto something more substantial than the trailer's current thirty-five-year-old metal siding. (Yes, the family's trailer home is thirty-five years old.) After checking inside some of the spots where the old siding had pulled away, we realized the trailer only contained wet foam-like insulation between the current metal siding and interior walls. So we hope that the additional insulation board and vinyl siding we install will certainly keep the family warmer during the winter.












The other half of our crew continued to labor on the the floor for the new room. The guys secured the floor joists and laid the beams, but ran into a snag upon realizing that the trailer's existing concrete pad outside the back door was actually extending into the area where beams would need to be laid. This led to a lengthy process of using a sledgehammer to bust up the concrete pad and then haul away the rock.











We were joined by two new helpers today. The homeowner's son-in-law and twenty-one-year-old grandson spent the day working with us, too.

By the end of day two, we had definitely made more progress, but obviously have much more work to do.











During tonight's program at Henderson Settlement, we learned that the amount of poverty in the area greatly exceeds the Kentucky and national averages. Bell County where Henderson Settlement in located ranks as the twentieth poorest county in the entire country. Due to poor health care and a history of working in the mines, approximately one-third of Bell County's residents are disabled. Those statistics really clarified for me not only how blessed I truly am, but how great people's needs in our own country truly are.