Today we were greeted with warm and sunny skies for our last day in the county. After a quick stop at the hardware store, the crew headed to the Clear Fork site for the final time. Today’s task, to lay the tiles (following the arrows on the back), install the termination strips and but everything back in the room. Besides these tasks we knew we were getting into at the beginning of the week, Walt was able to help Billy get his speakers rewired and hooked up so he could listen to his music. A small job but one that meant the world to Billy. We had a great time with him this week and will look forward to seeing him in the summer when we are going to try and help stop a leak from the roof of his trailer.
This wraps up our service trip. We cannot express to you what a wonderful week it was. Thank you to the volunteers that came. You showed your flexibility when the trip went from helping with the NIU students to a small PV service week, and none of you opted out. This week there was a lot of work done, but also great discussions, reminiscing, reflecting and A LOT of laughter. Thank you for once again choosing to “Be a part of it!”

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Today we checked a lot of “must do’s” off our list. We started the morning with stop at Biscuit World on the way to the home repair site. As always, it was delicious. Once we arrived at the site we were able to finish putting the flooring and sub-flooring down in pretty good time. However, we were unable to find any sort of tiling in Wyoming County so we had to stop there for the day and make a run into Beckley in the evening.

We stopped through at St. Vincent dePaul on the way back home to unload tools that we won’t need anymore and load up on the supplies we will need for tiling and ate lunch there as well. After our stop there we dropped “Lil’ Blue” back off in Pineville and had a quick chat and catch up with Arnie. Next stop…The Way for a quick shower and change before heading to Beckley.

We first tried to find tiles at Priddy’s Lumber where we do all our business during the summer. While they didn’t have tile, it was nice to catch up a bit with the folks that work there. They even gave us a tip that we may find tile at Ollie’s Bargain Outlet. We had success finding the perfect tiles for Billy’s house.

Since we were already in Beckley we made a quick trip to Gabe’s and they went to the older downtown part of Beckley for dinner at a place called Foster’s that had once been a hardware store.

After a full and wonderful day, we settled in around the kitchen table for reflection. Tonight we reflected on home and world and how the two relate. The discussion was great, but not so easy to summarize. We shared our connection to home, our reflections on the world, our uniqueness and our similarities. After about an hour sharing our thoughts and ideas, we broke out the cheese and crackers, and popcorn. Sound familiar?

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