Saturday, Heather and I had the opportunity to help provide food to the Des Moines Habitat For Humanity build.
They are doing some sort of large scale build, i think 10 houses in 10 days maybe? At any rate, they are building a lot of houses.
We were simply helping prepare and serve lunch to the crews.
Our involvement was due to Heather’s company providing the food for the day’s meal, and then recruiting staff to come help serve it.
Lunch turned out to be about 300 pork-burgers:
What you can’t really see in the picture is the rain. As has been the trend for September, it was cold and rainy all morning. It never turned into a downpour, but standing outside of the shelter wasn’t ideal. I was more than happy to grill, in part due to the fact I hadn’t brought a coat in my rush to leave the house. Standing by the fire was nice and warm, if a little damp.
The other advantage to volunteering to grill is that I have a defined task, and don’t have to keep wondering around looking for something to do or haunting the one person who seems to know whats going on for another task.
Even on that rather large grill, cooking ~300 burgers was surprisingly time consuming.
After cooking and serving lunch, we cleaned up and headed home. I had just enough time to get a hot shower in before the Nebraska game started. ESPN was streaming video of the game, a trend that I hope continues as we haven’t had a TV for over a year now.
Our plan for Sunday involved helping our friends who have been remodeling their house, to do some painting after church. A phone call from family drastically altered that plan, early Sunday morning.
Heather’s Uncle, the same one I briefly mentioned back in April when we saw him run in the special Olympics, was in the hospital. His remaining lifespan was being estimated in hours when we got the call, and found out that the majority of the family was headed to Omaha. I am not sure if I even know what I think about that day, and I am certain that I cannot refine it into something worth putting here. It was a long, cold, sad, rainy day.
Sorry to end on such a down note, but it ends up being an accurate summary of our weekend.
-Jordan
Nelsons 