PDA Mission Trip #32 (New Bern, NC) – Day 4 (Hump Day)

Written by Lucille Baur

Written by Lucille Baur 

Sometimes folks refer to Wednesday as “Hump Day” because it is the middle of the week, but in our mission trip parlance it referred to fixing humps in floors at two of our homes. Of course we did plenty of other things as well. 

One of the floors with “humps” was being worked on by Jerry Brown and Barry Berson. Jerry reports that they removed the vinyl planks from the kitchen floor and repaired the subfloor, which was separating from the framework and had created a dangerous, uneven condition. Then they reinstalled the original vinyl planks and created a safe, smooth surface. The female homeowner was thrilled with the job and even invited her neighbor over to share in her joy and brag about the great work our guys had done. 

Another very happy homeowner is thrilled with the work that Stuart Morrison, Bruce Andrews, and Dave Salak are doing. Stuart shared that his retired male homeowner lost his original 80-foot trailer during Hurricane Katrina and replaced it with a 65-foot model, which has needed a lot of repairs. Our trio is focusing on electrical problems and moved into fixing many of those today. They are now repairing electrical outlets, and you can imagine how excited that made this homeowner to be able to use electricity that he hadn’t previously been able to access. 

The final floor with humps is at our original house, with a party of five doing repair work. The floor work was actually the last thing we did today. Lucille and Laura finished painting two bedrooms. Steve Ward worked some magic as he repaired wall studs damaged from the huge tree that fell on this trailer home during Hurricane Florence. He also made some additional creative repairs to the metal roof. Edco was very proud of the perfectly fitting plumbing access panel he created where none existed before. Fletcher moves from one project to the next giving his sage advice and counseling. We don’t make a move without checking in with him first. 

So back to the floor. This was a case of “How many GPC volunteers does it take to put down a plank vinyl floor?” In our case, it was four, with Fletcher supervising. You must understand that we are dealing with a floor that isn’t level and a room that isn’t square. We need to put down flooring in two bedrooms before we head home, and we just got started in one. Thank goodness Jerry and Barry are now back, with all their flooring experience. 

I can’t sign off without saying how wonderful it was to Zoom with former mission trip veteran cooks Carol and Ella tonight. Their fun personalities and cooking expertise have been legendary. We love them and miss them, but we haven’t completely forgiven them for hanging up their mission trip aprons and spatulas. They did hand off their “Cooking for a Crowd” cookbook to Yvonne, however, who is now delighting us with her mouth-watering meals. 

Be ready for more good news tomorrow!