March Madness
A Good Works outing
by Mark CarkhuffWhat do you do on a beautiful, spring-like day in March? Well, if you're like my wife and I, one of the things you might do is open up the house, get rid of that "bottled up" feeling left over from winter, and capture some fresh air to get you through the next couple of weeks until Spring is here to stay.
As providence would have it, this particularly pleasant March day fell on Saturday, March 11, 2006. Many of you will recognize this as the second Saturday of the month, which is the day St Peter's parishioners join many others from around the region to support the ministry of Good Works in Coatesville, PA. As a reminder, Good Works is a Christian nonprofit organization which exists to improve the living conditions of low-income families in Chester County, PA - transforming substandard houses into warmer, safer, and drier homes; and despair into hope.
The team this month comprised seven members of the St. Peter's parish, as well as our adoptee Gail Mellon of Trinity Episcopal Church, Coatesville, PA. Our work crew leader, Ken Fleischer, laid out a division of the days planned efforts to Art Wrenn, Tom Brehm, Hugh McLennan, Cliff Castle, Randy Klein, and Mark Carkhuff. We were going to take full advantage of this beautiful spring-like day, and not only open up the windows at homeowner Wanda Suber's home, but take six of them out with the plan of replacement before days end. However, this was not all that was on the agenda. Art Wrenn and Tom Brehm would ply their talents to the much needed bathroom renovation. So off they went to the second floor while the remaining six of us, if you're keeping count, began the task of removing the windows from the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Randy Klein, who in the last two work days has been on window replacement duty (seven previous windows), was nominated as technical specialist, and kept everyone moving in the right direction.
While the fun and games of demolition and reconstruction were ongoing downstairs, we had left Art and Tom upstairs handling the technically demanding jobs of removing the vanity and toilet to prepare the bathroom for a new floor. Ken and Mark assisted in removing the old tile flooring from the bathroom.
I titled this narrative "March Madness", not so much to compare it to the NCAA tournament coming up in a matter of days, but because, at 2:30 pm, we still had six holes in the walls where windows should be, and a lot of commotion (I'll let you decipher) coming from Tom and Art upstairs, the bathroom of which still didn't have a toilet or vanity back in place. We were losing manpower, and fatigue was setting in. However, by day's end all of the replacement windows had been installed, curtains re-hung, bathroom vanity and toilet in place, and a new floor partially laid in the bathroom. God is good!
Contact Information
If you are willing to contribute a Saturday to share God’s love with people in need living not too far from your neighborhood, or have questions about Good Works, contact St. Peter's Good Works recruiter, Mark Carkhuff or at 610-935-1623. You are also invited to visit the Good Works website. And if you have already volunteered for a workday, but need directions to the Good Works warehouse in Coatesville, PA, where we meet at 8:45 a.m. sharp on the second Saturday of every month, click here.