Operation Backyard 2011 - Crew Chief Perspective
July 26, 2011
Now that I’ve had a little over a week to process everything I feel like I can look back at OBY with a degree of clarity. It was a banner year, because less than a week before OBY started the only information we knew for certain was the students who signed up and my own involvement. Then some of those students dropped out. From Thursday to Saturday Mrs. Wilson scrambled to get everything ready for us (lunches, transportation, chaperones for the evenings, etc). Our Sunday night chaperone (Debs) was recruited about an hour before she showed up.
That night, one of the discussion questions was, “What do you expect from this week?” This was my eighth year of being involved with OBY, so everything is pretty “old hat” for me, yet I realized that I didn’t have an answer to that question. We were going to a roof without a nail gun, which I’ve done. We were going to be on a roof in blazing hot temperatures, which I’ve done. We had a mostly female crew, which I’ve done. Almost half of my crew were on my site last year and I knew what to expect from them. I’d been to the site and knew what to expect from it. I know and love David Ault and Dan Myers, the OBY leadership. All this and I still didn’t have an answer to that question. What I did know is that God was already working on our behalf. It took about two and a half days to line up everything we needed for the week from lunches on down. We had no less than five women come in to spend the night and be responsible for our girls. That’s something I’m still amazed by.
Monday TJ shows up and helps haul kids and tools to the jobsite. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to get up that early on my days off. We unloaded, prayed, and started the roof. As soon as we start stripping the roof I noticed that they hadn’t used just 1x6s for the decking, they had used 1x4s, 1x6s, 1x8s, 1x10s, and 1x12s. That was new, and it meant I needed additional boards to repair the damaged ones on the roof. Long story short, we got to sit in the shade for an hour before lunch. Shortly after lunch Emily Freed took off, she had to work that evening. Less than five minutes later she called me because she got in an automotive snafu. Being the only “adult” on site I couldn’t leave, so I called Craig my site’s intern and asked him to go help Emily. When I called him, he was about a block away from where she was. Considering all the driving around he did that week, the fact that he was right there is nothing short of miraculous. She wasn’t badly hurt and she had a friendly face there within minutes. Praise God for His abundant mercies!! Back on the jobsite we got to our stopping point a little after 2pm and headed back to the church before the heat from the day really started to hurt us.
Tuesday We had planned to start early, but God waived us off with a rainstorm that quit just in time for us to start at the regular time. Ms. Mattie wasn’t home, so we had to call for nails since ours were in her house. We still had to strip the other half of the roof, so we weren’t waiting at all. We got the roof stripped and ready for felt as lunch arrived. As I finished, David Ault called me from Home Depot and told me about a storm that looked to be headed my way. I rallied a few of the kids to start back from lunch early in order to start covering the roof. We made progress and it didn’t rain. We got the boards we needed to finish patching the roof and still it didn’t rain. I was later told that storm came at Knoxville and swept right around it, leaving us rain free. We did get the benefit of overcast skies and cooler temperatures, which we all enjoyed. We left the site around 2pm, making the two earliest days I have ever left an OBY site for the day.
Wednesday We were so close to finishing that I canceled the early start. We were finished up by lunchtime so we got to spend a couple hours washing Ms. Mattie's siding, mowing her lawn, removing a stump, and did some other clean-up. We finished so early that for the first time in Berean's history with OBY we took the half day Wednesday and spent the afternoon relaxing.
Thursday We were off to a new site for Thursday and Friday. When Dave told me about the site he told me to be sure not to finish it on Thursday. He didn't make it easy on us though, since the shingles had already been stripped and one side had been covered in felt paper. Also, we had a group from All Souls come and help us out. So let me say a special thanks to Joe, Sam, Tyler, Nick, Dean, and Chris who joined us on the roof and followed all my crazy rules. We hit one snag as a gatorade that was meant for those on the roof got thrown through a window. But this is one of the things I love about the OBY leadership; I gave Dave a call and his response was, "No problem, these things happen." I knew he would be calm about it, which gave me the freedom to be calm about it. One of the kids told me later that after they told me about the window I got out my phone, and climbed down the ladder like nothing had happened. That's how easy Dave and Dan make OBY for me. We finished early again, as it was getting amazingly hot on the roof and Dave told me not to finish it. Thanks to some help from Christine and some goofy picture taking, we were able to stall long enough to allow Mrs. Kouns to arrive with a birthday cake for Anna. Then in the evening, for the homeowner dinner, the daughter of our new homeowner and two of her granddaughters made an appearance. I was proud of the way our girls stepped up and loved on those two little girls.
Friday We were all glad to see Emily Freed's triumphant return to the site, and I was glad she spent the necessary amount of time recovering and didn't rush it. It was drizzling for the first part of the morning, which added a welcome amount of coolness to the air. We were finished by the time lunch arrived (okay, I made them put in the last few shingles before I let them quit). But after lunch, we cleaned up and went back to church with the help of Mrs Simpson. This year goes down as one of the hottest on record, but we also had the shortest days ever. Special thanks to Breanna and Ruthie for coming out to help during the week.
This year's theme was Refresh, and I got to experience that in a special way. On the schedule, the students are supposed to be in their rooms at 10:30 with lights out at 11. Monday through Thursday, after I chased some of the girls out of the fellowship hall at 10:30, I would get up to my room where I found the guys already asleep. This is a radical change from years past and allowed me an extra 30 minutes of sleep per night. So thank you guys, you refreshed me during the week as well.
Nathan McKeehan - Berean Bible Church
Cityscapes is written by Chris Martin, President, Knoxville Leadership Foundation.
