Hello from Hendersonville!

Wadduuup from North Carolina! This is Sage from the ASB trip to Hendersonville with an update of what we’ve been up to here in the mountains. After a Sunday morning of fun in the snow, today was our team’s first day working with Housing Assistance, a not-for-profit organization for building and maintaining affordable housing options in Henderson County, North Carolina.

We pulled up the Housing Assistance main office bright and early this morning (after scraping ice and snow off our vehicles; it’s really cold here!) There, we met Todd, Gary, Sean, Alvaro, and Marcesa from the organization for a meet and greet and a briefing of the day’s work.

Half of the team then went with Gary to the neighborhood that Housing Assistance, community members who will be living there, and volunteers like us are building from the ground up. Gary showed us the homes that had been started for this development, and then took us to our job site—the crawl space under a single-family home. Here, Gary and six of our ASB teammates spent the morning crawling around in the dark putting down a vapor-seal in the space to protect against moisture and gases that might seep up through the ground. We had a blast, no kidding! Gary was great to work with and many hands made light work, and the feeling of finally standing up outside was worth all the head bumps that happened under the home.

Top: Team member Lexi went to town drilling holes in the cement of the crawl space. Bottom: Sage and Mitchell followed up, hammering the vapor seal into place.

The rest of the team went to another job site: the home of the lovely Ms. Perkins. Ms. Perkins lives alone in her home that has fallen into disrepair: a leaky roof and water-damaged ceilings have made nearly all the rooms in her house unlivable. Our team, along with Todd and Alvaro (who we now call Al; yeah, we’re that close) got to work fixing the ceiling and cracking jokes this morning. The team ripped out the ceiling in the main hallway as well as in one of the bedrooms and started to put up a new ceiling in these areas.

top: Alvaro and team member Joseph held up the ceiling while they drilled the board in place. bottom: Team member Victoria took out staples from the old ceiling boards while our Graduate Trip Advisor Alexis was at the ready with a drill.

After lunch, the team met up at Ms. Perkins house. There were plenty of hands on deck and plenty of work to be done, so we made progress quickly. I had the chance to sit down with Ms. Perkins for a while and chat with her. She asked how I was feeling as she noticed I was under the weather then proceeded to pile blankets upon me and insisted I rested for a while. She gave me a package of tissues when she saw I was sniffling. She was lovely to speak with, and she has such a great heart and kind, giving spirit. We’ll be working in her home for the rest of the week, which is incredible, as everyone will have the opportunity to get to know the person who will benefit directly from our service.

So, if you’re coming through Hendersonville, NC, come say hey to us! We’ll give you some work gloves and you can come tear up flooring with us, or talk with Ms. Perkins for a while, and then we can all go grab a meal at the famous Hot Dog World. From all of us here, have a great break and War Eagle!

pictured: Our fearless Site Leader Ashley at her favorite place in Hendersonville. We all now love Hot Dog World as much as she does.