Paradise, CA – July 17-23, 2022

We were pleased to welcome our largest summer youth group this week. 15 youth and sponsors traveled from Inman, Kansas to serve in Paradise. Despite a very early morning flight, they came full of energy and ready to experience all the week would hold.

It was a hot week, with temperatures soaring into the high 90s every day. Fortunately, with lots of hydration breaks and mostly inside work, they made it through quite well!

One crew completed the painting at a house on Shaw Circle, then moved on to some outdoor landscaping at the Newland Road house to meet inspection requirements. After that was completed, they painted the exterior of another house.

The Boquest crew completely painted the interior of the house – walls, doors and baseboard. With the painting complete, they moved on to the flooring project and finished that. By Friday, they had started on baseboard.

Ishi Drive house was cleaned first, then lots of painting was done. Walls, doors, trim and baseboard were painted. Their crew decided the phrase for the week is “but wait, there’s more!” (painting, of course).

Evenings were spent playing some very high-spirited and competitive table games and fun was had by all!

We were honored to have a special guest, Angie – one of the homeowners we’re working for, and her friend Patty, join our group for dinner on Friday. They shared their story with us, highlighting what the town of Paradise was like both before and after the fire, as well as their experience during the fire and evacuation.

This week brings us to our last weekly report for the Paradise location for this summer, as this week concluded the summer youth program at the Paradise project. We will miss the energy and fun the youth brought to our project. Next week the long-term volunteers will work on finishing up odds and ends at both the Jewell and Honey Run houses, hopefully completing them before we all leave this weekend. We also plan to do some deep cleaning at the unit housing before closing up until fall.

We will welcome Robert and Sally Unrau, as well as Maynard Goins to the project later in the week to help with the transition.

Thank you for your interest in this project,

Beverly Delp, Office Manager, on behalf of the whole Paradise team