Team Building

Top row: Tim, Chuck, Debra, Larry, Sue, Ricardo, Ann, Richard, Marty, Daniel, Joan
Bottom row: Cindy, Judy, Judy, Joel and Ken

Multi-million-dollar companies host team building sessions in an effort to induce greater productivity in their employees, but those sessions could not produce a team as effective as the one pictured above. Oh, boy!  Can this team build!  

Joy asked all the team who worked on her house to sign her T-shirt just as Marty is doing here.

During our 2-week Habitat for Humanity build, we finished a house for home buyer Joy and her granddaughter. 

Three bedrooms, two baths approximately 1200 sq. feet

This is Joy's house and these are our team leaders, Chuck and Judy.  But that wasn't all we built!  

Up at dawn, our crew raised trusses on one house, roofed two others, framed walls in the third, nailed up interior partition walls in the fourth and gave the fifth house a lick and a promise that someday it, too, would welcome a home buyer's family through its doors. 

Tim and the rest of the men raised the roof on the house on the end.

Seventy-seven-years-young, Richard was up on a roof every day of our 2 weeks and he signed up for an additional 2 weeks at Fellsmere.  Undoubtedly, he'll be up on the roof for those 14 days, too.

Home buyers like this mom must put in 300 hours of "sweat equity" at the build site.

Joy's house on the left was midway through the process of nailing on its siding.  Surprisingly, this was my favorite job.

But none of that would have happened without team work. 

From left to right: Larry, Debra, Marty, Ken and Judy

Each morning Ricardo, our site manager, listed what needed to be accomplished that day, matching jobs to each team member's skills--or in my case, potential skills. 

Ricardo, our site manager

Left to right: Joan, Ann, Richard, Tim and Maria

We worked hard, but Chuck and Judy made sure we had fun, too. There was the Super Bowl party, a social hour one evening, dinners out on Friday nights, a trip--and then, a return trip--to Marsh Landing to listen to a bluegrass band enough times to learn the words and hand motions to "Five pounds of possum in my headlights tonight."

I tried to take more photos this week than I did last, but when you're the rookie, you've got to pull your own weight without lollygaging around taking pictures. I did capture a few people at work, and you can tell from their faces that this was a team that enjoyed working together. 

Marty

Tim

Judy

Me

Richard, Judy and Sue

Friday night was our last supper together.

Captain Butcher's Grill

After our meal, Chuck honored each of the men with a sentence or two of what made that person so essential to the team. Judy did the same for the women. It was touching to think of all the ways this team pulled together over these past two weeks. 

Last night as we gathered around a bonfire comprised of castoff lumber, we vowed to repeat this team building experience by reuniting in Fellsmere again next January.  In the meantime, several continued on down the road to a build in Indiantown, FL; one couple left for a restful break on the Suwannee River; Tim & I departed for Davenport, FL; and three families remained on site in Fellsmere.

Go, team!  But let's experience another team building exercise again next year!

View from the restaurant's deck at our last supper