Saturday, February 23, 2013

the work has begun


I have been back in Danmark for about a week now. And I have been busy busy. It is go time for work in the shop. I jumped right in with the cafe team. We have been working at the shop every evening and all day on Saturday. We have had a number of volunteers from the church that have been helping us. Our first goal is to get the main rooms fixed up and ready to use. We also need to do some serious cleaning in the bathrooms and kitchen before we can open. But remodeling them and turning to old beer storage room into the children's room will have to wait until we have work and witness teams to help us. 

So it is time for us to do the hard core manual labor. I can now add floor ripper and wall sander to my resume. We needed to rip out the old carpet to be able to lay a new floor. We pulled up the first layer if disgusting beer and puke stained carpet only to find another layer and then another and another. We tore up 6 layers in all before we found the bottom wood floor. But that was only in half of the main room. When we started pulling layers on the other side of the room we found that the previous owners had laid cement in place of a couple layers of carpet. So we get to bust cement in the middle of our carpet ripping. The other great task has been to sand all of the wooden walls in the shop so that we can paint them. And by all wooden walls, I mean the entire shop. It has been hours of arm work-outs and dust baths. 

On the exciting side of work (because let's just face as accomplished as the construction work makes me feel, it would never be my first choice of work) we have been designing a bar, looking at different appliances/machines and talking about menus. All the wonderful things that make this old dirty bar a cafe. 

This has been a week of the joys of being a volunteer missionary. Switching from manual laborer, barista, cook, and minister. Life as a volunteer is never boring. 


Sunday, February 10, 2013

Leaving the States.... Again

It is almost that time again. Soon I will be packing that big suitcase, weighing it, stuffing it, hoping to get every little last thing into it. Then there will be airport checkins with heavy bagage payments and security checks, followed by long boring waits, feeling completely trapped in a little space for hours on end, wishing I could actually sleep on a flight. Only to land across the ocean, go through it again, but at least this little space is much shorter. Then there is picking up the heavy suitcase and going through customs and finally seeing someone, anyone from the church is like seeing the most important person in the world. Because that person will be the one who drives me to the place I get to crash, my Danish home. Yeah, it's that horrible traveling time again. I don't think I will ever enjoy this process.

But, even though the travel time is a pain, it will all be worth it when I walk through the door of my home in Denmark. I am ready to go. (maybe not physically yet, but emotionally and mentally.) I am returning to some new exciting adventures. We now have purchased a location for our shop. The team has already started the process of cleaning it out and preparing to do some remodeling work so we can open it soon. I am really excited to return to the shop and get things started.

I have raised enough funds to live and work in Denmark for another year! Thank you to all who helped me raise all of the funds. I appreciate all of the help. If you want to help me through out the year, you can donate online at- Katie Fitch in Denmark . Also, remember to check back here for info of what is going on in Denmark!