We pulled up to the small house. The red house was in the middle of a barren yard surrounded by nothing but dirt and a few patches of crinkly, brown grass. People in yellow shirts flocked towards the house. I joined the sea of yellow as it engulfed the home. Closely looking at home I could see the paint chipping off and dirt collecting in the corners of the windowpanes. Sigh, my group had a lot of work ahead of us. The wishy-washy gray morning color of the sky was just starting to disappear. I had gotten up two hours before when the sky was pitch black and I still couldn’t believe I got up this early just to do service. “Would this even be worth it?” I thought quietly to myself.

I was at a home provided by the Golden Gate Community Center in Phoenix, Arizona. I was there to help paint a home so it looked brand new. Most of the houses that I saw people painting were small and on the rugged side. The people that we were painting homes for were either less fortunate, or had something tragic happen recently or something along those lines. The house, I was at wasn’t far from the center and it fit all the characteristics’ that one would think of as an unfortunate persons home. But, that’s why we were there, to help.

The first step in painting the house was unloading all the paint and tools. Out of the tool box I grabbed some kind of gadget made to get all the old chipped paint of the house. At the back of the house my friends and I worked too get all the paint chips off the brick. It was much harder than it looked. My arm tired quickly and I only cleared off one brick. But, after a while, it wasn’t that bad as I socialized and made friends with the other people nearby.

The fun part finally came: painting. We painted the house a tan color. I grabbed a giant roller and moved it in strokes on the side of the house. After that, I grabbed a small brush and painted the windowsills a dark grey color. The majority of the house was covered in only a few moments. I circled around the house searching for one small thing to do as the bright sun singed everything in sight. I finally found a job to paint the corners of the roof. I rose up the ladder and reached up high to get every detail in the corner of the roof. Once I finally finished I stepped down right into the bucket of paint! The tan color covered my jeans almost all the way to the knee. “Oh great,” I thought “this couldn’t get any worse.”

By the end of the day everyone was tired, sweaty and covered in paint, including me. Other workers timidly knocked on the newly painted grey door. A large family walked out of their home. When they laid eyes on their home they viewed it like it was a giant treasure chest. They smiled like they just received anything they could ask for. I realized then how, if someone painted my house, I wouldn’t mark it as anything special. This family never could have dreamed to get anything this amazing. I was all of a sudden grateful to give this family something, I even wanted to do more than I already had. Waking up early to work hard in the hot sun and get paint everywhere was worth it, even if I didn’t believe it at first.