RVing With a Purpose

NOMADS Annual Meeting 2021

Saturday, September 18, 2021

It’s been a while since we communicated. We are both alive and well having survived a busy week at NOMADS Annual Meeting. A week ago Thursday evening was our executive meeting of NOMADS and then the full Board meeting was all day Friday. Those meetings kicked off a busy week. Saturday morning there were committee meetings for Anne and trail maintenance for Max. Sunday morning we all (around 200 NOMADS) worshiped together at the campground. We shared brats and hot dogs Sunday afternoon with our first time attenders and in the evening a memorial service for the 53 NOMADS who died over the past 2 years. We closed the day meeting with the auction committee as we began setting up for our charity auction. Beginning Monday, we had Bible Study, devotions, classes, meetings, wonderful dinners, and great entertainment from a gospel quartet and Christian comedian. We also had a fundraiser charity auction. We were busy from early to late with lots of fun and renewed friendships. Thursday our last dinner together was at the Bashor Children’s Home where the chef out did himself serving us a wonderful meal. The director of the home also shared the Bashor story with everyone and we are pretty sure every project at Bashor will be full within thirty minutes of becoming available on the website for a long time to come. Beautiful campus and staff that are passionate about helping their kids. They have also just built a beautiful new building that will be used for girls who have been victims of human trafficking. They are doing a good work and we as NOMADS are glad we can be a small part of their work! Thursday was also when Anne became the 2021-2022 Chairman of the Board of NOMADS. The next year should be pretty busy. Please remember to keep us in your prayers. Our NOMADS friends do great work serving God by serving others and is an honor for us to serve them in this way.

We started each morning with a lively sing-a-long.

Morning devotions are always the best way to start the day.

Monday night we were blessed with a lively performance by the Crown Quartet from Kentucky.

Wonderful NOMADS Choir performance led by Tammy

It takes many people many hours to set up and conduct our love auction, which is one of our main ways we raise money to help the agencies where we do mission work..

NOMADS donated hundreds of items for the auction.

The donated items include beautiful hand made crafts …

… and some items that brought tears to our eyes.

Our love auction ends with a very entertaining live auction that shows the “extravagant generosity” of NOMADS.

This year’s classes included skills classes like drywall finishing …

Our host campground, Elkhart Campground, has been very supportive of NOMADS so some of us tried to help the owners out a little by clearing part of their nature trail that had suffered some wind damage.

Bashor Children’s Home has one of the prettiest campuses we have ever seen.

Oh, if you ever have the opportunity to see David Dean, a Christian comedian, grab the opportunity. He is great. We laughed so much and after almost 2 years of COVID, I think we all needed some extra laughter. After such a busy week we decided to stay in Elkhart for a few days to rest and catch up on some work. We will probably head back to Alabama on Tuesday. Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

On Friday we took time to go to Yoder’s Meat and Cheese in Shipshewana.

A friend of ours called this store a “cheese lover’s heaven” …

… but they have a good supply of meats, groceries and a few things we have never seen before.

South Bend Chocolate Company

Thursday, September 9, 2021

Arrived in Elkhart

After two travel days we arrived yesterday in Elkhart, Indiana for our NOMADS Annual Meeting. Since the work didn’t start until tonight we decided, after a strong recommendation from good friends, to visit a local attraction – the South Bend Chocolate Company. As soon as you walk in the door you are struck with the wonderful aroma of chocolate and are immediately drawn to the display cases in the outlet store. We refrained from buying any of their wares – until after we took the factory tour. For us that was showing remarkable restraint.

Want to see where chocolate comes from? Click on the picture.

Some of their wares. There are several other displays cases and shelves around the store making decisions difficult.

Today they were coating pretzels. This line was coating with milk chocolate and the line beside it was coating with white chocolate. All the pretzels are inspected and placed on the belt by hand.

In fact, most of the work is done by hand, like separating these caramels …

… which start in the large sheets. (Yes, we did sample them.)

This chocolate Santa is solid, weighs 65 pounds, takes two days to make, and costs about $500. They make several of them every year.

This is where the products are packaged by hand and prepared for shipping.

In the museum is a large display of old candy packages, including these of Anne’s favorite candy bars.

We saw this odd grave marker in the museum, but our tour guide did not explain it. A Internet search revealed that Jeff is the Sales Director for the company and Mark Tarner is the owner.

Traveling Again

Wednesday, September 7, 2021

Our time back in Alabama was very busy. Actually, we made several quick trips out of state visiting friends and family as well as time with friends in Alabama. There was work to be done as well. One of our random stops was an overnight stop in the tiny town of Bluffton, GA – population 101. Interesting place. We are now back on the road and today made it to southern Indiana with the intent to be in Elkhart by about mid-day tomorrow for our NOMADS Annual Meeting. Meetings will begin Thursday evening and continue through next week. Please remember us in your prayers for a safe and productive time.

White Oak Pastures was our random visit in Bluffton, Georgia. Quite an interesting place that is built around regenerative farming practices. Look it up. They also have delicious food in their restaurant.

While visiting family we also got to visit with Aunt Jean’s box turtle, Newdul. He turned 50 years old this year and is still scurrying around.

Squirrel Tails and God Winks

Wednesday, August 25, 2021

If you are reading this looking for a connection between squirrel tails and God Winks, sorry – the only connection is that we are writing about these two completely separate things in this post.

Saturday, we remained in Antigo to rest, get ready to travel and celebrate our anniversary. As we were out doing some errands, we again saw a sign we had been laughing and making jokes about since our first day in Antigo. Why would anyone be advertising they want squirrel tails? We kept looking for tail-less squirrels as we walked the Antigo trails but never saw one. This time we just had to investigate. After all the jokes we had made we really wanted to know. Click here for a link to what we found. We know this is serious business for the folks at Sheldon’s Inc, the producers of Mepps, the world’s #1 lure, but we have sure laughed a lot. Have fun reading. Don’t miss the page on how to submit the tails or how much money you can earn by doing so.

Sunday, we reluctantly turned Fred back in southerly direction, dreading the increasing temperatures. It was an uneventful drive until we were about 25 miles from our destination for the day, Midwest Mission Distribution Center. They have a great campground for their volunteers and we had arranged to stop there for the night, relax and visit with friends on Monday morning. However, Fred had other plans for us and turned on his check engine light. We immediately began checking all the gauges, listening, and looking for any changes in anything. There was nothing. Everything seemed fine. Remembering that the folks at Freightliner told us one time that our engine would not let us tear it up, that it would stop us before that happened (not sure that is completely true), we decided to continue on toward MMDC. We pulled into our campsite for the evening, let Fred cool off and shut him down as usual. Hoping the light would clear itself, we waited a bit and then retried. Nope, the light stayed on. We called the 24-hour Freightliner number and the helpful gentleman tried to determine the issue. Unfortunately, he couldn’t really help us and told us that based on the code, we shouldn’t drive on to Birmingham without getting things checked. Well, it just so happened we were eight miles from an excellent Freightliner service center. We were at their office at 7:00 am Monday morning and they immediately started checking out Fred and after about 1 ½ hour we were told we simply needed a software update, which they provided and we were back on the road. Wow! We know some would call this luck and others maybe fate, but we know and are so thankful for another example of how God always provides for us. And sometimes without us realizing it until after the fact – God Winks. And we made some more friends at The Truck Center in Springfield, IL. If you are ever in need of service or repairs to your motor home in the Springfield are, we highly recommend these guys and gals. And they have service centers in numerous other locations too. We will certainly use them again if the need arises.

We are now back in Alabama preparing for our next adventure.