Month: January 2018

Tuesday, January 9, 2018

It was another nice night last night and 59 when we got up this morning. It was cloudy this morning with 50% chance of storms. We never had much rain. Misting part of the time and some short lived light rain. Certainly no storms. We do understand that just a few miles away, in this same county, they received 3 inches of rain.

The construction crew building the new Early Childhood Education building here on campus was very grateful we didn’t get 3 inches of rain. They began pouring the concrete for the foundation and slab for the huge new building at 2:30 this morning and the pump truck finally left about 5:30 this afternoon. There were about 50 trucks of concrete delivered to the site today. It was cool to watch the huge pump truck in operation.

We did devotion this morning using Proverbs 18:21 and Proverbs 15:1-2 as the scriptural basis. Read those in the Message version. It’s a little different. Ends with “fools are leaky faucets, dripping nonsense”. We liked that verbiage. Makes us pay a little closer attention. We challenged everyone to try to go the next seven days speaking only life and encouragement making it a point to speak nothing negative.

After devotion Ruth, Laura and Anne went back to the cottage to continue painting. Max, Chris and Mark headed to the water treatment plant and began replacing the metal roof on the generator building and began building a new pump house. When needed they also returned to assist Lee, Jo, and Mike on the fencing. Bob, Connie and Carol continued painting in the salon. They are pushing to complete that tomorrow because some of the girls are scheduled to be using that area Thursday. We were all busy today and got a lot done. After lunch, Anne and Kathy went to a new location, a house owned by the children’s home located about 2 blocks from campus. It was determined today that someone needs to move into the house this weekend. That means the trim needs painting and some touchup painting on some walls needs to be completed by Thursday afternoon. We made progress today. We will see how things are going tomorrow. If needed we may have to pull some additional painters in on Thursday to complete it all. The house is pretty large with 4 bedrooms. Anyway, it was a productive day. Everyone was safe and we think everyone had fun. Another good day.

After work we went for a walk on the rail trail, opposite direction from yesterday. Much better trail. We really liked it except for the rain that caught us before we got back home. We look forward to taking the bikes out that way.

Update on our cousin Joshua. He had a better day today. The confusion has improved and he ate a little as well. Thanks so much for your prayers, and please continue to pray for this precious young man, his Mom and Dad, Allison and Tim and the entire family. He still has a long way to go. The good news is that there has been no tumor progression and they seem to think this is caused by viral meningitis.

Monday, January 8, 2018

Last night after finishing the blog we watched the Space X launch. It was awesome. We watched an orange glow slowly come up over the horizon. Soon there was the spacecraft spewing fire from the rear going higher and higher. You could hear the roar. We even saw second stage separation. It was so cool. Several of our team members were outside with us watching. Everyone enjoyed the treat. We were able to view two launches when we were working a project in Melbourne 2 years ago. Sure people who live in Florida in the area of the Cape seem to just ignore the launches, but any time we are in the area we try to see them. The night launches are especially fun to watch. There is a possibility of another launch while we are here. We will be watching the schedule.

Today we started our work here at Florida United Methodist Children’s Home. There is much work to be done as is always the case at the Children’s homes. After devotion, those of us who have never volunteered here were taken on a tour of the facility by the volunteer coordinator. It helped us to get better oriented. We got to talk to one of the couples working as house parents as they showed us one of the children’s cottages.

There is a full time minister appointed to serve here to serve the children and the over 220 member staff. They also have a county school on campus and they work very hard to get the children back up to grade level with student teacher ratios of about 1 teacher and 1 paraprofessional to every 6-8 children. The program is very comprehensive for children age 5-18. They have some children that come in as private placements and some that are placed by the state. Sad that we need places like this but very thankful that this place is here for these children. We would ask that you add these children and the staff to your prayer list.

After our tour some of us started working on replacing a fence, some of us began painting and some began designing covers to be built for some of the equipment in the water treatment plant. After the design they came up with a materials list and plan to start construction tomorrow. There was also some landscaping done today. It will be a busy 3 weeks. We pray God will use us in this place to be his hands and feet.

Sunday, January 7, 2018

Wow, heat wave! It was 41 when we got up this morning. It was a partly cloudy day, but even so the temperatures were in the lower 60’s this afternoon. With the wind you still needed a jacket, but so much better. We know a lot of you still haven’t gotten above freezing so you probably don’t want to read this, but we are so glad to be out of the deep freeze.  Finally.

Today was Sunday, so of course we had a slow paced quiet morning and most of the team went to Osteen UMC for worship. One of our team members, Bob, is interim pastor there. He is a retired UMC pastor and currently lives a little south of here. Osteen is just about 7 miles from our campsites at the Children’s Home. The church is small, 65 members, and mostly elderly. They were very warm and welcoming and Bob brought us a good message from Mark 1:4-11 on the baptism of Jesus by John. The team members seemed to enjoy our visit and after services ten of us went to a local restaurant, The Osteen Diner. Original name don’t you think? There was a wide variety of selections, from wonderful breakfast fare to sandwiches and entrees. We had the country fried chicken special which was wonderful. We would definitely go back here again.  We have enough for lunch tomorrow in the refrigerator. After lunch it was time for a quick nap, and a little laundry. Our last team members arrived just before 4:00. Good to have the entire team safely parked. Of course since we aren’t leading this team, we don’t have to keep up with everyone. Our first team meeting was at 4:00 where we did the official introductions and were given general information about the project. We will start at 8:00 in the morning with devotion and then we will meet the maintenance staff and have a tour of the campus. We are looking forward to getting started. Seems like a fun team and should be a good project. Hope you had a great weekend and stayed warm.

Saturday, January 6, 2018

Today we awoke in Live Oak to below freezing temperatures as expected, 27. It was certainly better than the 23 predicted. However, we had our happy face on, because we knew that the low tonight in Enterprise should be 36 and tomorrow night 51. We are finally far enough south! Highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s are fine with us.

We left Live Oak Lowe’s at 7:15 after a quiet night of good sleep. Forgetting we lost an hour yesterday, the sun was just coming up as we again headed east on I-10. After just a few miles we headed south on I-75. We stopped twice, once at a rest area and then to top off FRED’s fuel. We don’t like to park for three weeks without a full tank. After getting fuel we drove across the Ocala National Forest on the Black Bear Scenic Byway. Unfortunately, the only bear we saw were on the warning signs telling us to watch for bears the next 30 miles. Then by 11:15 we were at Florida United Methodist Children’s Home in Enterprise, Florida, our home for the next three weeks. We were met by our leaders, Kathy and Terry who helped us get parked. We didn’t take time to set up before we saw Ruth and Mike and Jo and Mark for a few minutes. We saw them all last at annual meeting in September and are so glad to be with them again. We are really looking forward to getting caught up with both couples. We then spent the afternoon, setting up, cleaning up, doing some laundry, unwinterizing, etc. We are now settled in and will have our first team meeting at 4:00 tomorrow afternoon. We might get a bike ride in before that time. Please be in prayer for all the pastors and services tomorrow. We are so blessed to have the privilege to worship in this country, one we shouldn’t take for granted.