Month: September 2018

Sunday, September 30, 2018

The last day of September was a beautiful day in the mountains of Kentucky. Low of about 61 this morning but it warmed up to the upper 80’s this afternoon. Tomorrow is suppose to be cooler.

We drove over to Middlesboro, about 15 miles, and worshiped with the congregation for whom we are framing a building, New Heights Church. They are currently worshiping in a small gym type building, Making Ripples Studio, and it was pretty full today. During the week there are zumba classes and the like in the worship area. The music and preaching were good and the congregation very welcoming. They are very excited we are here to help build their new church.

After church we decided to ride up to Pine Mountain Resort State Park for lunch. It is back in Pineville where Fred is parked. It is a beautiful park on top of a mountain. The lodge is rustic with a large fireplace as you first walk in. The dining room has windows on all sides with beautiful views of the mountains and valley below. In a few more weeks when the leaves are in full color, (they are just beginning to change), the place will probably be packed with people enjoying the leaves. The view alone was worth the cost of our meal and it was a good meal. We all ate too much.

To work off some of our lunch, we drove on up the mountain past the lodge to the parking area for Chained Rock Trail. Chained Rock is so named because there are two very large boulders that are “chained together” to keep them from crashing down on the town of Pineville and destroying it. The chain links are quite large and weight 7 pounds each. They chain is over 100 feet long. The story goes that the children were afraid to go to sleep with the boulders looming above, afraid they would be crushed by the boulder during the night. Some say it was a publicity stunt to attract visitors to the new state park but you can read the sign. It was a nice hike with a beautiful view so even if it is just a crazy story and stunt we enjoyed our time on the mountain.

We had our opening meeting tonight and Anne and Debra will be cooking breakfast starting at 6:00 in the morning. Looking forward to a good week.

Saturday, September 29, 2018

So we arrived here in Pineville, KY yesterday and Max and Randy were on the job site in Middlesboro at 8:00 this morning. Unfortunately, due to rain the metal building people are behind. The roof was suppose to be on but the contractor started on it today. However, at the pace they were going today, we doubt it will be finished by the time we leave on Friday. Hopefully it will not slow us down too much. We will be using metal on the interior walls so we can build those out without the roof. For those that may be new to our blog, we are working with a different group this week – Constructors for Christ. Each year this group builds a church or family life center. We provide five weeks of labor and the church provides the materials. If it is small church, we may complete the building, but if it is larger structure such as this year, we will not complete the building but will have saved them a lot of money on labor for five weeks. We only work one week, as most people, and work it with Max’s brother, Randy, and sister-in-law, Debra. It is a wonderful week when we get to work and visit. They stay with us in FRED and we have fun. This project usually begins on Father’s Day but the church had weather and permit problems and the project was delayed until now. Unfortunately, we will be short many of our usual workers due to the delay. Our team this week will be less than ½ of our norm with about 20 expected versus about 45-50 on a usual week one. Oh well, God will use and bless what we are able to get done. Today Max and Randy first repaired one of our tool trailers electrical connections that were damaged in their travel to KY. Later they worked on installing the base channels so we will be ready to begin some walls Monday Morning.

Debra and Anne worked on setting up the “store” today. We sell T-shirts, hats, water bottles, etc with the Constructors logo. We folded shirts and displayed merchandise for most of the day. We have some new designs this year. We probably have some new shirts in our future.

Tomorrow the rest of the team will arrive, and we will have our first team meeting tomorrow night. We look forward to a great week.

Friday, September 28, 2018

It was about 61 degrees when we walked a few minutes before we pulled out of the Agricenter RV park at 6:30 this morning. It stayed cool much of the day, but was sunny and warm when we reached Clear Creek Baptist Bible College in Pineville, KY a little before 5:00 pm.

It was and uneventful drive – first through Tennessee fog and then in the beautiful mountains of eastern Kentucky. We will be here a week working with Constructors for Christ on a new facility for New Heights Church with Max’s brother and sister-in-law.

We are thankful for safe travel and pray for safe travel for all our NOMADS.

Thursday, September 27, 2018

We stated the day with more rain. That means it has rained at some point of the day everyday since the annual meeting officially began on Sunday. Fortunately, it was just a fine mist when we were having to walk to the meeting area this morning. The heavy rain came while we were meeting and then there was no rain this afternoon. It has really cooled off. Our low tonight will be 56. That means it will be cool when we are doing our final departure checklist in the morning.

Today was another very busy day, but fun and sad at times too. This morning after 7:00 am Bible study and 8:30 devotion, we had the second half of the business meetings. That meeting ended with the gavel being passed to our new Chairman of the Board, Everett, and the official beginning of Anne, Mike and Carolyn’s four year terms on the board.

This afternoon Anne was in the mood for a break from the meetings and so she attended a line dancing class taught by some fellow NOMADS. That was a first, and she found it to be a lot of fun and good exercise. No problem getting steps today even though we didn’t get to walk this morning due to the rain. Max attended sessions hanging doors and windows and best practices for NOMADS. There was another leader training class this afternoon and tonight we had our closing meal together, barbeque from Corky’s. Very good! And the banana pudding and brownies were pretty awesome, too. Our choir gave a final worship concert after dinner. They did a great job. We have a lot of talent in this group. Then it was time for our last hugs and “see you down the road’s”. Some of our friends we will work with in a few weeks in Lumberton, NC and some we probably will not see until our meeting next year in Illinois. Even though we may be many miles apart, we will hold them in our hearts. Lots more to share but we must be ready to travel early in the morning so we will try to catch up a little later. Safe travels everyone.