Another Gumby Day

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Today started as a very overcast day, and with the 25mph sustained winds, it felt much colder than the 47 on our thermometer this morning. It was 11 degrees cooler for our high today (70) and we are going to be back down in the 30’s tonight. It’s really not suppose to be this cold here. We came to south Texas to wear t-shirts and shorts and today we all looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy we had on so many layers of clothes. Guess we aren’t quite far enough south. The wind was so bad today that Rita, Dave, Max and Anne got wind burned working outside all day. By the way, if anyone is interested, the Lumber River in Lumberton, NC is still not below flood stage. It was almost there at 13.4 (13 is flood stage) but now with the storms it’s going back up again. Still hasn’t been below flood stage since the floods of hurricane Florence last September.

Roger and Bev led us in devotion today. Bev read the story of the author of the hymn “It Is Well With My Soul” and then we all read the works together rather than singing. Sometimes when simply reading the words we listen more attentively and think more about the meaning.

Stel asked us all to be flexible today and switched things up a bit. Rita, Dave, Max and Anne went to Josefina’s to install more of the trim on the exterior of the house and build the back porch and steps. The trim is completed and we built the deck area and steps but have not quite completed the hand rails nor installed the pavers at the bottom of the steps.

Roger and John stayed at the church to work on the bathrooms, installing water lines and the lavatory. Stel also worked in the bathrooms and installed a new light fixture in the ladies room. Bev and Jodi worked on the bathroom doors, giving them a little sanding and then some polyurethane. The doors look really good. Tonight we all went back to Strickland’s for dinner and of course there was lots of great conversation and even more laughter. We have such a good team! It has been a real pleasure to work with this group and as usual we will be sad to say our “see you down the roads.”

We will have to really push tomorrow to finish everything up but hopefully things will go well and we can make it happen. We would like to finish a little early so we can begin packing up but if not we will just leave a little later on Friday.