Month: May 2019

Thursday, May 9, 2019

Today started cloudy and very humid. We tried to make sure we stayed hydrated. After lunch the storms came. Lots of rain. Serious flash flooding. Thankfully we all made it back to the RVs safely but it took considerably longer than usual. When we watched the videos on TV of cars floating down the streets, and water on Interstate 10, we were even more thankful.

Today’s devotion was done by Gary. He shared a devotion by Charles Stanley encouraging us to be available. God wants to use us and will use us if we will just make our selves available to Him.

We all headed back to our regular homes to begin our last day of work. The mobile home movers were at Norwich when we arrived, readying the mobile housing unit (FEMA trailer) for moving to the FEMA collection center. Our homeowner had to be out of the trailer by the end of April. She is now staying in a hotel until her house is complete. The power company came by earlier in the week to pull the power meter but since we were there working and needed the power, they say they would come back Friday. The guys doing the work today were really nice and let us keep using power until the FEMA office told them to cut it off shortly after lunch. Then in a few minutes they set up their generator and let us have power from that. About 2:00 the storms really came and when the truck came to get the trailer you could barely see to drive. They decided they were not pulling it today and left. The moving guys could have left then too, but hung around and let us continue to use their generator until we were done for the day. Really nice.

Today we placed the trim in the channels for all the transition strips. The transition from the ceramic tile to the wood laminate looks really good. Joe did a great job. Max, Anne and Charley worked on installing baseboard and caulking. Good progress was made. We have completed much of the needed work on the house. If our team had about one more week we could probably complete both houses. Unfortunately, there are no volunteers scheduled here for several weeks. Makes us sad to leave. We wish we could have done more.

Out at Groom Road good progress was also made. It was raining so hard and water was rising fast so we did not get to go to the Bible presentation at Groom but from the pictures, the kitchen looks very nice. Nice counter tops, Bob and Gary! Sharon and Virginia also completed the portion of the flooring they were hoping to do.

It’s been a great project from the beginning in February through to this week. NOMADS worked 10 weeks last year and 12 weeks this year helping the people of Baton Rouge rebuild their homes and lives. What an honor it has been.

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

This morning we had some sun but mostly gray skies. This afternoon and evening we have had some rain and areas just north of us, Baker and Zachary, have been under a tornado warning. One of the houses we are working on is in Baker. We have not heard of any damage and are praying everyone is safe.

This morning’s devotion was brought by Joe and he did a great job making us think about what it really looks like to be faithful. Thanks, Joe.

We then all headed back to the homes we have been working in all week. To start the day Max and Joe continued to work on transition strips. This has been a difficult process due to needing to drill into the concrete slab. We have been through several masonry bits. Max had to trim the laminate to fit the transitions because we didn’t know what type of transitions we would be using when we put down the laminate. By the end of the day all the transition strip brackets had been installed. Anne and Charlie began and finished the day installing base board. They also did some caulking today.

 

The folks at Groom almost completed the kitchen cabinets. They have just a little trim to install above the wall cabinets. There is just a little more flooring to install and then some baseboard. Wish we could have finished them both but that was not to be.

Tonight the Louisiana Conference treated the team to a crawfish boil. We also had the corn and potatoes to go with that and the team provided salads, dessert and bake beans. We had a feast! Best of all we had time to visit with Laraine, Darryl, Charles, and the case managers. Thanks, Laraine for arranging everything. It has been such a pleasure to get to know everyone and work with them. We hope God will bring us together again – but not due to another disaster.

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Weather-wise today was the same as yesterday. Really nice day. We didn’t even see a gray cloud. The rest of the week is predicted to be a real wash out so maybe the predictions will be wrong.

Virginia had our devotion today and used Philippians 4:13 as the basis and then read us “The Quilt”. Virginia is a quilter so this reading was special to here. We all agreed it’s special. If you haven’t read it you should.

 

After devotion we all headed back to our regular assignments, Max, Anne, Joe and Charley to Norwich and Gary, Sharon, Bob and Virginia to Groom Drive. Progress was made in all locations. Charley and Joe were excited to finish the laminate flooring in the master bedroom. It looks very good. We also completed the door installation of all the swinging doors. We are waiting for the materials needed to hand the bi-folds. We also started on the floor transition strips. Since we were planning the Bible presentation tonight we also tried to clean and straighten up a bit. Over at Groom they installed the counter tops and finished the flooring in the large closet. Both houses are looking good.

This afternoon Gary did an interview with a reporter for Channel 2, Baton Rouge. One of the church members called them to tell them about the good work the NOMADS have been doing. We will see if it is on the 10:00 news tonight. Hope so. After the interview we went over to Norwich to meet our home owner and make our Bible presentation. We had a nice visit and the rest of the team got to see the house as well. It was another great day.

Monday, May6, 2019

Today was another bright sunny, blue sky day. Only three more to go.

We met with Darrel before team meeting to discuss priorities on both houses. For the Norwich house he wants us to just continue and complete items in the same order we would normally do them. We are not going to do the plumbing or the installation of the appliances. Therefore when we got to Norwich Drive, Charley and Joe got started on the laminate flooring in the master bedroom and Anne worked on getting the master bath ready for texture. Hoping the texture people will be back tomorrow. Max returned to working on the door installation. By the end of the day only two rows of flooring remain to be installed. Charley and Joe have done a great job. Hopefully the bathroom is ready for texture and most of the doors are in place. Just a couple left along with some bi-fold doors.

 

At about 3:30 today the Lowe’s truck arrived at Norwich with the homeowner’s refrigerator. She has been trying to get a refrigerator installed for two weeks now. The first one she bought would not go through any door in the house. Today they brought another refrigerator that we hoped would make the clearance. It did not. Therefore, just as we had to do with the roll-in shower, we had to remove the back door, and door frame in order go get the refrigerator in the house. We reinstalled the door to the point we could secure the house for the night and we will complete the re-installation tomorrow. Hopefully, there will be no more door removals this week. After everything was secure, we hurried home to get ready for dinner.  Francis Asbury congregation provided us with a wonderful time of food and fellowship tonight with a fried chicken dinner with all the fixen’s.  We had to say our good byes tonight as we will not see these precious friends again before we leave.

We are making progress. We will accomplish what God wills this week.