Month: January 2020

Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Today’s devotion was brought by Sara using a reading from Our Daily Bread from a few years ago. 1 Samuel 16 where God chooses someone that looks to be an unlikely choice was the basis. She talked to us about our first impressions. We can’t help but make them when we see or meet someone but often they are so inaccurate. She gave us some good examples and left us with some things to think about. She also shared some of these, “If we were honest, song titles.” Thanks, Sara for sharing with us.

We then headed off to work but a little differently today. Karen, Wanda, Sara and Anne headed back to Dennis’s house. There they painted the bedroom and hall walls and started painting the closets but ran out of paint. That job will be finished tomorrow. Then the floors had to be scraped, and mopped and the flooring installation continued. The living room is now complete and work began on the hallway where it gets a little more complicated. The house is looking good.

Max and Greg headed back north to Marathon Key to work on George’s house. It’s a park model. When Max looked at it last week, the subfloor needed to be replaced. A Mission team from Marshall University replaced that yesterday and installed insulation in the ceiling trusses. Today’s job was to work with Jim and his wife Ann, Robin, one of the case managers and Jeremy, the volunteer coordinator, on installing white paneling on the ceilings and building and framing up a wall. The house is now ready for the college students to work on tomorrow.

Everyone was tired again today but some were still eager for another game night. We needed to stay home and work and didn’t participate. Maybe next time. It was another good day working in the Keys.

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Wanda brought our devotion this morning from Philippians 4:4-8, reminding us to give thanks to God for what we know he can do even when we don’t know how He can do it. She also brought her guitar to accompany our singing. We always love it when our team members share their musical talents.

For the most part it was a painting and flooring day for us with the whole team at Dennis’s house again. Sara and Karen painted the ceilings that we textured yesterday while the rest of the team worked on flooring, except when Greg, Max and Dennis were busy putting a new plywood cover on the attic pulldown steps. After painting Sara helped with the flooring. At the end of the day the flooring was finished in the kitchen and almost finished in the living room. Another productive day.

We opened the fellowship hall for team game night last night and tonight. Last night they played some strange variation of Mexican train and tonight a card game called Hand and Foot. We enjoyed watching the game play (and especially the fellowship) both nights for a little bit, but unfortunately had NOMADS and personal business to take care of.

Monday, January 6, 2020

It was cool this morning but the day was beautiful and back to shirt sleeve weather. Cool nights and mornings with 73 degrees for work. Perfect.

We led the team in devotion this morning and Max talked about how to stop a hurricane and how we can help stop the spiritual hurricanes of hopelessness and despair of our homeowners. Afterwards we headed to this team’s first day of work at Dennis’s house. Dennis was very pleased to meet and get to know the new team. He enjoys showing everyone all the plants in his yard such as the papaya trees, and art work he is has in process. He does a lot of work with granite and certain woods. He has some beautiful pieces.

Today the team first tackled the texturing of the back bedroom, closets and hallway. There was texturing and then knockdown and then the cleaning of all the equipment. Once that was completed we began teaching the team to install laminate flooring. They picked up on it quickly and we ended the day with about a fourth of the flooring installed in the living room and kitchen. We enjoyed teaching how to texture and install flooring. A productive and fun day.

Sunday, January 5, 2020

Since we didn’t post to the blog yesterday we will catch up today.

Yesterday was a beautiful morning again. We had to say goodbye to Glenita and Steve as they left for their next project. This was our first project with them and we really enjoyed getting to know them. Hopefully we can work with them again soon.

For a little while the campground was empty except for FRED. Unusual. We did some work and laundry and then walked over to the flea market. It seems to have more vendors each week and as the keys have filled up with snow birds the people walking around looking at all the “treasures” have increased dramatically. It was crowded yesterday. We didn’t stay long and came home with all our money. By 10:30 Wanda called to say she was on Big Pine and would soon arrive. She is a new member of NOMADS and this is her first project. So great to meet her and look forward to working with her. By early afternoon Karen and Greg arrived and we helped them get parked. We have never worked with Karen and Greg before so we look forward to getting to know them better, too. Unfortunately, we received a call from Sara and she was having car trouble. She got back to Big Pine after dark and we helped moved her RV into it’s parking place so she could get some rest. The wind continued to blow all night at about 25 mph. This morning was another gorgeous but windy day but… according to the TV weather people, it was COLD! The high today was 69. Really funny listening to them. It is about 20 degrees cooler than last week, but we just can’t bring ourselves to say it’s cold.

We enjoyed another Sunday of worship with the congregation at Big Pine and of course the brunch afterwards. Tonight we had our opening meeting with the team and it sounds like we are going to have another great group for the next two weeks. Thankful everyone arrived safely and looking forward to another week for working for the people here in the Keys.