Month: February 2020

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

It was another beautiful day in the lower Keys. This morning we met in Virgie and Dan’s RV for morning devotion and meeting. We had the devotion today and talked about paying attention. If we are to be like Jesus, we must pay attention to others, their needs, their hearts, the things that are important to them. We must do this for the people we lead, work with and really importantly, our family.

After devotion, the rest of the team returned to Dennis’s while Max and Anne went back to the house on Atlantis Street to complete the closet. We spent the morning working on the closet and also putting a couple of toggle bolts in the closet we finished yesterday. It just wasn’t quite as stable as we wanted and the toggle bolts took care of that perfectly. After lunch we installed the last two supports in the walk-in, vacuumed up the drywall dust and dirt called our assignment complete. Next we went back to Marathon to pick up more supplies. We are becoming regulars at Home Depot and are getting pretty good at finding what we need.

 

The rest of the team got the sink temporarily installed and plumbing working in Dennis’s kitchen. With some plywood for counter tops, he feels like he is ready to start cooking. He is even putting a few items in his cabinets. The baseboards and caulking were also completed today and they began reworking the bathroom. The team will be spending less time at Dennis’s over the next week or so while we are waiting on counter top and windows to be installed. We are almost done. There are several other homes waiting for work.

 

Monday, February 10, 2020

This week will be a little different. We have two other volunteer groups working here at the church and in the area. Some of the new volunteers are sleeping on the floor here at the church and using the kitchen and fellowship hall for meals so this morning we meet in the Al-Anon meeting room. This morning Virgie shared from Mark 1:35. She talked about us finding our solitary place to get along with God and communicate. Jesus’ got along to pray to his father and we are to do likewise. Dan closed sharing this funny.

Today was a different work day. When we arrived at Dennis’s we discovered Trent, another worker with the conference, had gone there Friday and finished the bedroom flooring. What a wonderful surprise. Gumby struck again! That’s what Dan had planned for some of our team to do today. So, today Max and Anne went to the house Max worked on part of last week to to measure the closets and then to Home Depot to purchase all the necessary supplies for completing the closet. We completed one of the closets today and began the other bedroom closet. Dan and Sue completed the window trim that Sue and Lisa began last week. Then they were back at Dennis’s to join Virgie and Lisa and Mark continuing to work on base boards, caulking, installing a new window in the bathroom and working on the sink plumbing. As soon as the counter top people come Wednesday to do their measuring, we plan to install a temporary sink in the kitchen and then the bathroom sink can be demoed and the bathroom remodel move forward. Another busy day serving the people of the lower Keys.

Sunday, February 9, 2020

Starting Thursday Max started getting hoarse but felt fine. By Friday morning he was coughing and had a sore throat.  By Saturday Anne was afraid she was getting sick too but never really got sick.  We decided to skip the team trip to Key West on Friday afternoon to rest and hopefully not infect any of the the team members. The rest of the weekend was spent trying to avoid getting too close to anyone and working around FRED – cleaning, bookkeeping, taxes, and other fun stuff.  Of course we went to church this morning followed by brunch with the congregation.  Since we have no new team members for next week, no team meeting tonight.  We did have a good walk today but the wind is really whipping again tonight.  Hopefully with the extra rest this weekend we will be ready to go back to work in the morning.

Thursday, February 6, 2020

Of course, we get very little news about Alabama this for south in Florida. We barely get any news of anything north of Miami. However, thanks to the internet, AL.com and a few others, we have been able to find enough to know there was storm damage and to much rain in our home area. One place we saw that Oneonta had over 4 inches of rain the past 24 hours. We are still praying for every one in the path of these storms. Y’all be careful!

Jim brought us our devotion today and shared a little about himself. He spent the first 30 years running from God and the next 30 and continuing today serving God. He reminded us that we are not called to just be followers of Christ but to also be evangelists. Thanks, Jim for giving use that reminder.

This morning Gumby paid us another visit and Max and Mark went to a new house to work. The house is just a few blocks from Dennis’s and is right on the water. There they installed water shut off valves, smoke detectors, cabinets knobs and an electrical outlet. After lunch they took Lisa and Sue, our window sill team, over there to start on the window sills. After getting them set up, they returned to Dennis’s to install the final kitchen cabinet that arrived today. This morning at Dennis’s Anne and Virgie trimmed in the front bedroom and got the floor ready for the laminate. Lisa and Sue worked on caulking and trim painting. Jim worked on electrical problems and he and Dan worked on the closet door in the back bedroom. Dan also spent time today planning out the bathroom demo and rebuild that we will be working on next week.

It was another good day but we are all glad it’s our last day work this week. It’s time for some rest. We all went to dinner at the Big Pine Rooster tonight. Again, everyone enjoyed their food. We had some great baby back ribs. We don’t usually order BBQ at a seafood restaurant but two friends told us they we good so we give it a try. They were very good! No specific plans for the weekend so we will see what comes up.