April 2024 – RVing With a Purpose

One Fun Week At Camp Loucon

Sunday, April 21, 2024

After taking Friday to catch our breath, do a little laundry and buy a few groceries, we left Sumatanga Saturday morning and drove to Leitchfield, KY to Camp Loucon where we worked with another NOMADS team for this past week. We had never worked at Loucon and it was fun to experience a new camp. Loucon is in a beautiful and peaceful wooded setting in western Kentucky and like many of our camps had a long list of deferred maintenance items that they needed some help catching up. Charlotte led our team totaling 11 NOMADS. We have enjoyed working with Charlotte, Larry, Kathy, and Les several times and it was great to see them all again, and we especially enjoyed getting to know new-to-us NOMADS, John, Frank, Jill, Tom and Joan.

After we arrived on Saturday a deputy and a tracking K9 walked by our RV. Fortunately, we knew there was a man trailing seminar at the camp. Otherwise, we might have been a little concerned.

We began our work on Monday by removing some old siding from three cabins and replacing with new material. There was a work day scheduled for Saturday with about 100 additional volunteers arriving and they were to paint the new siding.

We also over the course of the week, replaced two porches on other buildings, rebuilt the steps on one of the office buildings, began building new game pits for summer camp and began the work of restoring an outdoor worship center. Eric the new camp director and the staff were very excited about the work we were able to complete this first week.

We spent most of our time with Jill, Frank and Les rebuilding this old porch on the camp staff media center. Those new support posts and header were installed before we arrived.

Once the old posts were removed we reinforced the connection between the new posts and the new header.

Anne and Jill building the new porch frame

Max and Frank installing new deck boards

Les was the saw man for several of the projects this week.

We completed the new media center porch on Thursday, but removed some parts and reinstalled them while the TV crew videoed.

Some of the NOMADS team replacing old porch at Munday Lodge

Tom, John and Larry building new steps for the camp office

This game pit is for a large chess or checkers board.

The Loucon phone system is for internal communications only.

This week we also worked Friday – an uncommon event for NOMADS. Joan reached out to Project Volunteer (PV) as part of her work as Co-chair of our promotions committee. PV arrived at Loucon Friday morning to video the work we were doing and interview Anne, Eric and others on our team. Project Volunteer will be producing a TV show for NRB TV and YouTube from the interviews and video. We will keep you posted when it is completed. They will provide us a copy of the 28 minute show and a number of the shorts they produce. Our hope is that we can use this to help us reach out to draw more new members. This was a fun addition to the project as the PV people were very low key and easy to work with. They are also Christians and use their talents to encourage others to volunteer.

Randy, from Project Volunteer, interviewing Larry and Joan. (Sorry, we didn’t get any pictures of Anne’s interview.)

We are now back in South Carolina with Randy and Debra for a couple days before we go to the next Switch It Up Huddle. We are looking forward to catching up with friends at the Huddle. Next week’s blog post may be a few days late so that we can include all the Huddle information.

The flush cable on FRED’s toilet broke a few days ago so after we got back to South Carolina we had to replace it. While replacing that we also replaced the flush valve. Fun job.

While we had it out, Anne cleaned all the parts and places that are otherwise unreachable.

The cicada emergence has started in South Carolina.

Spring 2024 NOMADS Project at Sumatanga – Week Three

Sunday, April 14, 2024

Our last week on this project started with us finishing the playground equipment repairs and painting at the administration building and ended with us starting some minor wall repairs in some of the Pool Camp cabins. In between we found out that the wall covering on the fourth walls in the three bathrooms (that we thought we finished last week) also needed to be removed.

Dennis and Gary finishing up the hanging bridge on the playground.

It’s been said that it’s not really a NOMADS project unless you do some painting.

Dennis and Pam also painted the ceiling of the administration building porch.

Anne enjoying painting in the Administration building

One of the bathroom walls after we finished it – again.

This dumpster was empty when we started this project/

We took a few minutes to watch the eclipse on Monday. We didn’t have the glasses, so we tried the “pinhole in cardboard projected on a bucket” method.

It was another great NOMADS project at Camp Sumatanga. We always enjoy working with Gary and Sharon and made some wonderful new friends in Dennis and Pam. We look forward to working with them again down the road. The highlight of the week was Thursday morning when Pastor Tony, the camp director, brought us our morning devotion and held communion for the team and some of the camp staff. It was a fitting end to a wonderful project at our favorite camp.

Brother Tony’s Communion Set came from the Holy Land

Spring 2024 NOMADS Project at Sumatanga – Week Two

April 7, 2024

Monday morning of week two after devotion, we went to Cabin 3 to work on the leaking roof. It’s a tin roof and several of the screws were either missing or were not tight. We replaced all the missing and loose screws with larger screws and put roof sealant where needed. The rest of the week we had a little rain and there were no leaks but it is predicted we will have heavy rain several days this next week so hopefully the cabin will remain dry.

We replaced a few hundred screws on Cabin 3’s roof. Hopefully it won’t leak anymore.

After finishing up at Cabin 3, we rejoined the rest of the team back at cabin 6. We completed that work Tuesday before lunch and then moved to the Administration building to reinstall exterior ceiling panels that were removed when there was a leak in the fire suppression system. Some painting is still needed at the Admin building and we will probably have enough rainy days this week to get that work done.

After working on the roof of Cabin 3 we helped remove the ductwork and furnace from the third cabin (Cabin 6) bathroom we were asked to demo.

Last cabin shower area ready for the contractors

Last cabin toilet area ready for the contractors.

We were able to reuse the roof panels on the admin building porch.

After we tacked the panels up with a nail gun we went back and secured them with screws.

Wednesday and Thursday we worked on the small building where the high ropes course gear is stored and the playground. We removed the shingles and decking from the gear building and then redecked and put on a tin roof. The playground was installed after the 1994 Palm Sunday tornado hit Goshen United Methodist Church in Piedmont, AL. Twenty church members lost their life in that storm including Pastor Kelly Clem’s young daughter, Hannah. The playground is a memorial to Hannah placed by Kelly and her husband. We’ve been working to replace some of the broken pieces of the playground equipment. It’s been a difficult job as we try to match new and older pieces of the playground, but it is also a work of love and brings back many memories of all the tornadoes we worked over the 22 years Max worked as Emergency Management Director. Hopefully we will get enough good weather this week to complete this work.

Getting the old nails out of the way of the new decking.

The playground equipment company donated the parts we needed to repair the equipment.

Today we were again blessed to attend our home church and Sunday School then hike about 4 miles at the new nature preserve with Barry and Donna.

Spring is really beginning to show here at Sumatanga. Some of the examples are the wild irises …

We had a new visitor at the campground this weekend.

Another beautiful Sunday afternoon for a hike in the Big Canoe Creek Nature Preserve. One of the trails today led us by the creek.

This little ringneck snake and some birds were the only wildlife we saw on our Sunday afternoon hike.