Author: rvingwithapurpose

Saturday July 6, 2019

Oops! It’s been a week and we haven’t made a blog entry. Well, we are still alive and well. On the assumption that you really aren’t interested in reading about our mundane cleaning out of our house as we prepare it for sale and taking care of things at Aunt Helen’s house, there isn’t much to say about this week. However, we do have a couple of lessons learned:

1.  Don’t buy anything thinking someone will want it after you’re gone.
2.  Never plant any kind of ivy or climbing vine near your house. At some point in the future it will cause you, or someone else, misery.

Oh, we forgot to mention last week that a friend installed a 50 amp electrical connection where we park Fred. So wonderful!

We spent a good deal of time in Oneonta checking on Jean and Helen this week. Tuesday was Aunt Jean’s hand surgery. She has an excellent hand surgeon who is very compassionate and was very careful in his examination so as to not hurt her. Jean entertained the staff making her funny little quips during all the waiting. The staff all loved her. The surgeon had to remove about ½ of the third finger on the left hand and released the contractures on the other fingers and wrist. The hand should now be in more of a resting position without the fingernails cutting into the palm of her hand and causing infection. She will return to the doctor for a dressing change next Thursday but so far things are going well. We spent part of the 4^th visiting with the LOLs and then took the rest of the day to just rest.

Today we decided to ride up to Cheaha State Park. It’s the highest point in Alabama and a nice little park. We received an email last week about the improvements they have made recently in the campground so we went to check it out. It was a nice little excursion but it was too hot to do anything outside today so we opted out of hiking. We did our walking this morning before it got so hot. Don’t forget to be praying for our pastors tomorrow.

Friday, June 28, 2019

First, thank you for all the prayers and support for the Constructors for Christ and Hodge Missionary Baptist Church. We have not yet heard the official cause of the partial collapse of the trusses but we do know there were some serious storms Saturday and Sunday and we experienced one on Friday night before we left Saturday. We also know that the Constructors have had a great week and made great progress. They had all of the collapsed trusses cleaned up by Monday night. We also heard “we are having so much fun” from some of the youth there this week. Please continue to be in prayer because this church is impacting their community for Jesus.

We have had a busy week although probably not very interesting to anyone else. Of course it was great to be back at our home church, Lester Memorial and our Sunday school class. All of our summer mission teams were back in town so there were lots of hugs for everyone.

For the family: Monday morning we were in Birmingham for Aunt Jean’s appointment with the hand surgeon. She will be having surgery July 2 to remove a portion of the middle finger on her left hand and hopefully release the contracture on the other fingers. She doesn’t seemed bothered by this plan and didn’t want to wait another week. It is planned for same day surgery so she should be back in her bed Tuesday night. Please remember her and her physicians and caregivers in your prayers.

Tuesday we were back in Tuscaloosa working to clean out Anne’s dad’s warehouse. Wednesday was doctor appointment – no problems, another visit with the LOL’s and then back to Tuscaloosa for a few hours. Thursday was errands and some donations to the Hope House and finally today we got to stay home. Still lots of work to do around here. But we are making progress.

Sunday, June 23, 2019

We just found out that at about 5:00 pm today many of the trusses at the Hodge Missionary Baptist Church build collapsed. The reason has not been determined, but it is suspected that the storms this weekend somehow weakened the structure. Please be in prayer for the church and the Constructors for Christ team this week that will be removing the debris and rebuilding that part of the building.

Saturday, June 22, 2019

First thing this morning we drove to the build site of Hodge Baptist Church to take one more picture. We found that the wind had blown our work tent over – even though it was anchored down by six five gallon buckets of water. Fortunately the building frame was not damaged. We met and talked to some of the church members who were also there. They are all so excited about the new building. Here are the pictures we took each morning to show the progress of the build:

We went back to the Bible Camp and flushed tanks, packed up and headed out. It was an easy drive back to Oneonta where we stopped to check in on the aunts and buy some produce. The Gym on State Hwy 75 across from the high school has a large parking lot that is never full so it is a convenient place to unhook the truck and run our errands before heading back up Pine Mountain.

Almost as soon as we finished setting up the rains came. We were under a severe thunderstorm warning for a while but only received some heavy blowing rain. There are still some strong storms in the area but we are not expecting anything severe.