Author: rvingwithapurpose

Saturday, September 29, 2018

So we arrived here in Pineville, KY yesterday and Max and Randy were on the job site in Middlesboro at 8:00 this morning. Unfortunately, due to rain the metal building people are behind. The roof was suppose to be on but the contractor started on it today. However, at the pace they were going today, we doubt it will be finished by the time we leave on Friday. Hopefully it will not slow us down too much. We will be using metal on the interior walls so we can build those out without the roof. For those that may be new to our blog, we are working with a different group this week – Constructors for Christ. Each year this group builds a church or family life center. We provide five weeks of labor and the church provides the materials. If it is small church, we may complete the building, but if it is larger structure such as this year, we will not complete the building but will have saved them a lot of money on labor for five weeks. We only work one week, as most people, and work it with Max’s brother, Randy, and sister-in-law, Debra. It is a wonderful week when we get to work and visit. They stay with us in FRED and we have fun. This project usually begins on Father’s Day but the church had weather and permit problems and the project was delayed until now. Unfortunately, we will be short many of our usual workers due to the delay. Our team this week will be less than ½ of our norm with about 20 expected versus about 45-50 on a usual week one. Oh well, God will use and bless what we are able to get done. Today Max and Randy first repaired one of our tool trailers electrical connections that were damaged in their travel to KY. Later they worked on installing the base channels so we will be ready to begin some walls Monday Morning.

Debra and Anne worked on setting up the “store” today. We sell T-shirts, hats, water bottles, etc with the Constructors logo. We folded shirts and displayed merchandise for most of the day. We have some new designs this year. We probably have some new shirts in our future.

Tomorrow the rest of the team will arrive, and we will have our first team meeting tomorrow night. We look forward to a great week.

Friday, September 28, 2018

It was about 61 degrees when we walked a few minutes before we pulled out of the Agricenter RV park at 6:30 this morning. It stayed cool much of the day, but was sunny and warm when we reached Clear Creek Baptist Bible College in Pineville, KY a little before 5:00 pm.

It was and uneventful drive – first through Tennessee fog and then in the beautiful mountains of eastern Kentucky. We will be here a week working with Constructors for Christ on a new facility for New Heights Church with Max’s brother and sister-in-law.

We are thankful for safe travel and pray for safe travel for all our NOMADS.

Thursday, September 27, 2018

We stated the day with more rain. That means it has rained at some point of the day everyday since the annual meeting officially began on Sunday. Fortunately, it was just a fine mist when we were having to walk to the meeting area this morning. The heavy rain came while we were meeting and then there was no rain this afternoon. It has really cooled off. Our low tonight will be 56. That means it will be cool when we are doing our final departure checklist in the morning.

Today was another very busy day, but fun and sad at times too. This morning after 7:00 am Bible study and 8:30 devotion, we had the second half of the business meetings. That meeting ended with the gavel being passed to our new Chairman of the Board, Everett, and the official beginning of Anne, Mike and Carolyn’s four year terms on the board.

This afternoon Anne was in the mood for a break from the meetings and so she attended a line dancing class taught by some fellow NOMADS. That was a first, and she found it to be a lot of fun and good exercise. No problem getting steps today even though we didn’t get to walk this morning due to the rain. Max attended sessions hanging doors and windows and best practices for NOMADS. There was another leader training class this afternoon and tonight we had our closing meal together, barbeque from Corky’s. Very good! And the banana pudding and brownies were pretty awesome, too. Our choir gave a final worship concert after dinner. They did a great job. We have a lot of talent in this group. Then it was time for our last hugs and “see you down the road’s”. Some of our friends we will work with in a few weeks in Lumberton, NC and some we probably will not see until our meeting next year in Illinois. Even though we may be many miles apart, we will hold them in our hearts. Lots more to share but we must be ready to travel early in the morning so we will try to catch up a little later. Safe travels everyone.

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

The rain has continued intermittently the past two days. When you are sure it is over, something else pops up. The quantity hasn’t amounted to much but enough to soak you if you get caught walking up to the meeting area. Temperatures have continued to be really mild. It’s currently 67 and really nice outside tonight.

Yesterday was an extremely busy day and we worked and walked on concrete floor all day. The Love Auction is the biggest way we raise money to give to agencies who need help with materials for projects. Yes, it seems crazy. Members bring items to auction. We register them in and put them out for all the members to pursue. We give everyone bid numbers and have a silent auction. A few items of special interest are held out for the live auction done by an auctioneer member of NOMADS. When we get the count tomorrow, we will have probably have raised over $38,000.00 from our members extravagant generosity. So we spend our own money to pay our expenses to projects and then spend our own money to buy things at the auction to have funds to give away. Some people think we are crazy. We think it is great. The entire amount of money raised by the auction goes to partially fund the materials needed for our various projects. It takes a lot of work to put on the auction, but it’s also lots of fun.

Today everyone paid for and picked up the items they won in the auction. That’s always fun because most of the time on the silent auction, you don’t know until you pay out exactly what you won of what you were placing bids on. We ended the day with a hammock, some home made jelly, salsa, and a drill bit set. One of the things Anne was most pleased about was that a hand crafted wooden bowl, made by Ralph, our deceased World War II fighter pilot friend, brought $550.00. Ralph would be so pleased that it was used to raise money for missions.

Today we also had the first half of the Board report to the membership. After that were the seminars presented for the membership.  In one of the sessions we taught a 1.5 hour class on Disaster Preparedness for RVers.  It was very well received and people stayed after so long we almost missed lunch. We hope it makes a difference in NOMADS members’ readiness for storms. Later in the day, we were taken on a tour of the Agricenter’s facility by a friend of our friend Melody. This is a very interesting place. We will share that information in another post.

Tonight we had a pot luck dinner that was wonderful. Anyone who left hungry has no one to blame but themselves. After dinner Elvis was in the building and sang us a few songs. We also got a nice visit with Pat and Clay, our dear some NOMADS friends from New York, after dinner.

 

Busy days but good days. We are tired!