Author: rvingwithapurpose

Sunday, July 16, 2017

This morning was nice and cloudy. We again walked about 6:30 to get some exercise before it got too hot. It was only 73 when we walked today, humid, but with the clouds, certainly much better than yesterday.

The team went back to Chestnut Street UMC today since we wanted to introduce Larry and Carol to our host church and show them the supply trailer. There was a large group of youth from Pennsylvania in worship today. They are here for the week to work on homes in the area. They will be working on some roofing and window installations. Not sure what else. The message today was on the parable of the sower. Pastor Lowry reminded us that the different soils represented the different problems of our heart. Excellent service again today. Again such a warm welcome and much appreciation shown for the volunteers in town working to restore Robeson county. We really like working here and are praying about returning fall of 2018 for more work here. BTW – that let’s you know how much work there is to do here. They have already scheduled a NOMADS team for fall of 2018.

After worship we went back to Pier 41 again. Again the owner visited with us and thanked us for working in his community. Again we all enjoyed our food. Today we had broiled shrimp and it was oh so good! Always really good food, large portions and very reasonable prices. After lunch we took Larry and Carol to what will be the new UMCOR campground for volunteers since they will probably be moving to the new location while they are here. It was then back to the fairgrounds and waiting on our last team members to arrive. Ray and Cathy arrived safely, about 2:45 and got parked and settled before the rain began. So we have our team for this week. Yea!

We had our team meeting at our RV at 6:00 and since it was National Ice Cream Day we made home-made peach ice cream to serve the team. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and it was a good time of getting to know our new team members and familiarizing them to what we are doing here. Seem like another good group. Looking forward to this week and what we will be able to accomplish for the home owners.

You again ask “what about the Mexican Rodeo?” Well it is now 9:30 and we are sitting in our RV listening to very loud Spanish music. It seemed to get started mid afternoon. We saw a few horses, no bulls or anything else rodeo-wise. Of course it did storm late afternoon so that could have changed their plans. Anyway we were a little disappointed we didn’t get to see bucking bulls. All we have seen much of is a lot of dancing and loud music. We are about 2 football fields away from the gathering and it is loud and we can feel the bass vibrating FRED. Everyone seems to be having a good time. We do hope it doesn’t go too late since we have to work tomorrow. Sorry, no pictures of people flying off bulls.

Saturday, July 15, 2017

Today was another hot one. The temperature started upward quickly this morning. We did our walking at 6:30 am today to try to beat the heat but the sun was warming it up quickly. Heat index was predicted to be 105 but since we weren’t working and were staying in the air conditioning we didn’t ever check it today. We stayed home all day and relaxed, did a little house cleaning (vacuumed and mopped), and watched movies. Love the fact that we can clean the whole motor home in so little time! Our first couple joining us this week arrived about 3:45 this afternoon after a hard drive with lots of backups on the interstate. So thankful for their safe arrival. Larry and Carol will be taking over leadership when we leave at the end of the week. We have another couple that should be arriving tomorrow afternoon.

What about the rodeo you ask? We are wondering about that too. No signs of a rodeo today. No bulls, no beer and all is quiet. There is something going on inside one of the buildings here at the fairgounds with a fair number of cars but otherwise no activity.  So sorry – no interesting pictures of bulls bucking people off. Tomorrow?? We will see.

Late this afternoon we had a severe thunderstorm come through and the temperature dropped almost immediately. It is currently 73. Nice! Actually the high for tomorrow is only suppose to be in the 80’s and the first of next week should be cooler. That will be a welcomed relief. After the rain we had another beautiful sunset – in both the western and eastern skies.

 

Please continue to pray for the safe travel of our NOMADS this weekend and remember to pray for the pastors of all the churches tomorrow.  Hope you are having a great weekend!

 

Friday, July 14, 2017

This morning around 9:00 Rita and Dave, and Morris and Karen pulled out with Rita and Dave headed back to Alabama and Morris and Karen headed to Lake Junaluska for a few days then to Gaffney for their annual Freightliner service. They will be taking a couple of weeks off and then returning to Lumberton to lead the team for a few weeks. We were sad to see them all leave and pray for their safe travels. They were such wonderful team members, hard workers and so much fun. Great team. So for today it was our our rig and Suzanne’s Airstream. Looks sort of empty around here. At our request, the guys from the fairgrounds came and mowed the empty sites so our incoming team members will have nicely mowed sites. Then the man in charge of the maintenance told us that we are going to have a Mexican Rodeo here this weekend. He said it will be bulls and beer and that we could watch it from the fence right by our RVs. It could get interesting. And maybe noisy. Nothing is going on tonight. We saw a bull shoot come in on a truck but haven’t seen any bulls. And we saw a big Budweiser truck come in to the Grand Stand but that’s about it so far.

Jeff our construction supervisor called this moring and told us that UMCOR received approval from the Lumberton City Council this week for the RV park a few miles from here. It is an old mobile home park that is empty and UMCOR wants to put in some RV sites for the NOMADS and other volunteer groups to use for disaster assistance. We and Suzanne met Jeff over at the new location and walked the site and made a few recommendations. Jeff hopes to have the sites completed within the next 2 weeks. It should be nice parking when it is complete. They had started working on the site about a month ago but had to stop until the Council gave final approval this week. After meeting with Jeff we ran a few errands and then returned to the fair grounds. Temps were in the low 90’s but heat index today was 105 at 1:00. We mainly stayed in out of the heat this afternoon and watched Christmas movies and read and relaxed. Nice quiet day. Hope everyone has a great weekend. Stay safe, and we will be watching to see what happens around here tomorrow.

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Repeat of yesterday and the day before. Hot and dry! And that’s all we are going to say about that.

The day started with a good laugh. The grounds crew here at the fair grounds cut the grass Tuesday. Ever since then we have all be fighting tracking in to our rigs all the grass clippings. Everyone is always apologetic when they come in and they try to wipe their feet off really well on our multiple mats. It really doesn’t seem to work. Yesterday Rita really tracked in the grass clippings. She was so sorry about it but it didn’t matter how many times we told her everything was ok. This morning Rita came in with a dust pan and little broom. She was constantly sweeping up behind everyone. It was too funny.

Karen shared our devotion today and it was sort of a continuation of joy using the July 4 devotion from “Our Daily Bread.” We all again talked about the obvious joy of the congregation at Branch Street UMC. Thanks Karen of a good reminder to be thankful for our joy and peace in Christ.

We got a lot of tedious projects done today. The sitting room is now officially complete with the exception of painting a step. We need to use that doorway so we can’t take that step out of service and paint right now. All the crown is now up in the hall. Thanks to Rita and Morris! All the base is installed in the living room and most of the quarter round. The door trim is all caulked and painted in the living room. There is still a little quarter round to be installed. The cedar planks for the dining room are now all organized and in process of being trimmed down. It was a good day.

 

Today was last work day for Rita and Dave and Karen and Morris. SO tonight we went out for our traditional Thursday night dinner at Woody’s BBQ. Since tomorrow is Morris’s birthday we also had a little celebration after dinner, with cupcakes. Everyone enjoyed the food and we all ate too much. We will be sorry to say goodbyes tomorrow, but have so enjoyed working with the four of them. It was a joy to have the time to reconnect with Dave and Rita and get to know Daren and Morris for the first time. We will miss you guys so much next week. Safe travels and we hope to see you down the road soon.