RVing With a Purpose

Thursday, December 12, 2019

We awoke to rain on the roof this morning. Would have been nice to fall back asleep but we did the adult thing and resisted the temptation. After the early morning rain passed by we had another beautiful, sunshine filled day.

After devotion, we all headed back to Dennis’s house to do the final drywall work in the kitchen and living room. Our first job this morning was to help Dennis herd Bucky the Key deer out of his yard. Dennis has some lush foliage and beautiful flowers in his yard and the deer really like it. We actually helped Dennis encourage Bucky to go visit someone else about three times today. Otherwise, we were finishing drywall all day. Mid afternoon, Gene set up the texture machine and taught us how to use it. The plan is that we will prime the ceiling Monday morning and then as soon as the primer is dry we will texture the ceiling. We would love to get the kitchen and family room textured Monday.

Some of Dennis’s beautiful flowers

And Bucky who likes to eat them

We have to say goodbye to Carolyn and Gene tomorrow. We so appreciate all their hard work leading this disaster rebuild for the past 10 weeks. We all went out to dinner tonight at the Big Pine Rooster. The food was really good but the fellowship was even better. So we are at the end of our first work week. One down and a lot more to go.

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Today, different from the last two day, we worked all day on drywall finishing at Dennis’s. There was drywall dust everywhere. It reminded us that for some reason our May 7, 2018 blog post titled “Drywall dust in the ears, drywall dust in the nose, drywall dust in the hair, drywall dust everywhere!” shows up regularly as being visited on our blog. In fact it seems to be the most visited post.  Don’t really know why.

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Work-wise, today was much like yesterday. We worked on drywall finishing at Dennis’s house on Big Pine Key in the morning and on painting and odds and ends at Danny’s house on Sugarloaf Key. There is a group of volunteers here from First Baptist Church in Atlanta and some of them have been helping us at Dennis’s.

When we arrived at Danny’s after lunch this big white blimp was in the sky above us. We saw it on Sunday also and Carolyn told us it a Tethered Aerostat Radar System operated by Customs and Border Patrol to assist in interdiction of drug and illegal immigration traffic.  She actually calls it “the eye in the sky.”  It wasn’t watching us.

Then tonight we got to enjoy a Christmas cantata performed by the Lower Keys Community Choir and the Keys Chamber Orchestra.  Our team leader Carolyn played French horn in the performance.

Monday, December 09, 2019

Today was our first day back at work on a project in several weeks. We of course began our day like we do every day regardless if we are working a project, with devotion time. Today Gene and Carolyn shared a little different reading of 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter. Just a little reminder what’s really important. Carolyn played her french horn for our music accompaniment. Thanks Carolyn and Gene. We discussed our work plans for today and then met another group of volunteers working with the church this week.

We then drove about a mile to one of the homes the NOMADS are currently rebuilding. At Dennis’s home the entire team (Gene and Carolyn, Ron and Mary, Elaine and Anne and Max) worked on sanding drywall and a few did a little mudding. This home was flooded by the storm surge of Hurricane Irma when most of the structures on the island received 2-4 feet of salt water. We think Dennis’ house was on the low end of that but since he wasn’t allowed back into his neighborhood for some time, by then the water and wicked up all the drywall and mold had begun to grow. It happens very quickly. The house was gutted. Prior to our arrival NOMADS had already installed all the drywall except for one closet. They also began the finishing process. Today the team did a lot of sanding and applied a little more joint compound.

At lunch we headed to another home about 20 minutes south. NOMADS have also been working in this home previously. We are now working on finishing up the last items so it will be ready to move in. We hope to have it completed before Christmas. It was a busy but good day.