RVing With a Purpose

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Yep, it was another beautiful day. Hot this afternoon with high of 83. Unfortunately, they are still predicting storms tonight. The weather is suppose to be out of here by 7:00am so hopefully we will not have a rained out work day.

Suzanne brought us a devotion today from The Upper Room. Thought provoking and good discussion. Thanks, Suzanne. Unfortunately, Stel and Jodi were added to our prayer list because they are both sick with colds. They didn’t work today and we hope they are feeling better after some extra rest.

We really missed Stel and Jodi on the job site today. We have gone from 13 team members to 7 today. However, they are an extremely hard working 7 and accomplished a lot today. We pulled the “Siding Crew” over to work with everyone else on the second addition today. Suzanne, Lee Ann, Mary and Ron worked to put up the sheathing. Barrie also helped with that for a time this morning. It is up except for one piece that we didn’t put up so we could more easily access the area. Good work! Max and Barrie installed the rest of the rafter blocking and then got all the purlins installed. You rock guys! Anne helped with what ever was needed but spent a good deal of time on the purlins as well. It was a very productive day.

We would appreciate your prayers for Aunt Jean. For those of you that don’t know, she has now had three falls in the past week, all three requiring a trip to the ER. This last one they admitted her and are trying to determine the cause. As of now all we know is that she has a UTI. The plan now is to discharge her Thursday or Friday to a rehab center/skilled nursing facility unless they find another problem. Hopefully with therapy, she will regain enough strength to return to assisted living. The case manager we talked to today said it might be time for her to have more care than assisted living. Our LOLs sure have had a rough year. We will see what tomorrow brings. Whatever it is, we know God’s got it, already.

Monday, April 2, 2018

Beautiful day with a high in the lower 80s today. We are really enjoying the weather here. It is going to get really cool later in the week but not nearly as cool places north of here. We heard about possible wintry mix at the Master’s this week. Surely not! I’m sure Rita will get that changed. Or maybe she will pack some warmer clothes. Have fun in Augusta, Rita and Dave!

Today our newest team members Mary and Ron brought our devotional. Thought provoking and very good comments and conversation with the team. Thanks, Ron and Mary.

After devotion, we loaded up the scaffolding into Charles’ truck along with the drywall lift and headed to the job site. It’s spring break for the Baton Rouge schools this week so traffic was fairly light. Everyone quickly got to work with Stel and Barrie working on framing the walls, and Ron and Jodi on demo of the sheathing on bedroom 2. By the end of the day all the exterior walls were up, the rafter hangers were in place, the sheathing down, and the door was cut from the living room to bedroom 2. Suzanne, Lee Ann and Mary worked on the siding. Jodi joined them later in the day. There is now siding on three sides of the first addition and one window is trimmed out. One more piece of siding and we will be ready to put the scaffolding up for the higher areas. Max and Anne worked on bedroom 1 addition, using foam insulation to complete the installation of the roof and then installing the ceiling and wall insulation. It is almost complete and should be completed tomorrow. Hopefully some drywall will go up Wednesday or Thursday. A couple of points of celebration today. The green screws for the metal roofing finally arrived today! We may install those in the morning before the roof gets too hot. Also, the conference bought us a tool specifically designed to cut the cement board siding. We used Gary and Avis’ tool last week but sadly they left us this weekend and for some reason took their tool with them. We asked Charles about purchasing one and he found us one today. Yea!! This tool makes cutting the concrete board so much easier and safer because there is no dust. Thanks Charles!

So a lot was accomplished today on what turned out to be a hot day. We were definitely happy with the progress and most importantly, there were no accidents. BTW, we have two team members who are not feeling well, battling colds, and we would appreciate prayers for them and that the rest of the team stay well.

Sunday, April 1, 2018

Happy Easter!! It was a beautiful one here in Baton Rouge. We did not go to Sunrise Service this morning. We had planned to go but then we got another phone call from Aunt Jean’s assisted living shortly before midnight. She fell out of bed again and had to go back to the hospital. It’s the second time this week. Anne didn’t go back to sleep until almost 4:00am and then the assisted living called back at 5:00. Just couldn’t make ourselves get out of bed. First year in a long time we missed Sunrise Service. It’s one of our favorite services of the year.

We did make it to worship at 10:30. Pastor David had asked Max to read the resurrection story from Mathew today. Of course he did a great job. The church looked so pretty this morning with the flower covered cross and all the beautiful Easter banners hung in the sanctuary. It was a good service culminating with communion. Thank you, Jesus!!

These banners were made by a church member.

Not long after lunch our new team members Ron and Mary arrived. They had a long drive over the past few days, coming from south Florida. We are thankful for their safe arrival and look forward to working with them this week. This is only their second project so still pretty new to NOMADS. We are so glad to have them here! Otherwise it was a quiet afternoon with only a quick run to Walmart disturbing our rest. We of course had the team meeting at 6:00 tonight and all went okay.

Looking forward to another busy and productive week.

Saturday, March 31, 2018

And it was another gorgeous day in Baton Rouge. We have been so blessed! It was a cool 49 this morning but perfect day. Now we have a beautiful sunset.

It wasn’t planned but we ended up working around the church this morning helping them spruce things up a little for Easter. Such a sweet congregation. There was weeding, and trimming and sweeping. Oh, I almost forgot. Pastor Dave asked us to take down the Lent sign. The banner portion was a breeze but then there were these 2x4s that seemed to reach to China. The two of us were out by be highway trying to get these four posts up and one of the members of the church across the street came over to helped us. He thought it would be easy with the shovel he brought along. We were all surprised with how much work it took even after digging around the posts. Anyway, with his help and a lot of laughter, we finally got them up. We sure did appreciate our good neighbor.

It had been two days since we were last in Lowe’s so we decided to visit Home Depot today. Decided on a ladder we like but we will wait and pick it up after we get home since we already have two with us on this trip. (Thanks Mark. It will be just like yours.) Also picked up a new tool belt for Anne.

On the way home from Home Depot we stopped at Sweeties, a local ice cream and snow cone shop. The owner gives 20% of his sales plus all tips and contributions towards digging water wells in third world countries. He has signs posted indicating the number of wells he and his customers have supplied since he opened in 2012. Total to date is 14 wells. We like doing business with folks like this. Oh, and the ice cream was good too. Jo and Mark told us about Sweeties last week. Thanks!

After having our dessert first, we then went home and Max tried out our new grill again and grilled us a very nice steak.

We realized we had never logged a geocache in Louisiana so Max looked on the geocaching.com map and discovered the closest one was across the street in the YMCA parking lot. So he walked across and found it. We now have geocache finds in 33 states.

It was a quiet day, with good times spent with church members and team members and team members puppies. We got our puppy fix. It was a good day.