Kick Off of Disaster Rebuild In Selma Alabama

Sunday, October 6, 2024

January 12, 2023 brought 15 tornadoes to the state of Alabama, including one tornado that tracked right through the heart of Selma, with top winds of 130 MPH.  Monday, September 30 marked the official start to the NOMADS efforts to assist in the long term recovery of the city of Selma.  As team leaders for the beginning of the project we first visited the site in June of 2024 to meet with Bud, the construction coordinator. We returned September 24th to prepare for the arrival of our teams and visit job sites.

Friday, our first team members arrived, Carolyn and Gene.  Unfortunately, our next couple, Herman and Janis had to cancel to return to their home which had been damaged by Hurricane Helene.  On Sunday Bill and Becky arrived after having to delay travel due to the effects of Helene.  We were very excited when we received a call that Bob and Leone were joining us Monday afternoon due to their NC project being cancelled.  In the mist of all the tragedy caused by Helene, we remind ourselves that places like Selma are now off the TV news and masses of volunteers are no longer arriving.  There is still much work to be done in Selma and we are so proud to have NOMADS as part of the long term recovery efforts.

Monday morning, the team began work on our first house. Tommy’s home suffered wind and water damage and was further damaged and emptied by looters.  The first priority was to replace the exterior doors so the house would be secure.  While that was being done, the rest of the team then began demo work, removing damaged drywall and paneling and flooring.  Then began the repairs to the wall framing and drywall. That continued through Tuesday and Wednesday.

Thursday began a new adventure for our NOMADS team.  We began working alongside some employees of Fannie Mae, a government lending agency, that came to Selma to volunteer in the recovery.  Fannie Mae encourages their employees to volunteer to serve in communities and allows them some time off to do so.  There were about 30 people, most with minimal construction experience, that volunteered to help make a difference for the people of Selma.  They came with their own team leaders and our four NOMADS couples became the “expert” advisors.  We really were Bud’s (construction coordinator) eyes and ears at each of the five homes where we worked on Thursday and Friday.  Team one continued our work at Tommy’s home, continuing the demo work we had begun and began hanging drywall.  Team 2 worked at a home that had ceiling and wall drywall work. Team 2 moved to a house needing exterior painting on Friday. The third team worked on windows, and drywall at house 3.

We were at the fourth house both Thursday and Friday.  It needed exterior siding to be replaced and bathroom flooring and ceiling repairs.  The house next door had burned, and the fire damaged the siding on about half the right side of our house.  We had two volunteers that had some experience with siding and after we helped them get started, they moved right along, mostly completing that job by Thursday afternoon.  The two ladies working on the floor in the small bathroom seemed to really enjoy learning new skills. They had never used the tools we used to removed three layers of subfloor to repair damage from a leaking toilet. They worked hard on a dirty job and we got most of the subfloor and the toilet reinstalled before the end of the day so our homeowner had a working bathroom. Friday we assisted the team in installing the last of the subfloor, installing a ceiling fan and removing the ceiling tiles and replacing them with drywall.  Anne even taught a beginning class on taping and mudding the ceiling.

It was a very busy week, and yes, we NOMADS worked on Friday.  We will be taking an extra day off next week and all the team members were in agreement that it was the right thing to do.  It was a great experience for us too.  New friends were made, faith discussions took place, and we have two people interested in NOMADS membership.  Great way to start our DR in Selma.

Crew Campout in Higginsville, MO

September 28, 2024

We left the NOMADS Annual Meeting on Thursday, September 19, 2024 (a day early) and overnighted at Cracker Barrel in Bentonville, Arkansas and then drove on to Arcadian Moon RV Park in Higginsville, Missouri Friday morning.  We were meeting with some of the Switch It Up Crew for a Crew Campout Friday and Saturday night.  We had about 70 people – which is very large for a Crew Campout and included about 20 new members. We had a good time meeting the new crew and it was great to renew friendships with people we had not seen in a while.  The weather Saturday didn’t cooperate, and we had several downpours that curtailed some of the morning and afternoon activities.  However, we were blessed with late afternoon sunshine and cooler weather for the great potluck Saturday evening.  What a great time we had eating and visiting with friends from several states.

We also spent some time with Sheila discussing future plans for the crew.  For those that are not aware, it is through the sponsorship of Switch crew that we lead a Bible study for our RVers on Wednesday nights.  It’s our “small group” since we are not able to attend small group at our church due to our travels.  Such a special group of friends helping each other grow in faith.  We are hoping to begin additional faith groups soon.

We are now in Selma, Alabama setting up for a NOMADS Disaster Rebuild project to repair home damaged by last year’s tornado.

NOMADS 2024 Annual Meeting

September 26, 2024

Well, it’s been one month since our last post.  When we last posted, we had returned to Randy and Debra’s home at the completion of our summer trip to New York, Michigan etc.  It was a wonderful trip.

We spent almost three weeks in South Carolina enjoying family time.  We caught up on some chores like changing the oil in BB and helped Randy and Debra take down some trees in their yard but mainly we just enjoyed our time together.

We departed SC in BB on Thursday, September 12, with our first overnight on our property on Pine Mountain in Alabama.  Max drove BB and Anne drove the  truck loaded with tools.  When we stopped at the Alabama Welcome Center we saw a new Beyond in the parking lot and we met Jeff and Susan the owners.  We enjoyed visiting with them for a little while especially since they were just two hours into their second trip in their new Beyond.  Great to see Beyonds in the wild and quickly make new friends.

Shortly after leaving the rest area Max began to feel  something was wrong with one of our tires and we stopped by our Ford dealership on the way back to Pine Mountain.  So glad we did, because we discovered we were having tread separation on both our front tires.  Several of the Beyond owners on a Facebook group we follow have recently had tire problems at about the same mileage (34,000) and their posts were one of the reasons we stopped so quickly to check the tires.  The interstate is so rough sometimes that you don’t know if the problem is the road or your vehicle.  End result, we replaced all 6 tires. Thank you, God, for your protection and thank you Beyond owners for sharing your information.  Because of their posts, we probably avoided some significant damage to BB due to blow outs.

Thursday evening we visited with friends and left the truck on the mountain.  Friday, we drove to Shreveport, Louisiana and overnighted in the Cracker Barrel parking lot.  It was a quiet night, a good breakfast Saturday morning and we arrived in Mineola, Texas around 10 am.

We had never been to Mineola and found it to be a very nice, friendly, cowboy town and the Civic Center/RV park was a great place for our meeting.  Saturday evening, we drove to Canton, Texas to have dinner with some Switch It Up friends.  We were so excited to see them that we forgot to take any pictures.  It was great to spend time with Mark and Debbie.  Hope we see them down the road sometime soon.

Our NOMADS Annual Meeting began Sunday morning with our worship service.  From then on we were busy with classes, meetings, great food, great entertainment, our fund raiser charity auction and most importantly, great time renewing old friendships and making new friendships.  We think this was one of the best annual meetings we have attended. The Board and committees did a great job and deserve a big thank you.

Next year the meeting will be in Tennessee.  We left Mineola Thursday afternoon in route to our next adventure which will be the topic of our next post.

GAP Update

Sunday, September 15, 2024

Back in June we worked one week with Constructors for Christ to start the build of a new distribution center for God’s Appalachian Project (GAP).  To read about our week there click here.  During the next 4 weeks other mission volunteers with Constructors for Christ continued to work on the building.  We started with a concrete slab and at the end of the five-week project the building looked like this:

To read the story in GAP’s newsletter click here.

In the five weeks that Constructors for Christ worked on the building 318 mission volunteers from 71 churches and 10 states answered the call to be the hands and feet of Christ in the Appalachian community.  This is the real church.

As always, we receive more blessings from these projects than the recipients of our efforts.