RVing With a Purpose

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Happy Valentines Day everyone!!! Hope you had a wonderful day and most importantly that you remember every day to tell those you love how much they mean to you.

It rained all night last night. That made for some really good sleeping weather with the rain on the roof of Fred. It was raining when we got up and it rained all day. On the way home it rained but also included some frozen stuff too.They actually changed the forecast and now we have a possibility of ½ inch of snow over night. We don’t think it will amount to much because the ground is just a little too warm. Guess we will find out in the morning.

We of course started the day with devotions. Since it’s only two couples this week we are just meeting in Fred for devotional time rather than going to the meeting room at the church. Next week we may start meeting at the church since we will have another couple. Since we have to drive to Maysville, we are meeting at 7:40 for devotion rather than 8:00. It’s really fun to meet, pray and study with friends first thing in the morning.

After arriving at our job site we continued the projects from yesterday. We finished up the cutting and laying of the tile and will probably try to grout it tomorrow. We painted the shelves for the bathroom closet that we built out yesterday. We also spent a good deal of time filling holes/patching sheetrock, and re-texturing walls. Interior doors were painted and a good deal of time was spent repairing one of the exterior doors. We are making progress but it will take at least 2 more days to finish up this house. It would be nice to finish by Thursday afternoon but ….

 

Since it was Valentines Day and there are very limited choices in restaurants in our area, for lunch we decided to go to Papa’s, the little place attached to the gas station a block from where we were working. Papa’s is known for their char burgers and char fries so that is what we had. The food was good and the company was great and we enjoyed a little bit of the local flavor. We all four said we wouldn’t have gone out to dinner tonight if we have been home, so not having a nice restaurant conveniently located really wasn’t a problem. Remember you can leave comments or send us e-mail and check back in tomorrow to see if there are any snow pictures.

 

 

Monday, February 13, 217

Today is day one of the NOMADS Disaster Rebuild project in Maysville, OK. Our rigs are in Elmore City, but the flooding on June 12, 2016 was in Maysville about 14 miles north of Elmore City. Maysville is a little town of 1,232 people with slightly more than 21% living below the poverty line. Beef Creek runs thru the middle of the town and with very heavy rain within a matter of a few hours homes in the lower area of town were inundated with more than 2 feet of water. There are some videos of the area showing cars almost under water. There was one news report of cars floating down the streets.

The home owner at the home we were working on today said that his dog woke him up about 4:30am and when he got out of bed to let her out there was water up to his ankles. By the time he and his wife left the house it was up to his knees in the bathroom. The flooding quickly receded but left homes ruined and possessions lost. Oklahoma United Methodist Disaster Response became involved and there have been Volunteers in Mission (VIM), teams working in the homes mucking them out and in the home we worked in today, the VIM teams had started the rebuild. We hope to complete this home in the next day or two and it won’t be any too soon for the home owners. They had been staying with family but over the weekend couldn’t wait any longer and moved back into the yet unfinished house sleeping on an air mattress on the floor. They have no other furniture or appliances. After today, all the plumbing is working. YEA!!  Today, in addition to completing the last few pieces of the plumbing,  we started installing the last section of tile in the bath room, installed shelves in the bathroom closet, and worked on some drywall patching and touch up, painting and caulking.

 

We will continue more of the same tomorrow working to turn the home back to the owners as soon as possible. It was a good and a fun day working with Gwen and Gary. We have more team members arriving over the next few weeks so then we will be able to do even more. We are tired tonight but it’s a really good kind of tired. We feel so blessed to be able to be here.

 

Sunday, February 12, 2017

This morning it was 53 and WINDY. We brought the big slide in on FRED because it was so windy we were afraid of damage to the topper. According to the weather people we had gusts to 50mph. We had planned to walk to church. It’s only about 2 blocks from where we are parked, but with winds steady at 25-26 and much stronger gusts one of us was afraid she might go airborne and we elected to drive the two blocks. The little Methodist church we visited was very warm and inviting. Sweet, sweet people and a very good message. It is a very small congregation, but hopefully they will grow. They invited the team to a covered dish dinner next Sunday after worship, so of course we accepted. After church we rode down to Paul’s Valley with Gwen and Gary for lunch. There is really just one restaurant we have found in Elmore City and it is closed on Saturday and Sunday. The rest of the day was spent organizing tools in the truck and getting ready to go to work tomorrow as well as working on some accounting and tax stuff. We will all meet in FRED for devotion at 7:40 in the morning so we can be about 13 miles down the road by 8:30 to meet with the coordinator for the relief efforts and then go to work. Praying for a safe and productive week.

By the way, this is the view out our windshield now (splattered bugs and all) – in case you want to compare it to our view at Maumelle Park a few days ago.

Saturday February 11, 2017

First, HAPPY BIRTHDAY Mama Ruby!! Celebrating 93 years today with our wishes for many more. We miss being there with you today but want you to know we have been thinking of you and hope it was a great day.

Sorry – no sunrise pictures today. Don’t blame us – it was very cloudy and we never saw the sun until we were many miles down the road from Maumelle. We hated to leave Maumelle, but really look forward to the disaster rebuild project in Elmore City. We left the park at 7:25, and stopped at a rest area down the road and had breakfast. Interesting rest area.

Can’t say we have ever seen a cemetery on the front lawn of a rest area before. We continued to follow I-40 west, crossing into Oklahoma and stopped at the Oklahoma Welcome Center. There we found our first geocache in the state of Oklahoma.

Before reaching Oklahoma City we turned south, taking state roads to Elmore City – population 697. We look forward to exploring the area and getting to know the people here.

Our team leaders Gary and Gwen greeted us when we arrived a little after 3:00 and assisted us in getting settled in the “RV park.” We are at Luster’s RV park which is in the parking lot of Luster’s Grocery Store in downtown Elmore City. The view out our windshield is a little different than back in Maumelle. Gwen and Gary invited us over for dinner and tonight we shared a wonderful evening with them having a delicious dinner and time of getting to know each other. Gary and Gwen are such a fun, sweet couple. This is going to be a great 3 weeks!  Can’t wait to get started.

When we signed up for this project in Oklahoma in February a number of people thought we were a little crazy. Certainly it would be quite different from wintering in Florida. We were cautioned about how cold it gets here in February. We came prepared for cold. Warmest sweaters, long johns, coats and RV antifreeze. Well, God once again just showed us his sense of humor. It was a bright sunny, hot, 87 degrees at 5:00 tonight.  I think that was about 20 degrees warmer than home. Don’t you just love it. It is predicted to be a little more seasonable tomorrow but we will remember the sense of humor.

Thank you all who are reading, following and commenting on our blog. It’s makes doing this fun, knowing you are actually reading it. Tomorrow we plan to go to church and then explore the area a little.