Time to do a little catching up on our blog, since our last post was about six weeks ago when we wrapped up our project in Oklahoma. From Oklahoma we went back to Alabama for our annual doctor and dentist appointments and some business matters. After that it was to Gaffney, SC for Fred’s annual maintenance and then we took a few weeks to spend time with family.
After our visit to Gaffney, our driver side rear view mirror was shattered by a careless trucker so we had to repair that before we could get back on the road. We also replaced the fresh water pump in Fred.
As has become our tradition we spent Thanksgiving and a couple of weeks after with Max’s brother’s family.
Over Thanksgiving weekend we helped one of our nephews install a metal roof on his garage.
We had a great time camping with Randy and Debra at Santee State Park. We love waterfront campsites.
Chilling around the campfire at Santee State Park
Hiking the Old 301 Santee Walking Bridge
We also camped in a hospital parking lot for one night. It’s nice to have a place of our own to relax in between patient visits.
And we also spent some time with Anne’s brother in Georgia, including a visit to the award winning Christmas light show at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.
One of the light tunnels at the Botanical Gardens light show
One of the dancing light shows
The goddess fountain is decorated with flowers in the summer, but was beautifully decorated with lights for the show.
The artists at the garden are very talented with light sculptures such as these birds…
… and these butterflies.
Now we are back at Gulf State Park in Alabama for Christmas.
On our way to Gulf Shores we always try to stop at Warehouse Market and Bakery in Atmore, AL to stock up. That’s the only place we have found the Conecuh sausage rolls, so we bought a dozen (and a few other goodies).
We continued leadership of the Oklahoma Disaster Rebuild for this our last week. Last Friday, we said goodbye to Chris and Laura and Bruce and Janette. We had a great two weeks with both couples who helped the team accomplish so much. Thursday night the team went to one of the local Mexican restaurants and had a fun last meal together. On Sunday we welcomed new team member Nettie and her sweet furry friend Amos. This was Nettie’s first DR project and we look forward to working with her on a future DR.
This week we spent a lot of our time completing William’s house. With the delivery of the shingles on Monday morning, we were able to complete the roof before lunch. ROAD also brought us new paint on Monday morning. Last Thursday when we ran out of shingles, we began painting the fascia and soffit. We were not happy with the paint and wondered if it had been through a freeze. With the new paint the painting went much better and by Tuesday we completed the exterior painting. Wednesday, we completed the repairs, drywall and painting in the bathroom as well as painting the ceilings in the living room and hallway and part of the kitchen. Wow, what a difference that made in the interior appearance of the house. The installation of the new door was also completed this week. We also completed several punch list items and at the end of the day Wednesday presented William his Bible. He was so pleased and excited about all the improvements made in his home. Such a blessing to help people restore their homes.
Finished roof
Nettie and Anne painting more soffit and fascia
Michele and Ken starting the kitchen ceiling.
Anne starting the painting of the living room ceiling
What a difference the new paint makes.
Living room ceiling finished
Nettie working on bathroom walls
bathroom wall when we left
Jake and Angela finished William’s bathroom while we worked in Okmulgee.
Bible presentation for Mr William
On Monday Anne was interviewed for a local news story about ROAD on KOTV in Tulsa. The story was still on their web page the last time we looked. Contact us if you want the link.
We also returned to Margaret’s home to complete the few punch list items there this week – touchup on some trim, paint, clean up, etc. We were able to present her with her Bible on Wednesday afternoon as well. She also was so very appreciative of all the many NOMADS who worked at her home.
Bible presentation for Ms Margaret
Thursday the entire team returned to Okmulgee, 50 minutes away, to help our ROAD friends Gary and Sam complete a lot of items at Tiara’s house. We painted the bathroom ceiling and lots of trim, installed ceiling and floor trim, closet doors, assisted with some subfloor/beams/joist work and installed some lights as well as some general cleanup. We also had the pleasure of meeting Tiara Thursday and presented her with her Bible.
Gary and Sam requested “all hands on deck at Tiara’s on Thursday.
Bob and Leone working on trim
Some of the trim required a lot of custom cutting. Bob spent a lot of time getting this piece right. By the time he added the door trim you could easily not notice the crooked ceiling. (NOMADS did not install the ceiling.)
Ken hanging bi-fold doors on the bedroom closet
Bedroom trimmed when we left
Bathroom when we left
Sam and Gary worked all day on Tiara’s Kitchen floor.
Tiara’s kitchen floor when we left. Sam and Gary finished it before they left.
Bible presentation for Ms Tiara
We closed the week with all the assigned tasks for our homes completed. No carryover work for the new leaders. We think this is the first time that has happened when we were turning over a DR to new leaders. Yesterday, November 10, Ken, Michelle and Nettie headed to their next project or home and we left the Oklahoma project in the great hands of Leone and Bob who will be starting some new work Monday.
Great team for our final week in Oklahoma
Also, for the past three weeks, we have worked alongside two other wonderful volunteers, Jake and Angela. They usually work with Habitat but fortunately for us the Habitat build they had planned to work was cancelled so they worked alongside us on William’s house. They had more roofing experience than us and were a tremendous asset. Hope we get to work with Jake and Angela again sometime. (Just maybe they will become NOMADS some day.)
Angela and Jake, our Godsends from Habitat for Humanity
Friday morning we said goodbyes to our new friends in Muskogee. We hope we can return sometime. They do great work and there are many people still needing assistance. Fred took us to an Arkansas rest area yesterday where we stopped for the night. This morning we were up early and made it back to Camp Sumatanga early this afternoon. Thank you, God, for safe travels. We are looking forward to worshiping with our friends at our home church tomorrow. Until next time, stay safe and ask God to help you be the light in this crazy world.
We continued leadership of the Oklahoma disaster rebuild this week. We had to say goodbye to Lee and Beth, our new NOMADS and friends, but welcomed Ken and Michele and Bob and Leone. Before Beth and Lee left the team had a great barbeque dinner at one of the local restaurants. Since we all worked at different houses on Thursday, we were very thankful for one last dinner together.
This week we continued the work on William’s home, almost completing the new roof. Tuesday and Wednesday, we were all either on the roof or working to support those on the roof, cleaning up and keeping us in supplies. Unfortunately, we ran out of shingles with one small section remaining.
Stripping the old roof off
After removing the old roofing we put down underlayment.
Jake, Ken and Bruce putting down the started rows
Jake and Angela taught Chris and Laura the finer points of roofing.
They learned quickly and were soon roofing on their own.
Our fantastic shingle cleanup crew
We ran out of shingles at this point and will have to finish next week
That meant more people were available Thursday afternoon to work on caulking and painting the new fascia and soffit Laura and Chris installed.
Anne, Leone and Michelle caulking the new soffitt
After we had to stop roofing, we started painting the soffits and fascia.
Bob took on the task of replacing an exterior door that had rotted at the bottom.
The old door that needed replacing
Old door removed
Bob installing door frame
The new door almost finished
Bruce and Jan completed the repair of the vanity in the large bathroom and began the work on the smaller bath, removing the vanity, removing and reinstalling bathroom drywall damaged in the flood as well as damaged drywall in the closet. Next week we will begin with the finishing and painting of the drywall and then paint and install trim and the new vanity. Hopefully we will complete everything for William next week.
Bruce and Jan cutting drywall
Bruce installing drywall in bathroom and closet
Max and Anne began work at Tiara’s home in Okmulgee, OK, about 45 minutes from Muskogee, Monday afternoon. This house is also being worked on by a TV show, “Fast: Home Rescue”, a show for the Weather Channel. It’s a small house and sometimes it gets very crowded. Monday, we worked on tearing out and shoring up the beams, and joists and reinstalling subflooring in the bathroom. Anne and Leone returned on Thursday for some exterior painting and painting the living room.
The bathroom at Tiara’s house before we started
We removed the ceiling in the bathroom first.
With the subfloor gone we could assess the joists and beams. ROAD replaced them and shored them up the next day.
This is some of the other volunteers that were working with the TV program
It was interesting watching how a reality program was produced.
Occasionally we had to stop making noise while they shot a scene.
At one point they used a drone to video the ROAD folks working on the roof.
Anne seems to frequently end up working on the high spots.
The weather was not our friend this week. We had record breaking cold weather with very heavy frost. We had to postpone our start time for an hour some mornings because we had to wait until the heavy frost melted off the roof. On the positive side, the grass and fields we drove by were beautiful. It was another great week in OK with lots of work accomplished for our homeowners still recovering from the flood waters.
Frosty mornings
NOMADS Muskogee DR 2023 Week 5 Team Picture at our Thursday evening fellowship meal.
We took over leadership of the Oklahoma disaster rebuild team Friday October 20th after working a transition week the previous week. Most of the homes we are repairing have suffered significant flooding, some with six inches of water in their home and some with several feet of water. Working with us this week were Laura, Chris, Bruce, Janette and two NOMADS participating in their first project, Lee and Beth. This week we completed and had Bible presentations at two homes bringing to a total of four presentations in Muskogee. We completed Ken’s home, which is the converted 100 year old passenger train car we began last week. We enjoyed Ken’s stories of how his father acquired the “home” and set it up on their property when Ken was a young boy. We replaced the flooring in the middle room, the kitchen and bath/laundry room, and made some improvements in the booth dinette. The home created some unique challenges for the team due to the curved walls.
Bible presentation for Mr Ken. We were glad to have his case manager and a representative from the Muskogee County EMA attend our Bible presentations.
In Christine’s home we completed the NOMADS portion of the work. NOMADS removed rotten subflooring at Christine’s and installed new piers and floor joists and new subfloor in the kitchen and bedroom. The remainder for the rebuilding at her home will be done by another agency.
Bruce, Lee and Janette removing the old subfloor
Old subfloor removed
Gary, one of the ROAD project managers, working with Lee and Bruce to replace all the floor joists
Bruce, Sam (on of the project managers) and Lee cutting subfloor material
Lee and Bruce replacing subfloor
Lee and Bruce on the finished subfloor
After we finished installing the sublfoor, the group that is coming in to finish the house for a television program wanted to see what else needed to be done under the house so we removed a section so they could crawl under the house.
Bible presentation for Ms Christine
In addition to completing two homes, we worked on two others. Margaret’s home was begun by previous weeks NOMADS and hopefully will be completed early next week. The house required roof repairs and drywall removal and repairs and our work this week of sanding drywall, and re-texturing and painting the ceiling and walls.
Anne working on ceiling
Anne and Beth roll texturing the walls
Lee helped with painting the high places
Almost finished ceiling and walls in Ms Margaret’s house
William’s home is still a work in progress without an anticipated completion date yet. His house requires total roof removal and reinstall including replacement of part of the decking. Also, to be replaced is the soffit and fascia which is partially completed and some drywall repairs and bathroom vanity repairs.
Laura and Chris removing old soffit and fascia
Soffit and fascia replaced
Angela and Jake, our Habitat for Humanity friends, working on William’s roof.
The weather has been great for work this week and since we can walk to Braum’s Ice Cream from our full hookup and level campsites (and the BBQ restaurant is only a mile from the campsites), all is really good in OK.
On Friday we had to say goodbye to our wonderful new friends and NOMADS, Beth and Lee. We hope to work with them again soon. Friday also brought a change in our weather. It has rained all weekend. Much needed rain due to the drought conditions but now the temperatures are dropping like a rock. Next week may require lots of layers for work. Hope you all had a great week.
RVing With a Purpose 