RVing With a Purpose

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Feeling very blessed this evening.

This morning we got up and continued packing up FRED preparing to return home. We went to devotion time with the team where Ken and Joyce had a thought provoking devotion. We then told the team we would be leaving and said sad goodbyes. Harry and Frank helped get our ladder on the truck and while doing that we noticed the ice on the dumpster.

It was really cold this morning. We were so thankful that we had no frozen pipes. We went back to the campground to finish packing and pulled out about 9:15.

We had and uneventful drive home and while driving my scheduler from Cullman Internal Medicine called to say she had been able to get us an appointment with the surgeon today at 3:30. That was wonderful news. We arrived at home, got ourselves parked, plugged in and started unloading. It was soon time to drive to Cullman for our appointment. The even more wonderful news is that our surgeon will be able to perform the surgery tomorrow morning! He plans to use a block rather than general anesthesia, do the surgery laparoscopically, and said there will be about a 3 week recovery. All of this is such a blessing!!! We should be back on the road soon! We have remained in contact with our MHCC team and they have now got a replacement for us, a couple that were headed back north but due to the severe weather would like to stay in the south a few more weeks. We are so glad they won’t be working short handed. Blessings on blessings. God is SO GOOD!

 

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Well, it seems we are now having winter. What a drag. According to the NWS forecast for Cedartown, we are having a hard freeze here tonight with a low of about 24 and from checking on family it must be about equally cold in Alabama. We actually had sleet and a little snow this afternoon when we left work.

We accomplished a lot today. The dumpster was arriving when we left yesterday so we started the morning with getting some of the old cabinets, and the other debris we accumulated yesterday to the dumpster. There are several more cabinets that will eventually be trashed but we stored them in rooms not affected by the remodel and will wait until the end to see if there is still room in the dumpster. We completed the demolition on the kitchen and office. We started the demo on the final room so demo should be about completed by end of the day tomorrow, we hope. We had another wonderful lunch provided by MHCC. Yesterday was chicken pot pie and today was cheeseburger soup and tacos. They feed us really well.

Unfortunately, this will be our last day at MHCC for this project. Max has developed a hernia and we will be returning home to see the surgeon tomorrow or Thursday. Please keep us in your prayers. We know this is just a little bump in the road and we will be back on projects really soon, but it sure makes us sad to leave our good friends and the work here.

Monday, March 13, 2017

Hope everyone has had a wonderful Monday. It sure was hard to get up this morning but we were good and did get up early enough to do our exercise. We will be having our daily devotions and breaks in James Hall on the Murphy Harpst Children’s Center (MHCC) campus. It’s convenient since we will also be remodeling the second floor of that building. The first floor has the infirmary and third floor is used to house visitors such as the students from Appalachian State that are here for their spring break alternative this week. The second floor was most recently used as dorm space for some of the male residents. With the completion of a new dorm, we will now remodel this space to be used by some of the administrative staff.

After our devotion, we first took a tour of the campus, so those who had never been here could get oriented and so those of us who had worked here before could see the changes. In the rec center, we loved the new art work on the ceiling tiles of the workout room and art room. Some previous students at Appalachian State worked with the kids on the tiles. We also had to go be the administration building to officially sign in on campus. It was a cold, messy morning for a walk around campus but it was good to see what they were doing with areas where we had previously worked. This is our third project at MHCC and this place has a special place in our hearts. The staff here does a wonderful work with these young people.

Back in James Hall the new CEO, Scott Merritt, joined us during our break to update us on MHCC. The facility was originally a Methodist orphanage and now is a residential treatment center for some of Georgia’s most viciously abused and neglected children, still associated with the Methodist Church. Over the past year, MHCC has had 50 vacancies (they are licensed for 75 children) and unfortunately they received over 1000 referrals for children needing those 50 beds. We will share more about this wonderful facility another day.

Back at work, we started the demolition process. We first moved a lot of beds and other furniture from the rooms then started taking cabinets off the walls. Demolition day is always fun but tiring. It’s quite physical. We did not complete the demo but did make a good start today. Can’t believe we still haven’t gotten the bikes on the Silver Comet Trail. Maybe soon.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

So, did everyone get to church on time today?? We lost 2 hours in 2 days coming from central time zone and then going on daylight saving time, so we are feeling it today. So 5:30 in the morning will be like 3:30 was last week at home.

Ouch!! It would be bad to be late for our first day at work. Maybe we will skip the exercise in the morning and sleep a little later.  We had snow and sleet in the early morning hours but certainly nothing like they had just a little further north.

It was cold and gray most of the day with occasional welcome periods of sunshine. Just before dark the clouds totally cleared and we have a star filled sky tonight. Think the lack of clouds means an even colder morning tomorrow. Yep, we left a lot of our really warm work clothes at home. Took them to Oklahoma and it was 70 degrees. Left the at home this time and of course, it turns cold. Hopefully it won’t last very many days or these folks are going to get tired of seeing us in the same warm clothes.

Today we visited Marietta Street United Methodist Church and enjoyed a great service and a very warm welcome. It’s a pretty little church with this neat brick cross in the sidewalk out front. The pastor’s name is Bobby Church, Pastor Church. He had a wonderful message on how Jesus is our way out of the dark cave of despair. He is our hope and salvation. We visited Marietta Street last year for Easter Sunrise Service and breakfast afterward. It was so good to see the people again.

After worship, of course, we all went out for Sunday lunch. It was very good and the visiting and catching up with old friends was great. There is always so much laughter when we are with our NOMADS friends. When we got home we had another roundup of the cows to try to keep them away from the motor homes.

Tonight we had our first official team meeting at Jim and Mary Jo’s. Of course we began with introductions although most of us have worked together on other projects. We got to know Richard a little better. He is the only person we haven’t worked with before and he will be on our Sumatanga project next period. We are going to be taking down some walls, tearing out a kitchen and putting up some other walls. We think it is turning older dorm space into administrative space but we will learn more tomorrow and it will all be good. Hope everyone has a great Monday.