Tag: nomads mission volunteers

NOMADS – Mingus Mountain, AZ 2026 – Week 1

May 24, 2026

Our last post on May 8, we drove through some beautiful scenery to reach our home for the night in Cottonwood AZ.  After refilling the refrigerator and the propane we had a good night of sleep.  We really appreciated hospitality of the Methodist church.  On May 9 we began our drive to Mingus Mountain, our home for the next 3 weeks.  It was a beautiful although harrowing drive.   We drove up through Jerome, but it was before anything was open.  We plan to stop there as well as Sedona when we leave.  Both areas are interesting and beautiful, but it was time to just get settled in after eighteen days on the road.

We arrived at Mingus Mountain Camp and Retreat before lunch, found our place to park and set up our campsite.  We were greeted by our NOMADS leader Suzanne and later that afternoon the rest of the team, Steve, and Doyle and LouAnn arrived.  Suzanne went ahead with our opening meeting since we were all gathered together and asking her questions.  It was nice though since it gave us all a free day Sunday.  Monday we met the camp director and program director when they joined us for devotion.  After a tour of the facilities, we began our work for the week. We made a lot of repairs.  Repairs to the entrance signage and painting it, the pump house roof,  the heat strip on the pavilion roof, a door, lots of painting, built a trash can enclosure, an entry ramp for the dinning hall, repaired the 9-square game and began working in the men’s rest room which is a big three-week project.  We began by removing all the tile, preparing the flooring for new vinyl laminate and started the painting.  By the end of the week we had it so the rest room could be used by guests for the weekend.

Over the weekend we visited Prescott Valley. Wow!  Another steep drive with minimal side rails.  You can see the roadway, way, down below.  We also bought groceries and visited Culver’s while there.  Saturday, we hiked to the top of the mountain where there is an area for hang gliding.  No one jumped off the mountain while we were there but the scenery was beautiful.

On Sunday, we streamed our 8:30 am service from our home church, Lester Memorial Methodist. By the way, that was at 6:30 am here.

Enjoyed working with this hardworking team this week.  We have accomplished a lot.  Two more weeks to go.

Start of our Spring 2025 Road Trip

Sunday, May 11, 2025

Tuesday, May 6 was the official beginning of our Spring Road Trip 2025.  If things go as planned, this will truly be a road trip.  There will be lots of driving, lots of miles covered and not as much moseying along at a casual pace as our recent vacations.  Tuesday, we drove to Asheville, NC to visit with the volunteer coordinator for the NOMADS disaster rebuilding project we will be leading in the fall.  We met with Hannah at the church that will be providing our parking sites.  The church is building camping sites on their property for people impacted by Hurricane Helene and will be including six sites for NOMADS to use.  This should be a great opportunity for us to serve in a beautiful location while working to get families back into their homes.

From Asheville, we drove to Barbourville, KY to visit the Constructors For Christ 2025 construction site.  We will be helping to build the East Barbourville Baptist Church’s new sanctuary and perhaps build out some Sunday School classrooms.  Since it was not too far off our route, we decided to take a quick look at the site and see the town.  We arrived too late to see anyone at the church but got to take some pictures, try one of the local diners, check out the grocery stores, and the RV park we will be using. We also boondocked at the local WalMart (with permission).  We are really looking forward to this project.  This will be the 50th  year Constructors has provided 5-6 weeks of labor to assist churches with their building needs.  What a great ministry this organization has led.  It’s an honor to work and serve with them and we look forward to seeing all our Constructor friends in June.  We traveled 336 miles today.

After a good night of sleep,  on May 7, we continued driving northwest.  We stopped at King Donut in London, KY for breakfast pastries and then continued to Big Bone Lick State Historic Park in Union, KY.  This is a smaller state park but is in a beautiful setting and bills itself as “the birthplace of American paleontology.” We would definitely stay here again.  The first sight we were assigned, we couldn’t get level.  So the very helpful, “off duty” camp host quickly changed our site to one that was level and located immediately behind Randy and Debra.  We spent the afternoon exploring the park and waiting for Randy and Debra to arrive.  Another 171 miles traveled.

Third Week At Sumatanga

Sunday, May 4, 2025

Our last post left us at Camp Sumatanga for Easter weekend.  Easter morning we were up at 4:00 am, on the road by 5:00 am and celebrated the resurrection of our Lord and Savior with our Lester Memorial family at 6:00 am on the mountain above Oneonta at Palisades Park.  It was a wonderful service and beautiful sunrise.  Such a great way to start Resurrection Sunday.

For our third week working at Camp Sumatanga we were so blessed!  Friday of Holy Week our good friends and fellow NOMADS Mariel and Shannon joined us.  On Sunday afternoon two more good friends and NOMADS, Rita and Dave, joined us. We also had great help from Barry and Donna and Emily.  First, there was NO water leak Monday morning!  We were able to resume work on Cabin 5 with Barry, Donna, Mariel, Anne, Max, and Rita worked on painting the exterior since Monday would be our only dry day.  Shannon and Dave did some framing work for the showers and vents, built some benches, and repaired drywall in the old section of the cabin.  On Thursday Dave, Shannon, Max, Anne, and Barry insulated the walls and ceilings. 

We also continued to work in the girl’s staff hut. By the end of the week Donna, Barry, Rita, Mariel, Anne and Emily had all six bedrooms ceiling, walls and closets painted along with the hallway and most of the trim.  The bathroom ceilings were also painted.  The old water heaters were removed.  Max and Anne rebuilt and insulated part of the front wall of the hut and finished the repair of  the damaged subfloor in the front room. Max and Barry also worked on rough-in electrical in Cabin 7.  It was a very busy week with a lot accomplished for the camp.  Most importantly, everyone stayed safe!  Big thank you to all who helped!!

We returned to Johnston, SC after church on Sunday and have spent the past week with Randy and Debra.  Randy received a great report from his oncologist on Wednesday so it’s been a great week for us.  If things go as planned we will be doing some westward travel with Randy and Debra this next week.

Uskichitto Week One

Saturday February 22, 2025

When we last posted, we had just arrived at Uskichitto Retreat Center (pronounced “Whiskey Chitto”) in LeBlanc, LA.  The retreat center has five cabins to house campers for summer camp season.  The cabins are also used during the off season by businesses, clubs and church groups for weekend retreats, meetings and work sessions. We have full hookup camp sites and laundry facilities.  This a three week NOMADS project, but we will only be working the first two weeks.  Mariel and Shannon are our leaders.  It’s so good to work with them again.  We haven’t seen them since the annual meeting last year.  We have team members, Pam and Dennis who we worked with at Camp Sumatanga last year and Lou and Gabriela who we just met.  They are relatively new members from Iowa.

There is lots of work to be done at the camp, but our highest priority is replacing the flooring at the pavilion.  Monday morning it was all hands-on deck to empty out the pavilion of all the sound equipment, furniture, etc. and remove the toilets and sinks from the restrooms and store everything in a nearby building.  That done, we began using various tools to remove the old flooring. Most of the tile actually came up fairly easily.  It was all the glue that remained on the floor that was the problem.  The camp director rented us a machine that made the job easier but there was still lots of time spent on our knees scraping. It was decided that we would be using epoxy paint with color chips to replace the old tile.  After scraping all the old glue up there was dust and dirt everywhere.  Then, we began the process of cleaning the concrete mopping numerous times to get it clean.  With that huge job completed, Thursday afternoon we etched the concrete and then mopped the concrete until clean again.  The mop water had to be clear.  That’s where we left it for the weekend. 

How we had fun all week

When there was a little down time throughout the week, a few of us were able to complete some smaller projects, the repair of some leaky faucets, replacement of some steps, repair of a “soft” spot in a bathroom and window cleaning in the cafeteria.  We worked hard this week and we were rewarded with a fantastic Cajun meal Thursday night prepared by some of the ladies from Squryes UMC. The weekend will bring rest, laundry and perhaps some sight seeing.