Week Seven's Activities

 Mondays task for the day was building another porch with stairs in Skidmore, TX. Our first hurdle was to find power for out power tools as this mobile home had not been connected yet. A generous neighbour allowed us to use his power.

 This porch project was completed by days end.

 The balance of the week our whole crew of 12 worked at this house in Refugio, TX where only certain repairs were to be done.

 Dennis with homeowner Domingo who qualified for a new home, but chose to repair his home only. Some of his reasons for doing a repair was that his taxes would be expensive, he would be required to have house insurance and this is where his memories are.

 The bathroom was totally gutted and rebuilt while the kitchen received a new ceiling and floor.

 Doug tackles the removal of the cast iron tub which was to be replaced by a new shower.

 Domingo was a willing helper and was very pleased and grateful for all the repairs we did for him.

Thanks to Marci for our early Friday morning ride to the Corpus Christi airport. Our travels continued to Houston - Minneapolis and Winnipeg arriving at 4:30 with our daughter Julie waiting to take us home.

We will take a month break from our blog posting until early January.

Ramping it Up

After having spent most of our days working indoors getting homes ready for the homeowners, our duties shifted this week to building porches with steps or ramps.

Yes, the ladies operate the chop saw.

The homeowners Rudy and Irene were very pleased with what we built for them. Rudy said "It made him tired to watch us work.

The Coastal Bend Recovery has received funding for the replacement of mobile homes destroyed by the hurricane for qualifying persons with new ones. These are single wide, two or three bedroom units. The manufacturer supplies temporary steps, and we have been building 6 x 8 foot porches with either 4 foot wide steps or a wheel chair ramp.

Our team of 8 Canadians and Marci, a Texan who is almost speaking Canadian "eh" worked real well together. The other team of 4 Americans worked on other porches.

This porch with steps was completed in three and a quarter hours by our team.

Our team completed 2 porches with ramps and one porch with steps this week in Rockport area and Beeville, an hour drive away.

Ken and Herman had a difficult time digging holes in the soil in Beeville.

Our teams have completed 7 of the 11 porches/ramps on our directors list, but we hear there will be many more in the future.

Friday morning was the send-off breakfast for Ken and Linda from Winnipeg as they head north toward home.

Another beautiful sunset to end a pleasant day.

Ramp Building and House Blessings

As we come closer to the end of our term as well as numerous other volunteers, there is a crunch of time where we are trying to complete the three homes we have been working on before American Thanksgiving.

Two homes have already been completed this week. Both needed touch-ups, cleaning and house numbers. One major change was the removal of steps and replacement with a 52 foot wheelchair ramp. This became the main job for the week for most of the crew. It was great having warm and sunny weather each day.

For the Thursday evening potluck Jim and I volunteered to do a wok stir-fry as the main dish and others supplied salads, bread and desserts. This went over well with our hungry working crew.

We were informed that Friday afternoon would be the house blessing for both houses in Aransas Pass. As it turned out only the one homeowner Sandra from house #2 could be there and the other owner house #3 with the wheelchair ramp was hospitalized with an infection in her amputated leg and could not be there.

Sandra homeowner #2 was present and told us a little of her story. Not only was her house destroyed but her job was gone as well when the private hospital she worked at was destroyed and was not being rebuilt. She was out of home and job! She was very grateful for her new home.

Our group photo on the day of the house blessing including the son in law of the home owner.

On Saturday afternoon our group of 14 went to King Ranch in Kingsville TX, about an hour from our home base. We first visited the museum and then went to the ranch for a 1 1/2 bus tour showing their specialty bred quarter horses and Santa Gertrudis beef cattle.

Today King Ranch sprawls across 825,000 acres of South Texas land and is the home of 35,000 cattle and over 200 quarter horses. This is the birth place of American ranching.

The Week of the Texas Cold Snap

Last Saturday we visited and explored the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge which is located 40 miles north of our home base. The refuge is known as the winter home of the Whooping Crane, North America's largest bird. Once nearly extinct these bird's now number about six hundred. We did see two of these birds in the distance. The Coastal Bend area is one of the best bird watching locations in the country.

We walked numerous trails and saw at least 9 alligators from baby to these 10 -12 foot guys. We can't confirm the size - no fences to separate us with less than 100 feet of water.

This 40 foot tree top observation tower has a 480 foot wheelchair ramp. The first we've seen like it.

 A view from the top.

We drove the auto tour of 9 miles where we saw this docile armadillo and the ditches dug up by the javelinas who root around for their grub.

Jim was intrigued how these two tree limbs could cross over and be totally grown together.

This week's work included the completion of caulking baseboard and the painting of doors at the Aransas Pass houses, house #2 & #3.

And the weather seems to have a mind of its own and had its extremes. Monday it was hot and humid to rainy and cold on Tuesday which continued most of the week. Low temps of 2C and 4C in the morning and no power or heat one morning at the work site. It was just plain  COLD in that house and we wore many layers to keep warm. These homes all need spray foam  applied from underneath the floors to make them more comfortable.

Tuesday to Thursday we worked at the Corpus Christi house #1 where we installed baseboards, doors, caulking  and painting trim and doors.

The guys paired off to each install doors, while the ladies painted door frames and then later the doors. On Thursday we only worked till 2 because our group was going out for supper with Kevin King, MDS head from PA. We enjoyed an evening of him sharing numerous MDS stories.

A mayhem of cords and air hoses down the hall. Thankfully no trips or falls or spilled paint. All 14 of us working in one house.

Cutting the counter-top for the kitchen sink. 

On Saturday we were invited to join Ken and Linda on a day outing to North Padre Island. It was not a beaching day but we did a short hike and a long walk on the beach as well as drive a short distance on the beach.

To round off our day trip we took a short ferry ride at Port Aransas to get us home.
What a nice day it was!

Week 3 - Our Crew Grew

Last weekend the arrival of 3 more couples completed our MDS Family for the month of November. Cyndi our office manager organized a campfire to meet and greet our newcomers Saturday night.

On Sunday, after church and lunch we explored Goose Island State Park with Ken and Linda P. We saw the damage to a part of the beach campground which was still closed.
Here we are standing near the Live Oak known as "Big Tree" at Goose Island that has weathered many storms. This 1000 year old tree has its branches anchored together with steel cables.

Monday Jim and I spent the day installing door trim at the #2 and #3 houses in Aransas Pass.

Tuesday we were back at the #1 house in Corpus Christi where the others had been priming  and painting one coat on Monday and the 2nd coat on Tuesday morning.

For comparison this is what the interior looked like on our the first day of work.

Two weeks later the walls have paint.

By Tuesday noon the plank flooring arrived and we were instructed how to install the flooring with 3 teams of 2. By the end of Wednesday the flooring in the whole house was done. Amazing, we did not know that would happen that quick.

The kitchen cabinets arrived on Wednesday afternoon. So on Thursday morning while some of the crew did touch up painting and caulking, the cabinets got installed.

The local Recovery Committee brings us the supplies needed for each project and they can hardly keep up. By Thursday noon we were caught up with the supplies we had there so we all went to house #2 and #3 for the rest of the afternoon.

Friday was a rainy cold day so we did prep work like shopping, baking and blog writing. A welcome rest day for weary bodies. Three day weekend are needed for old bodies to recover.