First Week of MDS Coastal Bend Experiences

Jim and I are volunteering with Mennonite Disaster Service at the Coastal Bend Texas RV Project. Coastal Bend is a broad term that includes nine counties that span along the curved area on the Gulf Coast. The RV park that MDS is located in is near Rockport TX.

Hurricane Harvey hit this area 2 years ago as a Category 4. It is hard to imagine but the campground we are located in was flooded, as well as the church we attended last Sunday which had 5 feet of water in it. Numerous homes and businesses are still boarded up, but much progress has been made.

Our Monday morning drive took us to Corpus Christi about 45 minutes away to the first home we are helping to finish. The traditional MDS group framed the home and we are helping to finish the inside. 

So our first task was to sweep and clean the basic floor area and put in the insulation and get it inspected before we could do the drywall. It passed except for a little bit of caulking. Then the drywall installation started on the ceilings and walls.

 Coffee break with our group of 9 people.

 Jim's first job was to partially remove the tub so insulation could be installed behind it.

Getting a large load of drywall delivered which was then carried by the men of our group and the recovery committee.

 Using the drywall lift is very helpful.

 

After the ceilings were in, Doug our director climbed in the attic to spread the insulation while another person funneled the insulation into the machine. It was a 30C day so it was sweat and sweat some more up there in the attic.

At devotions we were asked where did we see Jesus this week! I would have to say when I met the homeowners of the house we are helping to build. They dropped in to see us on Tuesday. They are in their sixties and she has terminal cancer and he has health issues as well. They have been living in a home without power and water and we know that they are not well off. On Wednesday they brought our group chicken, fries, bread and sweet tea for lunch.

Jim's impressions of Texas. Texas has crazy speed limits on their highways. Interstates with speeds up to 75  and 80 mph. With many state highways with 70 mph speed limits and that might be a two lane highway without shoulders. A digital highway sign states 2687 fatalities this year on TX highways. We arrived back to our camp on Thursday afternoon to police car flashers in front of our campground with a white pickup having rolled through the ditch. Maybe too much speed for rain covered roads. A real prayer concern for our team as we travel to our job site on the other side of Corpus Christi.

Enjoying Friday breakfast with our team.

As a Saturday morning outing Jim and I visited the demonstration gardens of the master gardeners open house.

The gardens are designed and maintained by Master Gardener volunteers as educational tools to demonstrate plant materials and landscape schemes suitable for the Coastal Bend.

I won one of the door prizes of a white greggii salvia shrub. We decided to offer it to our campground owner and plant it for her.

Granny's Prairie Garden is the children's garden.

A beautiful sunset taken out our back door.

Travels from Niverville to Rockport TX

Listening to the forecast and hearing of the winter storm looming we packed our RV earlier in the week.

There is a beauty to this early October winter storm.

For our departure Monday morning we needed to pack only a few remaining items and then we were off.

The border crossing was fairly normal with us going inside for them to do our paperwork, finger printing and eye prints. No inspection of the RV.

Monday night's stop was near Watertown, SD at the Dakota Sioux casino campground that included a beautiful sunset. As we traveled the snow kept getting less and by Watertown South Dakota it was pretty well gone.

All our days except Tuesday have been good with no wind. Tuesday we had a a very strong north-west wind and they were forecasting more wind for the next few days but they never came. For which we were very thankful. We made an early start Wednesday from Lewis and Clark State Park in Iowa.

In Perry Oklahoma we were the only campers. Clear sky with a hill top view over the lake.

Lake Mineral Wells State Park Texas was our Thursday night stop. We did some bird watching from two different blinds in the park. First day with comfy T-shirt weather. This campground had an interesting road we needed to take passing over the spillway right next to the dam.

Our last night on the road was at Blanco State Park north of San Antonio.

As we were leaving our parking lot lunch stop Jim saw a pickup truck load of watermelons for sale, so we stopped by and purchased one. What a sweet and juicy treat to share with our team at our Saturday evening orientation.

Our travel high temperatures started at around 10C and by Friday we were enjoying a sunny 26C.
We arrived Saturday afternoon at MDS Coastal Bend Rockport TX and had travelled 2864 kms.

This is our rustic campsite for the next seven weeks.

As we begin our travels we need tools to assist us in getting to our destination. It used to be only maps, but now a great addition is the GPS. It finds where we are on the globe, but needs a destination to be of use. Even if we choose to take a route other than it's plan it will try to get us back on course.
So it is with our lives too. We need to enter our long range destination and then follow Gods guidance. He is willing to draw us back to the right route, but gives us leeway to take some scenic routes or detours along the way.
The data entered in our GPS needs to be up to date. Ours proved to have some glitches, when told to make a left turn it turned out that this intersection now had an overpass and off ramp to take . . . too late . . . we missed our turn.

Thanks for following along on our journey. Will post again next weekend.

Snapshot of Summer 2019

Our grandsons love basketball. They played on the school team, a community team and have now advanced to the Manitoba Junior Bison team. We enjoyed seeing a couple of the games.

Birthdays came so frequently. Makenna turned three in May while Amara turned seven in June. We loved seeing the excitement in them as they were opening their birthday gifts.

With the opening of Lisa's home daycare, there was a need for a backyard fence. Jim helped Matthew with the building of the fence. It looks like those posts should corral Lisa's day care gang alright.

Summer is not complete without picking berries for the winter supply. Strawberries at Friedensfeld Berries and saskatoons at Riverbend Orchards in Portage la Prairie MB.

We had  enjoyable times camping with family and friends. With a total of 14 nights split between St. Malo Provincial Park, Austin Musuem fairgrounds, Stephenfield Provincial Park, Grand Beach Provincial Park and Winnipeg Beach Provincial Park.

We invited granddaughter Amara to stay with us a week while we both participated at Vacation Bible School in the mornings in Niverville. She was a student and I volunteered to be her group leader. This turned out to be a very busy but rewarding week.

In the afternoons we did many things like crafting pocket kitties and friendship bracelets to name a few.

We also enjoyed suppers on our deck with many beautiful sunsets and sometimes amazing cloud formations.

Lord willing, our next blog post will come from Texas on October 20th as we begin our next adventure.