Bring What You Have

Have you heard of the Stone Soup recipe? Annette shared  a devotional on Tuesday morning with the group from "Our Daily Bread" - Bring What You Have - January 16/20. Check it out.
Just as one person starts with water and a stone, it took a variety of donations from the community to make a nourishing soup to share. Likewise we have a variety of people serving together to create a special variety of soup. People with knowledge and experience in former vocations of administrative assistant ... plumber ... carpenter ... nurse ... police officer ... book keeper ... printer ... electrical engineer ... teacher's assistant and more.
So it isn't the effort of one person, but the group together that God uses to multiply and build a house and lastly a home for a family. We realize we can't help everyone but we are helping one homeowner at a time.

Another week has gone by. The weather started cool with temps like 6-7 degrees C and foggy on Monday and Tuesday morning, with it raining on Wednesday, but by Thursday it was sunny with highs of 20+ degrees C.

On Monday our whole group was priming ceilings twice and all the walls. On Tuesday Jim and Dennis at another location replaced a window in a mobile home and did a floor repair in a MDS home done last year.

While the rest of us painted the finish coat on the walls. The cabinets arrived, so Paul and Wayne went right to work installing them as soon as the paint was dry in the kitchen area.

On Wednesday and Thursday our team of four - Jim S., Val, Jim M. and myself were getting started with installing the vinyl plank flooring. It went well  but needless to say we were tired from all the time spent on our knees, and the ups and downs.
While we were doing the flooring, some others were painting trim and baseboards at another location to get ready for their installation next week.

Paul and Wayne started to install doors as soon as the flooring was down.

Friday afternoon Jim repaired our day/night blind in the RV that had worn and frayed cord preventing it from moving. He had all his supplies along and replaced the cord and some nylon grommets. It took some adjusting to get the tensions right so it could move up and down freely again.

Monday when Jim was baking his almond bread the oven did not have the usual flame so he assumed that the propane regulator on the tank was at fault. Friday he replaced it with a new one however that did not seem to make a difference so he pulled out the oven burner to clean it of any debris. Finally success ... it works again.

Repair and maintenance is needed regularly when your home bumps across the country.

Week of January 12 -18 2020

Each week one of the couples here sign up to choose the church the group will be attending and the restaurant for lunch. The Presbyterian Church and a local Mexican restaurant Los Comales was the choice.

Here I had a Chicken Fajita Taco Salad and it was bigger than I had planned therefore it gave me Monday's supper meal too.

Sunday afternoon Jim and I took a road trip to Lake Corpus Christie State Park, a place where we plan to spend a few days camping in the future.

Monday we continued hanging the rest of the drywall and others worked at the taping and mudding.

The rest of the week we (the four Manitobans) got sent to do a variety of repair jobs. First we went to a job that needed minor repair to split joints at a few corners. Here we caulked and then painted. And Jim cut down two doors to fit properly.

Notice the contrast between the neighboring house with boarded up windows.
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After that we went to the Long Term Recovery team's warehouse to clean up, organize and to prime shelving boards. There was limited work there so Wayne our director took Jim along to accompany him to check out future jobs which the case worker had lined up. It was an eye opener experience of what our director lands up doing in preparation for having work lined up for us to do.

Then Wednesday and Thursday we were to remove the skirting from a mobile home in the Rockport area. Wayne makes contact with the homeowner while we set up our equipment.

After the removal we were to place the boards closer to make a nicer look and keep the critters out. We did not finish because we ran out of materials.

Jim doing a roof repair with Dennis bringing the supplies.

The rest of the team finished the mudding, sanding and the texturing on Thursday. It should be ready to prime on Monday.

Friday  we took a drive to Port Aransas on  Mustang Island, after our grocery run and breakfast outing at the Bakery Cafe.

Waiting 30 minutes for the short 5 minute ferry ride.

Waiting for the big freighters to pass before the ferry can proceed.

Three Oil Platforms in dry dock.

Saturday evening we will be attending a community drama "Basement Ladies".

Travels Back to Texas

Our four weeks at home were very enjoyable, catching up with family, friends and neighbors. We enjoyed Makenna's Sunday School singing, Amara's school program, our condo's Christmas supper, our own family Christmas get-together, Jim's sibs faspa, my family Christmas supper and numerous other events.

Sunday Julie took us to Winnipeg for a short visit with Kim, Anton and family and then to our motel so we could get to the airport early Monday morning. Our alarm got us up at 3 am so we could catch the 3:40  shuttle to the airport. Wow, was this place humming with people heading off on their travels. With only our carry-on luggage we were able to get ahead of many folks and get in the line for security checks and that went reasonably well. So we were off to Calgary right on time. Thanks to Shannon's instructions we found our way from domestic to international flights with no problems. In Calgary we needed to do a second security check and here Jim's bag, which included some of Manitoba favorites - cheese and farmer sausage which needed to be checked out manually. Cleared US customs well and managed to do the kiosks where you scan your passport and  do your photos. Now we were off to Houston TX and again we had a bit of a walk to find our gate for our final leg of the trip to Corpus Christi.

Here we were met by MDS friends Dennis and Joanne (Manitoba friends) who took us back to our Texas home, arriving here by 6 pm. But our day was not done yet. Jim got the water hose reconnected to the RV, had a quick supper and did a grocery run to nearby Rockport. A long and tiring day but we went to bed planning to go to work the next day.

Our fall crew added a Christmasy look to our RV entrance for us after we left. 

A trickster in the bunch tied a tin can to the bottom of the truck, but we took note before we drove to town for our groceries.

What a pleasure to be out in the warm evening loading the groceries compared to back home.

Tuesday morning we joined the MDS crew at 7:30 am. Four new couples to learn to know in the coming month. Our crew of 12 is at a new build in Aransas Pass.

The new house in Aransas Pass.

Our new term of service started nearly the same as in fall, with insulating a new home and installing the drywall. By Thursday we had most of the drywall up and the two bedrooms were mudded first coat.

It has been a short but tiring week but it is a good tired. It is rewarding to help someone in need.