This was our last week here in Minot, North Dakota.  It has been a very rewarding, and emotional experience.  Sharon and I have made many new friends.  We will miss working with each and everyone of them.  Sharon and I spent a total of eight weeks here, in that time we have had the privilege of working with over twenty different couples and in a few individuals.  We all come different walks of life, such as in the above picture, there is a retired truck driver and his wife, a retired school teacher and his wife, a retired pastor, a retired firefighter, a retired mechanical engineer and his wife, and a retired air traffic controller and his wife.  There are many more like us that make up the NOMADS mission organization.  www.NOMADSUMC.org. 

We have worked on over a dozen different homes, contributing over 4000 volunteer hours.  All of these hours have been lovingly given.  Our wonderful Lord has given all of us the means and abilities, to do His work in this community.  We have help families to rebuild their homes, some that have had to live in small trailers provided by FEMA for over two years.  Not only have some of the families been without their homes, many have suffered loss of jobs, severe health problems, and other hardships that it is hard for us to understand. 

We worked on one house earlier this year that is owned by a nice older woman.  We met her and three of her daughters while we were working.  We told her that we would love to come visit her when we returned to Minot in August.  She said that we would be very welcomed to visit with her.  We when returned we found out that she was in the hospital after suffering a stroke.  Her house was not completely finished, but apparently it is livable.  Her health is not very good, but we have been told that she has gone home at her request.  She wants to live out her life in her restored home. 

Today we finished our work installing sheet rock on the ceiling of part of a house, finished taping and mudding the rest of the house.  This couple has been through a lot.  The wife lost her job right after the flood, causing financial hardship for the couple.  He had a heart attack and had major surgery.  He also injured a hip while working on their house prior to the heart attack. 

I could go on and on telling you about situations like this, but you get the picture.  So, as I said earlier in this post, we have gotten so much out of this project.

Enough of that, let me just post some pictures of the past couple of weeks of the work we did to close out our time here.

We worked hard, but we also enjoyed each other in fellowship.

Morning devotions on each work day.

Enjoying a get together after a hard day at work.

Gathering at a benefit for one of Minot's finest.  Darin, the police officer that I told you about in a past post that has cancer.

Pictures of Darin and his family

And today, when we left the home of Liz and Warren.  Here we are presenting them with a Bible, and closing with a prayer to ask God to continue with their healing, both financial and physical.

We are leaving a lot of sweat, and a lot of tears here in Minot.  God has blessed us with this experience.  Our God is a wonderful God, He does provide for our every need.

Sharon and I are off to Pecatonica, Illinois, for the NOMADS annual meeting.  There we will attend several seminars that will teach us some new building skills, and even a safe driving course.  We will also be taking a leaders training class.  There will be about 150 NOMADS couples there, many we have never met.  I will probably not do any post for a couple of weeks, so take a break from the travels for awhile.

Just remember,

God Does Really Really LOVE each and every one of you.

Gary

We made a visit to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park yesterday.  Just some pictures I would like to share.  Enjoy the ride.

 

A beautiful end to a great day.

"For the beauty of the skies"

God Loves You

Gary

I want to start out this posting a little different than most.  We did not make any special trips sightseeing this week, just a lot of hard work.  There were nine of us working on this house this week, all of us teamed up doing different jobs.  One couple continued working in the basement framing in for the rooms that will be bedrooms, another couple worked on putting up sheet rock in a closet that was built where a furnace had been and working around windows patching the sheet rock where new windows had been installed, one group worked on installing windows, while the rest of us started putting up the new siding.  I posted pictures last week of the work in the basement, so this week I will post some of the outside work.

The house was wrapped with a moisture barrier protection material prior to installing the windows and siding.  This was completed on Monday.  This is where we left off as we finished our workday.

By the end of the day on Tuesday we had most of the windows installed and had started installing the vinyl siding.  The home owner had selected a brick color.  As you can see it looks really good.  A lot of challenges are come with remodeling a house that had water above the ceiling, and there for about three weeks.  It took about three weeks for the waters to recede after the flooding.

After we finished the end of the house, we started on the front.  The first thing that has to be done is putting on the starting strip of metal.  The metal strip has to be level and aligned with the other sides of the house so the siding goes up evenly around the house.  If the starter strip is installed correctly, and level, the siding goes up nice and straight.  I can brag a little saying that we got that starter strip on just perfect.

By the end of the work day on Wednesday we had finished up to about halfway on the front of the house.  Jim, in the blue shirt on the right, has a piece of the metal starter strip that he is helping to put on the south end of the house.  Allen, in the red shirt, is waiting for Meridith to cut a piece of the vinyl to be installed on the front of the house.

The group was invited to dinner and a concert at Hope Village on Wednesday night.  I have told you all about Hope Village before, but for those that have joined us on this trip, Hope Village is the central point for volunteer organizations that are working in Minot.  One of the large Lutheran Churches in Minot stepped up first to start recovery efforts.  Several other denominations joined in with the work.  It was decided to make one person responsible for doing all of the coordination of work.  The gentleman in the middle of the following picture has been doing just that for about two years.  His efforts have really paid off.  Over 400 families have been able to move back into their homes since the flooding.

The young man in the blue shirt is the pastor of the Lutheran church that is hosting Hope Village.  The churches parking lot was turned into a large construction company and housing facility for volunteers.

After some brief introductions, we sat down to a very good BBQ dinner.  There was another group from Florida there also.  Volunteers come from all parts of the country.

After dinner we were entertained by a family of violinist.  The four young people in the following picture are all brothers and sister.  They played some very good classical music, with a couple of hymns included.  They travel the country doing concerts for church groups. They are very good.

Thursday had us back at work installing more siding.  The hardest part is doing the last row.  It usually does not go in as a whole piece.  We had to actually trim the siding to make it fit.  A small strip that is used to clip the last piece into is installed first, the the last strip of siding is snapped into place.  Holds it nice and tight.

The finished job is looking pretty good.

While some of us were finishing up on the front, a few of the others were starting on the south end of the house.  As you can see they got a lot done.

When our group finished the front of the house, we started on the back.  It took us most of the afternoon installing just a few panels.  You can see pipes and vents sticking out of the wall.  We had to cut around each one of those to make the siding fit.  There was a lot of measuring, remeasuring, and remeasuring, to make sure we had our measurements right before we cut.  It paid off, because the panel fit right on the first try.

This is where we left off for this week.  We hope to have all of the siding finished by the end of the work day on Tuesday. 

This house is special for us.  I want to share with you the story of a very brave young man.  Darin, the home owner, has leukemia.  But he has not let that stop him from being a loving husband and father, and an important part of his community.  Darin is a Lieutenant on the Minot police department.  He has continued to work, although his health has been very poor.  He stands about 6"2", his weight is about 130 pounds.  He had actually lost weight down to about 100 pounds.  Darin has been fighting is illness for about 9 years.  I believe that he will win the battle.  He has many friends in Minot, and after talking with him I can see why.  His faith in God is strong too, and many of you know that is a great thing to have.  We are working hard to try and have Darin and his family back into their home before we leave in two weeks.  It is going to be tight, but we are going to do our best.

I will give you another update on our progress next week, so in the meantime you all take care, have a great weekend, and remember

God Loves You

Gary

It has been over a week since we last visited with you all, so let me bring you up to date on what we have been doing.  Since we got here we have been pretty busy getting into the work routine.  We met all of the team members last Sunday, had a chance to work with most of them, then half of them left.  Those that left had already been here for three weeks when we got here.  Our team made some more changes this week when three other couples left, but we have had three more arrive to take there place.  That is the way these disaster recovery projects work, we volunteer for a week, two weeks, or whatever length of time we would like to spend.  Sharon and I have decided to do four weeks at one time.  That has allowed us to really see progress in the repair work we are doing, plus meet some great people.

Enough of that, let me tell you what we have been doing.  Our first day on the job sent us back to a house that we had worked on a couple of months ago.  The house had been made ready for the vinyl siding to be installed.  An earlier group had started the siding on one side, so we started on the rest.  The house is a two story structure, so a lot of the work would have to be done on a scaffold.  Part of the team started working on the highest part of the house, while the rest of us started on what we could do on the lower parts.  The siding got to a point where it all had to be done from the scaffold.  We only had enough scaffold for a couple of people to work on, so the rest of us headed out on Tuesday to work on another house.

NOMADS had already been working on the second house for a few weeks.  The wall board had been installed and finished, the walls painted, and ready for the doors and new windows.  The basement had been cleaned, and materials delivered to start framing in bedrooms, den, utility room, and bathroom.  That is what we started doing.

Except for the lumber, the basement was empty.  None of the framing had been done so we got to start from scratch.  In the following picture you can see some dark post on the outside wall.  Those post are actually steel I beams that are placed along the wall to help straighten it out.  The walls had been damaged by the water that flooded the house.  The top of the beams have a system made of metal plates, a large nut, and a bolt that is tightened once a month to straighten out the wall.  I am telling you that so you can understand why we are having to put up the outside walls about a food from the concrete wall.  It has been a real challenge to make the new wall square, but we have done a pretty good job of it.

Two of the team are looking at what we have done and discussing the placement of a bedroom door.

The windows are far enough from the wall studding that we are having to build a box to reach from the windows to the wall.

The team that was working on the first house installing siding had finished by Thursday morning.  They loaded up the scaffolding and brought it to the house we were working on.  You can see they had it put up and started putting up the house wrap.  As soon as we complete the house wrap we will install the new windows.

There was still a lot of cleaning to do in the main part of the house. so Sharon and one of the other ladies did a lot of vacuuming and sweeping.

On Friday some of us decided to go up to the US and Canadian border to visit the International Peace Gardens.  Sharon and I had been there on our last trip to Minot, but we we too early for the flowers to be blooming.  Take a look at some of the flowers.

 

 

On our way back to Minot we saw some strange turtles.  Thought you might like to see them too.  These were in two of the little towns that we passed through.

When is the last time you saw a turtle driving a snow mobile?

 Well, we start back to work tomorrow morning.  We lost three more couples this weekend, but we have three more that just got here. 

You all take care, and until the next visit remember,

God Loves You

Gary