2022 Madisonville Kentucky Work Day 4

        Mission Trip Madisonville Kentucky, 6/30/2022

    Hello enthusiastic blog readers! Thank you for keeping up with our adventure and of course thank you for your many prayers that have helped us through this busy week. We apologize for no pictures this time, we are having technical difficulties. Most of us started the day off with a hearty breakfast, followed by hectic packups as the teams were getting ready to go to our sites. 

    Now I'm going to let Kyle explain what happened on team Carmen. First of all, Kyle succesfully pet a cow today with a little encouragement to keep tryinng from Rick. The team was laying blocks again today and they should be finished with the final wall tomorrow.  Great job guys!  Everyone there survived the heat, if just barely, and had a very productive day.  When Rev. Peter arrived back at the church many people, including me (Clark) could only recognize him by the sound of his voice.  

    Next I'll talk about team Bob.  Pastor Jeff prayed for our team's safety and blessing before we started word.  We were working on the Sycamore house in Dawson Springs. When I was eating breakfast there were a few clouds in the sky.  But once again, the sky was cloud free by the time we arrived at the site, which we all knew meant that the temperature would be way up soon. We tried getting a lot of work done in the morning before it really heated up. Thanks to pastor Bob and the North Carolina mission team, we got off to a busy start, finishing the outside framing walls of the house. By the way, yesterday I meant to say that the North Carolina group comes from the Covenent Church, because the North Salem team is part of our group that traveled down. Because of the extreme heat, we took shade breaks once every hour and drank lots of water to try to cool off. Connie went to the Rural King store and bought us all special rags to put around our necks that, once soaked in water,  really kept us cooler.  Thanks Connie! 

    In the afternoon, we even decided to spend some time in the crawlspace under the house where it was shady and somewhat cooler. By after lunch, we were able to start putting up the framing for the interior rooms, so we soon had an idea of what the completed house would look like. Now this house is larger than the ones that Fuller plans on building in the future, because Dawson Springs requires that houses that are built on old home sites have the same footprint.  This one we were working on was bigger than it needed to be. The supervisor Scott was talking to us for a bit, and said that Fuller has enough funding to build 100 new houses. In addition, they also plan to repair houses with more minor damage from the tornado.

     A neighbor of the family from up the street came to say hello and thanked us for helping out. Once again, we were blessed by having Debbie, the mother, and her daughters Emily and Savannah stop by for a visit in the afternoon. Pastor Bob was more than happy to show them around the house, which again since the interior walls were laid out, they could start imagining what the house will fully look like when it is finished. Debbie then told us that not only was she worried about her own children during the tornado, she was also looking after another child during all of the mayhem. When she went to a community center after the tornado where other victims were meeting up, she met up with the mother of that child who was very grateful for keeping her child safe during the tornado. One day Debbie told us that when President Biden came to visit the town, all of the highways were closed since he was traveling, so for a full day everybody in Dawson Springs had trouble getting anywhere. After we left the worksite for the day, some of us went to Casey's General Store which was close to the worksite in Dawson Springs.  I wish to thank Lorene for buying me that cold bottled water.  (I was too tired to get out of the car.)  Sometimes today while working I felt as hot as I did on the TX mission trip, and that was really hot!

    And now onto team Elvis. The team was composed of Carrie, Heather, Davis, Sue, and Geoff, along with a member from the North Carolina crew. Now they were a day behind team Bob, so they were just framing the house today. Team Bob will be taking over team Elvis tomorrow since Elvis and Carrie are leaving first thing in the morning. 

    Meanwhile, Mel was assigned to assist the Fuller Center with stocking the toolshed that Mary Rae and I worked on Monday, and she was putting insulation in. She finished early enough that she went over and joined team Carmen for the last hour of the day. And as if she didn't go enough, she put the lasagna in the oven that she prepared last night along with chocolate and peanutbutter chocolate brownies. Take it from me, both of them were delicious.

     During the team meeting, we talked about many things, including what our plans will be tomorrow, with our half work day. Most of us will be going to Pennyrile Forest State Resort, some will be going home, and at least two of us will be going to a coin shop, at the suggestion of Kyle. We also had to make a decision about what to do with the extra money we have for the mission trip. We decided half will be going towards next year's trip, the rest will be given to the people that drove themselves for gas money, and the rest will be going to the Fuller Center for Housing. Mary Rae, who left yesterday is now safely in Philadelphia.  

    The last order of business was the great devotions led by Carmen.  We all read and thought about the Psalms 103:1-5.  It talks about praising the Lord, and the good things he would do for us.  Interesting comments made during the discussion were that the Lord desires us to be satisfied with Him.  Don't complain (even about the heat, for instance) because you are here for a purpose, and we should not take that lightly.  God's passion is Us; We are His masterpiece.  When we get back home and others ask us "What did you do on this trip?" we should reply "It's not what I did, it's what God did for us. And He gives us power to the weak, and we can have wings like eagles. Somebody mentioned that this happened in the movie Charriots of Fire. God has horizontal and vertical grace, just like a cross, the vertical grace is him standing there, and horizontal grace is his arms, ready to give anyone and everyone a hug. 

    Now for the closing comments. Connie reminded us that we chould not pick up metal tools that have been out in the hot sun unless you have gloves on. Overheard recently at a worksite: "Keep your booger hooks off of the bang bang button." Jeremy plays the Saxaphone and the guitar, while Mel likes to sing, and Peter both plays guitar and sings. That makes me think that we should have a music night where everyone plays an instument and sings.

     Well that's a wrap, thanks for tuning in.  Hope to see y'all tomorrow.  This has been your faithful bloggers Clark t and Kyle m. Goodnight, we will roport back tomorrow.