AUGUST FLEW BY FAST

August started with a County Fair and Rodeo in a nearby community. We actually needed to clean the church that day, (just the 2 of us, but that doesn't take long since the church is so small), so we skipped the big rodeo and attended the Kids Rodeo. 

 They had a miniature roping contest as well as “Stick Horse” barrel races. It was really cute! The “horses” and ropes were provided for the contestants.

This is Nash who lives upstairs

Also early in August we were pleased to receive a visit from our daughter Shellie, her husband Jason and three of their kids. Although we only had them for one night, as they were en route from Utah to their home in Virginia, we loved each moment with them and appreciated that they came hours out of their way to see us. 

 We enjoyed card tricks, roping a “calf”, watching a heard of cattle grazing, experiencing driving on the crazy bad roads, and just visiting.

Our grandson Chance digging in the sand

                                                                                       Sterling roping

He learned quickly and was actually chasing the neighbor kids around the yard and roping    them!  It was really cute, and the boys loved the attention.

                                                                               Phebe worked HARD to catch this one!

Now that some of the water has receded from the roads we were able to travel to the west side of the ranch, where we visited 8 more homes.  Yes, they all need some work done, and yes, we are still receiving calls from the eastern and northern sectors;  "My basement just flooded", "My dishwasher is leaking water pretty badly", "The cold water in our shower isn't working," "The wind tore the rain gutter off our barn".  So we addressed those problems while also beginning work on the western homes, and we have met some more wonderful families and have already fixed some leaky roofs, repaired a couple of decks, installed a water filter, repaired lots of doors,  chased mold out of a basement, and much more.  We spent last week on a 4-day circuit where we would sleep at different ranches at night to save driving time getting to the next job the following day.  We put 200 miles on our truck driving the circuit.  

Following is a sampling of our projects this month:

                             This was a project I worked on.  Between the bad water and hot sun, the deck was a wreck.

       I was able to sand the rails clean, but will be repainting the deck boards in a couple of weeks

 One cowboy had a barn where he tack room door was so narrow that he couldn't carry his saddle through it without squirming and stepping sideways.

                          So Bruce added 24 inches with a new door and made the cowboy very happy!

                One day we are down in a crawl space beneath a house running pipe for the propane regulator...

 and later that same day at a different house (far away) Bruce was up in an attic trying to locate a roof leak.  He saw the tail end of a snake up there.

While Bruce was in the attic I was on the roof with a hose squirting water in all the possible nooks and crannies trying to discover the source of the leak.

While Shellie's family was in town we worked on a horse barn where the rain gutter had been partially ripped off in a storm.  The cool thing was that we could set up the scaffolding on the bed of a flat truck and just drive along the roof line.

This was another project of mine.  I called it "The Deck From Heck".  There was a big burn hole in the middle of the deck, which Bruce repaired before I sanded and painted.  The boards are warped and splitting, but a replacement deck is not in this years budget.

              Completed deck, sanded and stained

     This is the moldy basement where I killed the mold, patched the walls, sanded, then painted

The other missionaries are working feverishly on a new house that they want to have completed before November 1st when all the missionaries go home for the winter.  Due to some delays earlier this summer, they are behind schedule, so on Thursday we received our first "Mission Transfer" where the Ranch Manager asked us to slow down on the maintenance and work full time on the new house.  We still have two leaky sinks to replace, some doors and windows to replace, a counter top to fix and much, much more, so we are going to do some creative scheduling to try to get things done and help on the house as well. 

                                                     The new house is shaping up and is all framed inside.

                                                    Bruce on scaffolding working on attic ventilation

One tender mercy occurred while driving past the McGinley ranch, when we decided on a "whim" to stop by for a quick visit while en route to our next location for repairs.  Elaine Peters was there and it was obvious that she had driven her lawn mower down a pretty steep hill, and the lawn mower was totally stuck and high centered while resting against a tree.  She was praying that help would come along, as she thought her only option was to cut down the tree in front of her to get the mower out.

 So, Bruce pulled her out with a four-wheeler, and she was back in business.  It is always gratifying to be an answer to someone's prayers. We went home with a warm feeling in our hearts and some tomatoes and squash from her garden.

 A similar experience happened last month when we stopped in at another ranch where the cowboy's wife was trying to cut the lawn without much success.  Bruce discovered that one blade was twisted into a J shape from running into railroad ties. Bruce took the blade off, found a vice in the garage, pounded it straight and put it back on the mower. It worked fine for a while, then the mower stopped and wouldn't start again. Bruce diagnosed that it had a dirty air filter, which he remedied right away. Once again we were at the right place at the right time to come to their rescue.  It doesn't get any better than that!