CAMPING FILLMORES

 For you who missed the latest news, we are off on our last mission....wait, didn't we say that last time? We are currently in Indiana, serving at an old Boy Scout Camp that the Church recently purchased, trying to get it into shape as a Girl's Camp before the summer hits.  We not only get to help get the camp in shape, but we get to stay the summer and act as Camp Hosts, which promises to be a lot of fun!

We have been here a month now, and have been mainly working on the Caretakers House....which is where we are currently residing.  But wait, let's back-track a bit.  We lived in a little cabin the first three weeks, which was quite an adventure.

We moved in as a snowstorm was brewing.

Welcome to our kitchen

The inside of the fridge was in better shape than the outside

This was the only cupboard in the kitchen so it housed everything that a mouse might want to nibble on. There wasn't even one drawer in the place.  Note how Bruce is dressed for the job...inside the cabin.  No heat wave going on here!

This was my utensil "drawer"

There are nine stakes that will be using the camp, so the word went out that the Caretakers house had no furnishings, and everything on my list was donated.  However, the person who signed up for the dishes and glasses didn't show up for a week, so we were washing the few paper plates we brought as well as our dixie cups.  You can imagine that paper plates can only take so many washings before they fall apart, so one night we had to rip up a pizza box and use it for plates.  The real stuff finally appeared at our door, and we expressed the proper amount of gratitude.

Bathroom sink.  The mirror was so high that I could only see the top of my head.  That was ok with me. 

Toilet and shower.  My knees could almost hit the wall, and Bruce could rest his head on the wall while stationed there.

Yes, we replaced the shower curtain, and Bruce is fixing a leak in the toilet.  He thought it was a good idea at the time, but two weeks later the temperature dropped and the pipes in the cabin froze up.  No more water for the sinks or toilet.  The small leak might have kept the pipes running?

This is the crawlspace under the cabin where Bruce went to check on the frozen pipes.  Nothing was burst open, and a week later the water began running again.  

The access hole into the crawl space from the outside was only 20"x12".  It's a good thing Bruce is a skinny contortionist!

Sleeping quarters.  Can you spot the 3 thick, fluffy mattresses under Bruce's sleeping bag?

This was our closet in the cabin. 

 You might think we were miserable there, but actually it was very quaint and the bedroom and the bathroom were warm enough to make one comfy.

Most of our time has been spent working in the Caretakers House

Some previous tenant had a dog which did it's duty inside and caused quite a scent in the house.  Hence, all the floors, some walls and the most of the duct system had to be removed and replaced.   The bathroom was gutted down to the studs and floor joists due to faulty plumbing and mold.  The other missionary couple and a few of their friends had been working on the house for the previous three months.

This shows part of the bathroom floor ripped up and looking down into the basement

This is where the bathtub used to be

Below is what the house looked like the day we arrived.  The bathroom is getting tile on the walls. The tile was all donated....did we mention that there was not a formal budget allotted for the repairs or furnishings in this house?

Bathroom all done

Here are some more donated items which were stored in one of the bedrooms, which we had to work around while painting walls, the ceilings, and installing flooring.

This is the same room as above and is our designated office.  The carpet for the three bedrooms and living room was donated.  The desk was another donation and it took 4 strong men to get it in place.  We'll show you this room when it is all set up and functioning.

A new sliding door was donated and installed.

Now the carpet is down and the trim has been installed around the sliding door.  Need I mention that the baseboards and trim was also donated. We just had to paint it.

The kitchen has been one of our main work stations.  But now the mess has been moved, the floor is down and I actually made cookies yesterday for the full-time missionaries to pass out to their investigators.

Bruce and I installed all the flooring in the kitchen, hallway and bathroom.

This was our first meal after we moved up into this house.  We are still hunting thrift stores for a suitable kitchen table.

After Bruce got all the electrical repairs in place, we insulated the attic.  First, Bruce built a cat-walk 15 inches higher than the ceiling and he filled up to that level and beyond.  Yes, the insulation was all donated.

 Our donated dressers are now in place and tomorrow we can actually unpack our bags.  We have been living out of our travel bags for the past month so this is pretty exciting!  

Enough about the house. We have been able to visit with our daughter Marcie and her family in Bloomington, Indiana, as well as with our daughter Stephanie and her family in Kentucky since we've been here.  We have already spoken in our Connersville ward as well, so we should be off-the-hook for awhile.

It has been a little chilly (our temperatures have been below freezing for two weeks) and we have had more than our share of snow.  Fortunately my daughter Jill gave me some leggings for Christmas, which have certainly come in handy.  I know that we have made this mission sound like so much fun that you are all wanting to sign up for one just like it!

This was tonight's sunset.  We feel blessed be enjoying good health and to be surrounded by such beautiful scenery and good people;  and we see deer on our property regularly.

Next time we will show you more of the camp itself.

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!