Frakes, Kentucky- Day 4

Snapshot of Day 4:

We worked ten hours.

It rained a lot last night, so we had to battle mud this morning.

We made great progress today.

We met more of the homeowners' family when they stopped by this afternoon to express their gratitude for our work. Their excitement lessened our aches, pains, and itchy bug bites.

Siding crew:

The room addition gang:

End of Day 4:

Frakes, Kentucky- Day 3

Wednesdays are officially scheduled as off-days for Henderson Settlement work teams. Our gang opted to work this morning, though, and take off the afternoon to go into town. At breakfast this morning, the homeowners' daughter who works at Henderson Settlement, stopped by our table to say hello and thank us for the work we are doing for her parents. Better yet, she brought us a homemade German chocolate cake she made- yum!

When we arrived at the work site, our crew broke into the vinyl siding group and the gang working on the room addition. The homeowners' son and grandson came over to work again today, and we also met Tommy's sister-in-law who stopped by to introduce herself.

After installing the strips which the vinyl siding will fit into, placing and securing the vinyl siding moved rather quickly.









The group finished securing the floor joists, placed black plastic under them, and installed the sub-floor for the additional room.






Here is where we were at the end of Wednesday, Day 3.










Please keep us in your prayers on Thursday since we are planning to work a longer-than-usual day so we can make a lot of progress on the home.

Frakes, Kentucky- Day 2

Day 2 began like every other day- with devotions on the side of the mountain. The misty fog rising in the distance frames an incredible scene on which to meditate each morning.


Once we arrived at the work site, our crew split into two groups- the siding crew and the gang building the additional room onto the rear of the trailer.

The siding crew first finished framing the windows and nailing 2 x 4s every two feet all around the trailer. After that, we cut insulation board and nailed it between the 2 x 4s, all the while battling the wasps which continue to bombard us. As we installed the boards, we constantly experienced difficulty with getting the nails to catch onto something more substantial than the trailer's current thirty-five-year-old metal siding. (Yes, the family's trailer home is thirty-five years old.) After checking inside some of the spots where the old siding had pulled away, we realized the trailer only contained wet foam-like insulation between the current metal siding and interior walls. So we hope that the additional insulation board and vinyl siding we install will certainly keep the family warmer during the winter.












The other half of our crew continued to labor on the the floor for the new room. The guys secured the floor joists and laid the beams, but ran into a snag upon realizing that the trailer's existing concrete pad outside the back door was actually extending into the area where beams would need to be laid. This led to a lengthy process of using a sledgehammer to bust up the concrete pad and then haul away the rock.











We were joined by two new helpers today. The homeowner's son-in-law and twenty-one-year-old grandson spent the day working with us, too.

By the end of day two, we had definitely made more progress, but obviously have much more work to do.











During tonight's program at Henderson Settlement, we learned that the amount of poverty in the area greatly exceeds the Kentucky and national averages. Bell County where Henderson Settlement in located ranks as the twentieth poorest county in the entire country. Due to poor health care and a history of working in the mines, approximately one-third of Bell County's residents are disabled. Those statistics really clarified for me not only how blessed I truly am, but how great people's needs in our own country truly are.

Frakes, Kentucky- Day 1

Our motley crew completed our first day serving in Kentucky, and it was fun. Yes, it was actually very, very enjoyable. Admittedly, I possess next to no building experience and used a hammer more today than I have in the past twelve years combined, but I managed to come through the day unscathed and without any blisters or bug bites. Two people did get stung by wasps, though, but they are fine.

Our group is serving an elderly couple whose daughter works at Henderson Settlement. The older gentleman has black lung from laboring in the coal mines, and his wife works in a nearby hospital. After navigating the mountain roads, our group arrived at the family's trailer about 9am.

After unloading our tools and checking out the supplies, Tom's first order of business was to dig a latrine for the men to use throughout the day. Tommy, the homeowner, was gracious enough to allow the four females to use the restroom inside the house. (Thank you, Tommy, for the use of your restroom and for all the hard work you put in with our crew today.)

Our job this week will be two-fold: to add vinyl siding to the family's trailer and to add a room on the back of the family's home. After Dwight and George measured for the additional room, several of the men dug trenches for the posts and beams which will act as the room's foundation. Aislinn and Virginia then began removing rocks from the area and building a stone wall behind the house.












While one group worked in the back of the trailer, another gang ripped old siding off the trailer and nailed up strips which the new vinyl siding will fit into. I have now learned to nail in the center of the oval hole when hanging vinyl siding and to not make it too tight so the siding has room to fluctuate with the weather.

We also had to rip off the old metal shutters, frame the windows with wood, and nail boards onto the trailer to which we will affix the new siding. Throughout the day, we had to dodge wasps (We went through two cans of wasp spray by lunch) and even had a bat fly out from behind a shutter.


Here is the front and back of the trailer at the end of the day. Hopefully, you will be able to see much more progress being made tomorrow.

Kentucky Prayers

During the upcoming week, Curly Girl and I will be venturing on a week-long mission trip to Henderson Settlement in Frakes, Kentucky. We will part of a group of fourteen people of varying ages from our church. While in Kentucky, we will be hanging vinyl siding and adding a room onto a family's trailer.

Please send up the following thoughts and prayers for our group:

Health and safety for our group as we travel and while we work

Physical and emotional strength

For the members of our group to bond and work well together

Our group will contain three pairs of parents and children. Please pray that the parents and their tween/teen children find their relationships strengthened throughout the trip.

For the members of our group to view the family we will serve as an extension of ourselves and not as an "other"

For the family we will serve to view our group as the hands and feet of Christ

For each member of our group to be open to the lessons that God tries to teach us throughout the week

To learn more about Henderson Settlement, check out http://www.hendersonsettlement.com/

To read my previous musings when I committed to the Kentucky trip and admitting my lack of building experience, check out http://musingsthoughtsandponderings.blogspot.com/2009/04/kentucky-bound.html.

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

South Dakota Road Trip

Two years ago this week, my family and I ventured on a ten-day road trip from North Carolina throughout South Dakota and then back home.

The first two days of our adventure found us driving twenty-one hours which included checking out the St. Louis Arch and traversing the back-back roads of Missouri. (An accident had turned the interstate into a parking lot, and we opted to exit the highway instead of sitting on it. Once our minivan exited the interstate, we ended up on roads which were not in our atlas, however. Thankfully, a kind couple led us through a small town or two, across some farming country, and onto the highway we needed to eventually reach our destination.)

Our first stop in Sioux Falls consisted mainly of visiting my husband's grandmother who met her great-grandchildren, Curly Girl and Car Guy, for the first time. We also checked out the Sioux River before heading toward the northeastern corner of the state.


To prepare for our trip, my children and I read all of the Little House of the Prairie books. Since the Ingalls' family finally settled in DeSmet, South Dakota, we spent an afternoon visiting the school Laura attended and the house her Pa built in town. http://www.desmetsd.com/


While in South Dakota, my husband was anxious to show off the places he frequented as a child. He could hardly wait to see his aunt and uncle's 1000+ acre farm, and my kids enjoyed checking out the large hay bales and meeting their South Dakota cousins.


As we traversed across the state, I was taken with the prairie's openness and beauty. The area in the middle of the state which transitioned from prairie to mountains kept reminding me of Dances with Wolves which was filmed in the region. As we drove through the rolling hills surrounding Pierre, I could just imagine how the area appeared before it was developed.

While checking out the western part of the state, we maintained a home base in Rapid City. Of course, we visited Mt. Rushmore, the Crazy Horse monument, and Mammoth Site (http://www.mammothsite.com/).












My favorite sites, though, encompassed the natural aspects of the region. Custer State Park with its free-roaming buffalo and mountain goats was truly amazing (http://www.sdgfp.info/Parks/Regions/Custer/custersp.htm). I absolutely loved the breathtakingly beautiful, twisting turns and spires of the fourteen-mile-long Needles Highway (http://www.pbase.com/harpeggio/needles_highway) which ventures by Sylvan Lake and ends in Custer State Park.

I also loved, loved, loved venturing into Jewel Cave, the world's second longest cave (http://www.nps.gov/jeca), even though Car Guy had to cross his legs for the second half of our cave tour since there are no restroom facilities deep in the earth.

To conclude our western swing through South Dakota, we took in the creepily barren Badlands (http://www.nps.gov/badl) and checked out Wall Drug (http://www.walldrug.com), similar to a western South of the Border, for some levity. We later found out that my husband's aunt and uncle met at Wall Drug when she worked there long ago.










Our family truly enjoyed our road trip to South Dakota and developed a new respect for the Native Americans and pioneers who thrived in its demanding landscape. We also definitely learned what the prairie looks like. Yes, the prairie is beautiful, but if I never drive through Iowa with its endless flat lands, corn, and silos again it would be fine with me.

I would love to travel to Yellowstone or to the New Mexico/ Grand Canyon region next year, but one thing is for sure. The next time our family ventures west of the Mississippi, we will fly.

I wish . . .

Are there things you wish you remembered how to do or would like to alter about yourself- not in a negative I-can't-stand-myself-sort-of-way, but in an oooh-that-would-be-so-great approach?

I wish. . . .

. . . I remembered how to suck the juice out of honeysuckle. As a child, I did this all the time in the summer, but I wouldn't even know where to start if I tried it now.


. . . I liked more fruits and vegetables. I've toyed with the idea of joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) (http://www.localharvest.org/csa/) just so I'd have to learn how to cook and eat more fresh fruit and vegetables, and I still may do so. Since my poor dietary choices tend to rub off on the rest of my family, it is definitely something to consider.

. . . I had worked harder to maintain my early-twenties body than to try to resurrect it at thirty-eight.

. . . I was more athletic. I like to run, but am depressingly slow. I played tennis in high school, but can't imagine how goofy I would look if I tried to do so again, and I am still stung by how much my children laughed at me when I tried to swim a few laps last summer.

. . . I possessed more patience.

. . . I could still water ski.

. . . I remembered how to launch these things, whatever they are, into the air. I know it involves wrapping the stem around the bud-thing, but I have apparently lost my touch when it comes to shooting plant matter into the air.


. . . I recalled my French. I remember bits and pieces of vocabulary, but not the grammatical structure of how to put it all together. When Curly Girl and I begin learning Spanish this year, I am hoping that my French floats back on my new Spanish knowledge.

. . . I was more social. Hubby and Curly Girl love being the life of the party, but I am definitely a more sit-back-and-watch-the-action kind of girl. Life would be easier for everyone though if I enjoyed chatting as much as they do. The thought of flitting around and making small talk at a large party strikes fear into my heart. I'd much rather just spend the evening with a few close friends.

. . . I could sing. When Car Guy is a bit older, I would love for our entire family to perform together in a community theatre production. Curly Girl and her father have performed in shows together, and I greatly enjoyed doing so while in high school. I don't think I could ever get up the nerve to sing again for an audition, though, and if the musical director did hear me sing, he wouldn't cast me anyway.

. . . I stepped out of my comfort zone more. I am definitely not a risk-taker. I am all about the tried and true, of traveling on the safe route. But I'm working on it.

That's it for me. What do you wish you remembered how to do? What would you like to change about yourself?