Enjoying our new home

Our new home - 36 foot Dutchmen Fifth Wheel

Hideabed/back window

Computer Desk

Just thought we would give you a look at our new home. How spacious it is! Paul moved it in for us on Saturday. The plan was for Friday, but we got severely rained out. Thankfully the ground wasn't too wet to back it in on Saturday. Miss Mary kindly helped us move from the motorhome to the new place, and then even vacuumed out the old one for us! She's such a sweetheart.

Our MDS group had a combination housewarming/65th birthday party for Nettie at our place on Sunday evening (pot luck). We even put up an 8' banquet table in our livingroom! We could barely entertain two extra people in our old motorhome!!!

John isn't too happy about the TV reception. We got 6 excellent channels after he bought an exterior antenna for the motorhome. Now we have this big fancy antenna on top of the fifth wheel and have found that the previous owner had cut the cable because he had a dish. We now have to figure out how to reconnect it.

II have been thoroughly enjoying Verna Martens' book which she has just had published last November. It is called "Beyond Our Wildest Dreams - Beginnings in Blue Creek" and chronicles their many years there. She has done an excellent job of writing it and the story is wonderful. It is so neat to personally know her - I can hear her voice speaking as she writes... She had let me read her manuscript last year when it was a "work in progress". She has said she wishes now they had ordered more than 500 copies for the first printing, as she is just about out of them already. They are leaving for Belize in February for a couple of weeks, and I am sure any she has left will be gone.

I am very much enjoying the sound system in our new RV, which I can turn on with the press of a button instead of having to start up the accessories on the RV! John gets to spend evenings in his recliner/rocker, whereas I am mostly sitting at my computer desk with the laptop...

We try and socialize with the rest as often as possible. We will be sorry to see Bert & Doreen Warms, of Winkler, Mb., leave on Thursday, as we have very much enjoyed working and playing with them. If they had not made previous plans to spend a month in Phoenix, and if MDS had room for them here in February, they said they would love to stay and work with us. However, we have new people coming in. Len and Nettie Hiebert from Grunthal, Mb., have made arrangements to stay and we are sure happy to keep them here.

We quit complaining about the rain when we heard they had a foot of snow in P.A. yesterday.

Sure are happy with what we have accomplished here so far. Today John and Paul put some of the flooring in Archie's house. Bert and Len hope to be finished the 66 feet of wheelchair ramp for Leroy's house before he leaves. Leroy's house is Project #3 on the MDS website. I note they haven't published my new pictures on the website yet, although my website update is there.

Hope all goes well with all of you.

Copy of MDS Website update which I sent for second week of January

First picture is Project 3
Second picture is Verna and Doreen at Fur Festival Parade

Website update for Johnson Bayou Week of Jan 14th

Submitted by Linda Braun

Our men worked very hard this week and got much accomplished. Unfortunately, there is not yet any work for the women to do.

On Project 1, the light fixtures were installed and the floors sanded in preparation for installation of flooring. We are now waiting for flooring and kitchen and bathroom cabinets. We have been advised that the cabinets are unfinished and it will be our task to finish them.

Project 2 - More siding was installed, but one end and the back of the house remain to be done.

Project 3 - Bert, Jake and Len poured concrete pads for the landing and posts on the deck. Bert and Len built stairs and the deck on the back of the house. Maurice finished nailing hurricane ties, tightened chains to pillars and nailed the blocking. Paul has a good start on the plumbing. John completed the wiring.

Project 4 – The crew from Winnipeg completed the pillars for the second new house. Another MDS crew will be arriving to frame in this house.

On Wednesday at noon, the son of the owner of Project 3 brought lunch to our workmen. They were treated to gumbo, which is a spicy stew.

John installed the windows and doors on Thursday, with Maurice's assistance. The sheet rock also arrived on Thursday, and all of the men helped to move it into the house. Thursday was a heavy day for our volunteers.

The framing has passed inspection and the house is ready to be insulated.

Several of our volunteers attended the 51st Annual Fur and Wildlife Festival/Mardi Gras Parade at Cameron on Jan. 12th. It was very interesting in that Cameron only has one main thoroughfare and that is where the parade took place. It was a very impressive parade for such a small place. There were thousands of people in town and the highway was impassable for several hours due to the parade. The area is famous for excellent hunting, fishing and trapping.

We attended a fairly small Church of the Nazarene in Port Arthur on Sunday morning. Their congregation was one of the friendliest a person could ever encounter. The church is pastored by a lovely young couple and it was the wife's turn to preach. We were all very moved by her sermon. We had a heavy rain all night in the middle of the week and enjoyed some sunny weather otherwise. The evenings are quite cool.

Our group has a great camaraderie both in working and socializing and we are all enjoying our surroundings and meeting the local people.

Friday, Jan. 17th - WE HAVE A NEW HOME!

For lack of anything better to do on our day off this week, John said he wanted to go to Lloyd's RV Centre in Orange County, about an hour away, just to see what was available. I humored him - that was better than sitting at our site twiddling our thumbs...

We packed up our friends from last year, Paul and Mary, and were making a day of it.

It is a very large dealer, as there are RV's and RV Parks down here by the mile. Of course, with so much devastation in this area, RV's are the main type of accommodation until rebuilding is completed.

They must have had 200 units there, including fifth wheels, with slides and without, regular pull-types, buses (including FANCY buses), new and used. We walked into units that looked interesting, but there was no even one RV, including brand new ones, that appealed to me in any way, shape or form. I knew that if we ever purchased an RV, I did fancy one with two rocker recliners.

John had in the back of his mind a pull-type that he could pull behind the Imperial. There is no doubt we have outgrown the motorhome - there simply is not enough room

On our way out of walking on the lot, we caught sight of some units that they were cleaning that had just been delivered as trade-ins. John went into one while I looked at a Montana. He came out and asked me if I had been in the Dutchman he just looked at, and I hadn't. It was a 2003 -36 foot fifth wheel with 3 slides. Well, I could not believe my eyes:

• a computer desk in the huge livingroom!!! I have been fighting with this laptop for 3 weeks already - no place to type in comfort
• a brand new hideabed and two brand new rocker/recliners - the people who traded it had wanted to keep their old furnture, so they switched the new units to the old RV
• a nice big corner floor-to-ceiling entertainment centre for the TV, bigger than the one we have at home
• a built-in sound system with speakers and probably a CD player (I didn't check)
• nice kitchen, although small amount of counter space
• bedroom with walk-around queen-size bed; full width of the fifth wheel mirrored closed; a 5 ft ledge with 5 huge drawers underneath, and cupboards at the ceiling
• a sink with cosmetic cabinet above in the alley
• a lovely mini chandelier in the dining area
• a bathroom with an RV size tub, a toilet and another medicine cabinet
• a WASHER AND DRYER across from the bathroom
• a nice pantry in the kitchen beside the fridge

WOW!!

There were only a couple of "cons" I could think of: 1) the kitchen window at the sink is quite large and therefore the cabinets above the window are quite high, even for me. 2) the pantry didn't have roll-out shelves 3) the table unit had benches rather than chairs.

Just out of curiosity, I said to John we should find out how much they wanted - that would end the subject right there... He came back, disbelieving. He said $17,900.00! Well, if we were going to buy something different, that would not be totally out of our range.

To make a long story shorter (there was another lady who was waiting for the unit to come in so she could see it, but her husband couldn't get in for another 3 weeks, so they wouldn't hold it for her, and the salesman came down another grand. We couldn't think of solitary reason why we shouldn't so we did. I am counting the days until we will have our new home on our site - this Friday! While John and Paul are going to Houston with the group to see the Houston Space Centre on Saturday, Mary and I are going to move our stuff into the new RV.

WHODATHUNK!!!

Just thought we'd share our excitement (and possible insanity) with our friends. We are looking to the Good Lord to handle all of the "ifs" and "buts", because there are plenty. In the meantime, a Mexican came up to our RV after work today and was interested in buying the motorhome... I don't think we can sell it down here, but will look into it...

Bye for now. God Bless Y'all.

Hurricane damage to trees

These trees are in the yard of project 3. The home in the yard was totally demolished.

Project 2 - week 2

At this point, the commitment of MDS is to put siding and soffiting on the house. The soffiting has been completed by Paul, and John and Maurice have put up siding. The siding is just about completed.

Project 3 - week 2

THIS IS PROJECT 3 WHICH THE 20 WORKMEN FROM WINNIPEG CAME AND FRAMED IN ON THE 6 FT PILLARS.

Our crew got a lot of work done on this project this week.

Bert and Jake and Len poured concrete pads and Bert and Len built stairs and a deck on the back of the house. Maurice finished nailing hurricane ties and tightened the chains to the pillars and nailed all blocking.

Paul has a good start on the plumbing.

John worked on the wiring.

Thursday was a heavy day for the workers. John and Maurice put in all the windows and doors. The sheet rock arrived and the delivery truck put it on the front deck with the fork lift. Our guys had to carry it into the house. They were all dragging their butts by 3 p.m.

Trying again - mission accomplished

YAY - This is the bridge we go over every time we go to Port Arthur from Johnson Bayou. This trip there was a ship going under it.

WEEKEND ONE AFTER FIRST WEEK OF WORK

We have all been having our frustrations with our computers and internet, and are all trying to help each other... Doreen finally figured out why her computer wouldn't SEND messages when it would receive them! Verna has been an accountant so she is knowledgeable about figures, but not Microsoft Office, so I was able to show her how to save text and paste it wherever she wants it.

We had a beautiful day on Friday. All put up our canopies and I made waffles for brunch in our "yard" for the couples who hadn't gone in to Port Arthur to shop and do laundry.

I had heard that there was some kind of "FUR FESTIVAL" in Cameron, just down the highway and across the Ferry from here. Apparently this is a Wildlife and Fishing Haven and they have an annual festival much like the P.A. Winter Festival only with a Mardi Gras flavour and no snow. A Parade and Carnival Rides were advertised, so we packed up Paul and Mary and went to Cameron to check it out.

How we take for granted all the land room we have up north! This little town is right on the Gulf Coast and only has one thoroughfare - the main highway going through town. So therefore, the Parade has ONE street to travel on and everything else comes to a halt The town itself may have two additional side streets in between the bayous - there were too many cars parked to even take a tour. And everyone in the area was THERE! It was wonderfully festive, and basically a "Mardi Gras" Parade. They said that if a person wanted to try Cajun food, we were not going to find anything more Cajun than here. We figured we'll have plenty of time to try out Cajun food so didn't get any there.

There must have been 100 motorbikes in the Parade, about two dozen classic cars, 50 horses and 20 floats and a million people watching! We were very impressed for such a small place.

They had muskrat skinning competitions, duck calling, oyster shucking, and other competitions. We didn't get to see any of them. We did get to hear the Cajun band who was performing behind the Carnival, and it was excellent. I could have stayed for an hour and even danced, but my companions were ready to leave.

It was a gorgeous summer day and we were really glad we took our chairs. It looked like we weren't going to get any beads at first, because everyone on the street was clamouring for them. I kept thinking that it wasn't even ABOUT admiring the lovely floats and all the hard work to make them, but the parade watchers were just interested in how many beads they could get, and some were very serious about it. We were observing an elderly white haired lady in front of us who just got in there and grabbed all the beads, it seemed. We did come home with some beads, but only because the larger floats threw them out farther into the crowd.

Then on Sunday we went in to P.A. to a very friendly Pentecostal Church which had been highly recommended by Maurice and Sue. Boy were they right! Not only did their people remember Maurice and Sue from Christmas, but they were truly a friendly bunch. A young couple pastors the church, and the lady, Pastor Aimee, is vibrant and lovely. She preached the sermon and did a mighty fine job of it.

We then took in another Grande Buffet and then decided to drive to Beaumont, Texas, where George Jones was born, and tour the Beaumont Botannical Gardens. Of course they were not in bloom being winter, but they had a wonderful indoor conservatory which we went through as well. Again, we had a lovely day for it.

So that's the first weekend done, and a wonderful weekend it was.

Pictures from Johnson Bayou, LA

THE RED ROOM

ARCHIE'S HOUSE

I'LL LEARN HOW TO DO THIS YET...

First MDS webside update 2008 by Linda Braun

The new MDS Senior RV project crew for January is in place. Maurice and Sue Eby from Michigan remain on site, as well as Project Managers, Jake and Verna Martens, from Portage La Prairie, Man.John and Linda Braun arrived from Prince Albert, Sask., as well as Paul and Mary Stoltzfus, from Gap, PA, Bert and Doreen Warms, from Winkler, Man. and Len and Nettie Hiebert, from Gruenthal, Man. That makes 6 couples for this site, 2 from the U.S.A. and 4 from Canada. Again, we are blessed with a great group of volunteers, including a building contractor and a drywaller, aka sheet rock worker. We had a few days to settle in, and started working on January 7th.

During this time, we were happy to meet Jake and Verna’s daughter, Daphne, and husband, David Dyck, and 4 children from Belize, who came to visit our site and spend some time with their parents/grandparents.

The following was the status of our projects when we started:

Project 1 - Archie's house - the interior needs to be completed: flooring, installation of bathroom, installation of kitchen cabinets and baseboards.
Project 2 - Completion of siding and soffiting - at this point, that is all we are committed to do.
Project 3 - The RV crew prepared footings and installed 6 ft.pillars in Nov-Dec. Last week, a group of volunteers from Winnipeg, Man, framed the house on the pillars, including floor, walls, roof completely shingled, wiring and house wrap. WOW! The rest is up to us to complete, beginning with stairs so we can get up and down.
Project 4 - Part of the Winnipeg crew poured footings and pillars.

During the first week, our volunteers accomplished the following:

Project 1 - the ladies painted the baseboards. Several of our men prepared the floors for flooring and installed some of the light fixtures.
Project 2 - Paul finished the soffit framing and John and Maurice were working on the siding.
Project 3 - Jake, Bert and Len worked with the Winnipeg crew for the transition for us to carry on with the building on this house.

It is necessary for us to travel a fair distance to shop for groceries and do laundry. Port Arthur is 30 miles to the west, Sulfur is 45 miles NE and Lake Charles 50 miles N. There is a very busy little "corner store" on the highway a block from our RV Park for "essentials". Our first Sunday here, we attended the local Baptist Church as a group. The congregation warmly welcomed our presence in their community. There are several generations of families who have lived in this community all of their lives. They are all pulling together to get life back to normal after their common experience of devastation. Some have lost their complete homes, some just have to renovate, and many had to help rebuild their workplaces before they could start rebuilding their homes.

Everyone welcomes us into their homes and lives with great southern hospitality. We are also very thankful to the Catholic Church which has been very generous in offering a room for our morning devotions and social evening.

We have encountered all kinds of weather during this week - from very cold, to pouring rain, to wind, extreme fog and finally a perfectly lovely summer day where we could put up our awnings and have our brunch outdoors... the kind of day we northerners had been looking forward to.

First week of work completed

The Americans are complaining that they are being outnumbered by Canadians on our site!! There's one couple from Michigan and our friends, Paul and Mary, from Pennsylvania. The Project managers, Jake and Verna, are from Portage La Prariie, there's a couple from Winkler, Mb, one from Gruenthal, Mb,. and us. They are good-natured about it though.

John, Paul and Maurice have been putting on soffiting and siding on a big house one mile from our RV park. Archie's house aka the house with the red room, is about 2 miles from our park. It is called that because his granddaughter and her baby will be living with him and she wanted her room painted red. It is really RED - all walls including the closet. It does have nice big windows though. Most of the votunteers do not care for the red room. I may be the only one who really likes it!

Archie is 91 years old and presently in the hospital in Port Arthur (P.A.) with pneumonia. We are praying that he will recuperate and be able to enjoy his new home. We really look forward to meeting him, as he is said to be quite the "old cowboy" and has stories till the cows come home. So far we have met his grandson, Ivan, who is quite a nice young fellow and is in charge of Archie's house.

Doreen and I painted all the baseboards at Archie's house on Wednesday. The other men have been screwing down the floors, levelling and sanding them getting ready for the flooring, which will all be lino. Doreen got to pick the out lino, as she has home-decorating talents. Apparently when the kitchen cupboards arrive we will be staining and varnishing them before installation.

Today, Thursday, it rained cats and dogs. Not a constant pelting rain, but just here and there. it was terribly socked in in the morning. The sky was clearing towards the end of the day, thank heaven. The grass is just saturated on the RV park.

We have not encountered any alligators yet. So far the mosquitoes have been moderate. But then, we have not had any real nice weather yet either.

Hello 2008 - interim blog

On New Years Day, we drove down to Jasper, Texas. Absolutely lovely scenery. We were at the Walmart Store shopping for groceries and looking for an RV park to spend our first night in our RV. John was out by the RV checking it out, and a truck drove up and recognized our rig. It was Walt and Pat Willems from California, who were in Alabama with us last year, and who are running the RV project at Newton, Texas this year. They invited us to spend the night at their site, the East Texas Baptist Bible Encampment. Newton is about 150 miles north of Johnson Bayou. There is also a regular MDS site there whose volunteers do not work the same hours as the RV-ers. There are many homes to keep all volunteers busy.

Pat invited us over for supper in their lovely fifth wheel. We also got to meet Gil and Rhoda Friesen, the Directors of the other project, very nice people.

We enjoyed our first night in our motorhome.

Pat and I spent Wednesday morning together shopping and tourihg their little town of Newton, while John helped Walt and some of his volunteers arranged shelving units for the dining hall to get it ready for the influx of workers in the regular program for the month.

We decided to wend our way down to Johnson Bayou on Wednesday afternoon and arrived at our site on the Gulf Coast in mid afternoon. Our Project Managers, Jake & Verna Martens, had not yet returned from their Christmas holiday and one of the other MDS people showed us where to park. We cannot SEE the gulf coast waters from our RV site, but we are right beside the highway along the shore of the Gulf Coast.

The weather was not very warm our first few days and it was necessary to wear jackets and have our heaters on in our RVs.

We drove to Port Arthur on Thursday. What a different world than what we are used to - coastal waterways, high bridges, oil rigs and refineries in the Gulf, bayous with grazing cattle...

John's tools were unloaded at the first house we will be working on. We have been told that when the tidal wave from Hurricane Rita came through, this particular house remained in place because of the trap door in the floor, which allowed the water to fill the house and fixate it, rather than float it away. 91 year old Archie, the owner of the house, presently resides in a FEMA trailer in the same trailer park we are in. His son's house and at least 3 others which were next door to his, floated half a mile out into the bayou, where they remain today. unsalvageable.

We have met Maurice and Sue Edy, from Michigan, our next door neighbours. Jake and Verna have returned, and our co-workers from Alabama, Paul ad Mary, from Gap, PA, have also arrived. What a great reunion! Bert and Doreen Warms, from Winkler, Mb. also arrived on Sunday, Jan 6th. We had several days to relax before it was time to go to work.

We did have a rather disturbing incident happen when our credit card was frozen. It appears we have been a victim of credit card fraud. Not only did someone charge a bunch of charges on the internet, but they also had enough personal information that the credit card company said they called and spoke to John, who advised of a change of his address to Ontario. What a shocker that was. Thankfully the credit card company was "on the ball" and froze everything before too much damage could be done. It is really scary that this would happen to us.

I understand that a person has to register in order to make a comment on blog spot and it may not be something you wish to do. If anyone is checking these, I would really appreciate knowing, so if you don't want to leave a comment, just send us an e-mail to our regular e-mail address and let me know that you are. If no one reads them, it hardly makes sense to be doing all this typing!!!

Interim Post on leaving Canada

The border crossing was less stressful than last year, but one of the guards was very rude. The guard who searched our unit did not detained us long,

Our first cross border gas was $3.09/gallon. It is neat that our RV is of the vintage that it still registers gallons and miles. Our journey will take us straight down Highway 281 to the Gulf Coast.

The first night we stopped at Aberdeen, N.D. In chatting with the lovely lady who was doing housekeeping, she advised that her mother had lived in Canada. She said her mother was one of the Dionne quintuplets. WOW!

The second night, Dec. 29th, we stayed at York, Neb. During that day, we traveled over the most awesome bridge I have ever seen, at Yankton, Neb. It spanned the Missouri River. Unfortunately, I was not able to get a picture.

Dec. 30th, we drove through Kansas and Oklahoma, stopping for the night at Perry, Ok. It was not yet warm enough to stay in our motorhome, but there was no snow on the ground for the last hundred miles. At Wichita, we traveled on our very first toll highway ever. It cost us $3.00 to go about 15 miles. Gas varies from $3.09 down to $2.85 per gallon. On Dec. 31st, we stopped for gas at a very small privately owned service station. I am sure we made the owner's day by gassing up there!

All across America, we saw colorful deflated Santa Clauses, reindeer and Christmas trees. In the wind, one Santa was bobbing about, looking like he had fallen and couldn't get up.

We spent New Year's Eve in Texarkana, which was my goal. However, it didn't work out to contact the car club there to see what was happening for New Years Eve. When we asked the desk clerk about a place to go and find some good C & W music to dance to, she said that because it was New Years Eve, all the clubs or whatever would be catering to the young crowd and playing rap music, so we immediately lost interest in partying. Went to the IHOP next door for supper and spent a quiet evening in the motel room, where I was finally able to get onto the internet.

Connecting to WI-FI with my laptop has been a constant frustration, as well as finding a proper telephone which would take my international phone card.

It was really neat, on New Years Eve, to be able to walk to the IHOP with no jacket on.

Travelling fro Brandon to J.B.

We are at Johnson Bayou

This is my first opportunity to get into our blogspot from our own new laptop computer from our "new home". It has been very frustrating trying to get onto the internet and being unsuccessful at every turn - until this evening. We have WI-FI here and it was just a matter of getting the computer set up properly.

I have two interim updates to download to this blogspot. I think I will leave that task for .tomorrow.

We found out on Saturday that our credit card had been pirated over the internet and a number of charges were made which we did not make. We were very worried about any repercussions that might have, but our card provider has assured us they will take care of it. Thankfully they were on the ball and froze the account when they realized something funny was up. A person thinks it can never happen to them!! Thankfully we have alternative methods of payment.

The weather had been quite cold here, so much so we required a heater at night. Today it was 70 degrees though. It was quite windy. We have been doing a lot of short trips to Port Arthur and Sulfur, scouting out the shopping before we go to work.

Sure would love to get some e-mails from friends so we know what you'all are doing. Don't know how to make a comment on the blogspot, but our regular e-mail is open.

I'm hoping to walk on the beach a bit tomorrow if its nice. There are lots of lovely beaches on the gulf coast not far from here.

Good night.

We have waltzed across Texas

What beautiful country we have driven through!

I had a new posting typed on our laptop, but there is no WI-FI available for connection at the place we are staying today so I have come to the Library at Newton, Texas, to check for e-mails. We are staying for a night or two at the second SR RV Project where friends we met last year, Walt and Pat Willems, are Project Directors. We ran into them at the K-Mart Store in Jasper, Texas, quite by . What a lovely surprise! We had also been looking for an R.V. Park for the night!

Again, we do not see any specific hurricane devastation, but the homes they will be working on were damaged by rains from the hurricane. There will be plenty of devastation to be seen where we are going, down in Johnson's Bayou (I imagine).

Just checking in. Hope to get to a WI-FI area so I can post the blog I had created.

So long for now.

Linda