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.
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