Third week of January, 2010

Photo 1; Sleeping Beauty - Miss Jane having a good rest on Mr. John's sofar
Photo 2: Dark pink + dark blue = purple

The renovation at Mr. John’s home is progressing one room at a time. This home will be remembered for the PURPLE master bedroom. The homeowner’s grandson who said that will be his bedroom, had requested a maroon or purplish color on all the walls of that bedroom. SETIO, the organization providing the materials, had advised that they had gallons and gallons of paint at their storage facility and we were free to help ourselves to whatever we needed. As SETIO is quickly running out of funds, we made the decision to attempt to create the color from their assortment of paint rather than buy new paint from Home Depot. After consulting the internet as to how we could make maroon out of the dark pink paint we had to start out with, we began our mixing. With several cups of dark blue paint, we soon had a color which we believed would be passable. The two of us who were painting thought it looked maroon in the pail. However, after it was painted onto the walls, it came out more dark plum than maroon. Our women all LOVE it; none of the (white) men care for it at all. Joe, the grandson, said he was happy with it. The master bedroom has quite a large closet which we painted a dark beige color that really complements the rest of the room - not that anyone will notice when the bifold closet doors are installed…

We were delighted to see Miss Jane back home this week. She was as happy to see us all as we were to have her back! However, when we stopped by Mr. John’s on Friday to see how he was doing and she was not there, he informed us that her family had taken her to a nursing home. This was very disturbing news, as she had appeared to be better than ever upon her return from hospital and we cannot fathom her consenting to being removed from her home. We are still hoping it is not so.

On the instructions of Joe, we painted the second bedroom off-white rather than the light blue requested by Mr. John. In my heart of hearts, I was painting it light blue, as we have become very fond of the old geezer. We are already getting the hint that Mr. John may not be sleeping in this bedroom for long, and that his family may be considering a nursing home for him as well. We know that this would not be his choice, but these are circumstances over which we have no control. We pray that he can continue to enjoy the attention he gets from our being there at least until we leave.

As we were working at the one site, some of our volunteers finished up the soffit and fascia and installed new posts on Miss Louanna’s front porch. On Martin Luther King Day, the children had a holiday from school. As Cheek is a predominantly rural community, many of the families have horses, and they had a visit from one of the grandchildren of the homeowner on his pony.

This week, John’s arthritis in his hands was acting up worse than it ever has before. The knuckles were swollen and he was having trouble flexing his fingers after a night’s sleep. It was time to bring out the unflavored gelatin again. Years ago when he was complaining about arthritis in his hands, an old friend of ours had told us that she had used a tablespoon of unflavored gelatin in her morning coffee to alleviate very bad arthritis. He tried it at that time and found that it worked well. He was skeptical about how helpful it would be this time. He was very surprised to find that after one cup of coffee with the gelatin dissolved, there was a noticeable difference. The swelling went down and although some of the pain remained, it was not nearly as bad. With the plumbing, drywalling and lifting he is required to do on this job, it is very difficult with hands that hurt. We will be “doctoring” his coffee every morning for the foreseeable future! The gelatin has to be softened in a bit of cold water before putting it in the hot coffee.

This weekend, Friday and Saturday, Ford Park was the site of a Hot Hearts Youth Conference. We have never seen so many cars and buses in their HUGE parking lot as there were this weekend for that event. We learned that there were 7,100 youth and chaperones attending this conference and it was a life-changing experience for all. We in our RV’s were quite surprised to realize that we no longer were disturbed by the heavy rock music emanating from the building. It is obviously true that a person can “tune out” noises, such as loud repetitive noise or a train going by.

On Sunday night, there was a rock concert to raise funds for the disaster victims in Haiti. The organizers must have been a bit disappointed at the turnout, as there were not very many cars in the parking lot.

Copy of article sent to Shopper for first week of the new year

January 11th was the first day of our new term at Cheek, Texas. Our crew consists of two couples who had been here in November and December, two new couples with whom we had worked on other projects, and ourselves. We were all anxious to get to work.

MDS volunteers are often called upon to attend to tasks which they would never expect. One of these greeted our volunteers on the first day of work. Shortly after Christmas, a very large pit bull dog was either run over on the road or shot, and it ended up deader than a door nail in Mr. John’s yard right by his carport. When my husband and I dropped by the first week in January, it was still laying there. Mr. John said his grandson had said he would remove it but had not done so. We made a trip to the nearby County Precinct to request them to remove it, and they said they would. However, upon arrival at the job site on Monday morning, the dog was still laying there. Bernie and Paul took matters into their own hands and buried the dog at the back of the property!

It was also distressing to learn that Miss Jane was in hospital. She required some medication adjustment and remained in hospital for the whole week. That left Mr. John without his chief cook and bottle washer. It was his adult grandson, Joe’s responsibility to ensure his Granddad got his meals; however, it was soon evident he was not eating on a regular basis. We ended up bringing him food just in case he hadn’t eaten, and often that was the case. His favorite is Fig Newtons…

There are three bedrooms which required removal of wallboard, installation of sheet rock, finishing and painting. One bedroom was to the painting stage when we left for Christmas. The new agenda was to remove all of the furniture from the second and third bedrooms (they were wall to wall and floor to ceiling packed full of beds, sofas, chairs, miscellaneous furniture, clothing and boxes) so that we could do all of the bedrooms at one time. The new volunteers emptied the rooms, putting everything under a tarp in the carport. They then removed the wallboard and cleaned up the debris. At that point it was ready for John to repair the termite eaten boards at the floor and begin putting up the sheet rock. Two volunteers familiar with electrical resumed rewiring the entire house. Two of the couples went to Miss Louanna’s home to do soffit and fascia.

We were happy with our progress by the end of the first week. John and I put up the sheet rock and I taped it while he started building a laundry closet to house the washer and dryer in the kitchen. The SETIO group had given us a box of one-time-use coveralls and since “mudding” is such a messy job, I decided to try one out. It didn’t look very fashionable, but saved my clothing from getting all full of mud. It’s a messy job!

Thursday is our weekly pot luck supper. There was plenty of various food again this week. Afterwards, we brought our new 26 inch flat screen T.V. over to the office trailer which will accommodate 10 people for seating, and watched a Ken Davis C.D. He is a Christian comedian and we laughed until our sides ached.

We had good weather until Friday, when the rain began. Obviously the mice didn’t like the rain either, as two of them moved into our R.V. Our traps are still set up, but so far there have only been two caught.

On Sunday, we attended Cowboy Church at Orange again, seeing as we have new people. They had three more baptisms and welcomed 13 new members. What an awesome church!

As we had previously had excellent meals at the Vidor Restaurant, we recommended that our group might want to eat there after church. Maggie was happy to see us again and the food was great. Before leaving, she presented us with a $10 complimentary gift certificate from the restaurant owner for bringing in more business. Wow! Of course we will be going back there again!!!

2010 started out with bad news

First day of the new year, we received the dreadful news that our dear old friend in Edmonton, Joan Dixon, discovered the first week in December that she had terminal ovarian cancer. What a shock for her and their family and friends! EVERY year we had received a Christmas poem from Joan and of course because we were in Texas, we did not realize there was no poem this year. She asked her daughter to wait until after the new year to advise their friends, as she did not want to spoil everyone's Christmas! She had been totally symptom-free until the end of November. The cancer had already spread to other parts of her body and she was in hospital from the first week of December on. It grew like wildfire. We had word from her family that she passed away last Friday morning, January 15th. We grieve with Charlie and Heather and Alex in the loss of a very fine lady who spent her life thinking about the comfort of other people, right up to the end.

Then on January 2nd, we learned that our former neighbours at Kootenay Lake also had bad news. After spending a wonderful Christmas with all of their family at home for the first time in years, Bryan and Jill Daybell advised that on their way back to Calgary, their daughter, Rita (who graduated with our Christy) and her two young adult daughters, were in a terrible accident in Kootenay Park. Thank the Lord that no one was killed, but they were in very bad shape. They have updated us to advise that the one daughter was released from hospital the same week, the second daughter has many broken bones and has finally been released but it will take a long while before she is back to normal, and their own daughter, Rita, had a head injury which she is still recovering from - but she is on the mend.

My Auntie Helen Werschler, who is also my Godmother, passed away at 92 on January 7th, but that was a blessing, as she had Alzheimers quite bad. She had broken her hip recently and had surgery in Regina. She apparently was in a lot of pain after the surgery and of course did not realize what was happening, so none of our family was sad to see her out of her misery. She was a wonderful auntie.

So, I just thought I would share this with anyone who happens to read our blog.

If you ARE following the blog, I would sure appreciate knowing. Just give me confirmation at redwingbraun@hotmail.com.

I am still writing articles to send to the P.A. Shopper every week, but as of the new year, the new Office Secretary is doing the website updates for MDS, so that lightens my load of writing.

John and I are doing fine. Haven't had any illness yet. Sometimes John gets down because of the "culture shock", but thankfully he gets over it and back to work. Today, Jan. 20th, he encountered a flock (or whatever they call a bunch of them) of cockroaches in a back wall which he is shoring up. He got out his spray bottle of diluted Pine Sol which does kill ants. It didn't seem to kill the cockroaches but it sure slowed them down so he could stomp them. And big ones they were!!

He is not crazy about this type of renovation work. He much prefers building a house from scratch. However, we are here, and we can see many blessings to the homeowner that we ARE HERE. Mr. John holds his hand out for a cookie every morning when I arrived, so I'd better be having one for him!!! And it is great to have Miss Jane back after she was in hospital for about 10 days. I really missed her!

Will write more in a few days. Good night.

Shari says goodbye to Texas

23-DAY BREAK OVER

December 26, 2009 marked the first anniversary of John being a non-smoker. What a wonderful blessing. After trying numerous times to quit smoking, he has finally succeeded! If he could do it, anyone can. He has commented that contrary to what he had been told, food does not taste any different and he is not coughing up “black stuff” from his lungs. He does confirm that occasionally the urge to smoke is still as strong as ever, but it passes quickly.

We enjoyed the Christmas holidays with our daughter, but it was our mission to show her this area of Texas and pack in as much sightseeing as possible in 15 days. After returning to Beaumont, we went through a number of tanks of gas and ate out at every interesting place we could think of. She must have had 500 pictures on her new digital camera which she won at the P.A. Inn Christmas party! We toured downtown Beaumont, where the giant “Dalmation” fire hydrant is the focal point. One lovely sunny day, we also enjoyed Shangri La Botanical Gardens at Orange, which included a one hour swamp tour. (see previous pictures)

Shari flew back to Saskatoon from Houston on January 5th. She encountered much frustration on her trip home. First, her 7:40 a.m. flight from Houston was cancelled and re-scheduled for 3:15 p.m. We were fortunate in that although we had gotten up and dressed in our motel room at 4;30 a.m. to leave for the airport, we had brought along the laptop and checked for e-mails before leaving. We were able to just get back into bed and resume our sleep, enjoy the continental breakfast at the motel, and then tour around the area on our way to the airport. We left her as she entered the security gate at 1:00 p.m., and we returned to Beaumont, as there was no reason for us to stay. We later learned that due to staffing problems, her plane did not leave Houston until 4:30 p.m.! She had a short layover in Calgary and had difficulties getting her bearings as to finding the right gate for her flight to Saskatoon. In the end result, she arrived in Saskatoon just before midnight. We are just thankful she is home safely.

Texas is experiencing an Arctic front which has plunged temperatures to below freezing. We have had to leave our water running in our RV’s to prevent it from freezing. The local plumbers are extremely busy!

As long as the cold spell lasts, the Salvation Army in Beaumont is doing an admirable job of providing a 24 hour warming shelter complete with meals, beds, coats and blankets for anyone who is homeless or who has no power. We are aware that there are many homeless people in the south who are able to live on the street because of the weather. However, it is quite astounding how many people do not have power in their homes, either due to poverty or a result of the “storms”, a reference to hurricanes or tornados.

We just got word that my dear Aunt/Godmother, Helen Werschler, passed away in Langenburg on January 8th. She was 91 years old, suffering from Alzheimers, and had broken her hip and was having a lot of pain after her surgery. So it was a blessing to hear she was no longer having to suffer. Much as we would like to be at home with my family as they say their goodbyes, it is not possible since we have made this commitment to MDS.

The internet age certainly helps to keep us in touch with what’s happening back home as well. I often check the local paper and it was there I learned that a dear friend, Gertrude Rock, had also passed on in Prince Albert. When I worked downtown, I used to run into her on my lunch hours at the Sally Ann or simply out for a walk. She was a lovely gracious lady.

All six couples volunteering for January and February are now on the RV site. We have enjoyed a couple of days of visiting with our friends, Paul and Mary from Pennsylvania, before resuming work. There are two couples who returned who worked here November and December, as well as two new couples, our Project Director, Warren Siemens, and his wife Carol, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and office manager, Maryanne Sawatsky and her husband, Pete, from Winkler, Manitoba. All of them have worked with us previously and we are happy to be on the team with them. Our camp has been revamped in order to accommodate the extra RV’s. We are packed in, nice and cozy, a little closer than we were before.

After a 23 day “holiday”, all of us are ready to get back on the job. The homeowner will be happy to see us on his doorstep bright and early on Monday morning as well.

More pictures

1. Shari overlooking the Gulf of Mexico (my favorite photo of the year)

2. John at Museum of the Gulf Coast

3. Shangri La is a wonderful place on a sunny day: Swamp Tour

New Years Eve, 2009

I notice that when I try to label my photos on the blog, the labels do not come out right. So I am going to itemize the photos here - from the bottom up because they still didn't come out right:

1. Linda with Miss Jessie (L) and Miss LaRue(R) from the Ben Rogers Welcome Centre
2. Penguin enclosure at Moody Gardens Aquarium
3. Shari enjoying a drink at the Rain Forest Cafe
4. Giant Dalmation fire hydrant in downtown Beaumont


I appear to have gotten lazy over our Christmas break, so I am using my newspaper article to share what we encountered:

What a lovely, memorable New Year’s Eve! First, we enjoyed a New Years’ Feast at the Golden Corral, which is the “buffet of all buffets”. Shari’s eyes bugged out when she saw all the food choices – the salad bar alone was phenomenal! Then there are different bars with your choice of Mexican, Chinese, Italian, Texas steak, pork, roast turkey, barbecued ribs, pot roast, catfish, shrimp, a dozen types of vegetables, pizza, various soups, buns, basically anything your little old heart desires by way of food! After you have your fill of any or all of the above, there is an area of desserts which is larger than most entire buffets. Not only ice cream, both hard and soft, but also pies, cakes, macaroons, cookies, fudge, several types of puddings, and cheese cakes - truly a dessert-lover’s paradise. All for the grand price of $10.95 per adult, seniors $9.95!

St. John’s Lutheran Church nearby had a sign out indicating there was a New Years Eve service at 7:00 p.m. and we attended that service. It was a lovely service and everyone was very friendly, in true Texas style. Afterwards, my husband was visiting with a gentleman at the door who was saying he had overhead we were staying at Ford Park. If we had no plans for the evening, he invited us to their New Years Eve party. We had nothing whatsoever planned, and as he just lived about 6 blocks from Ford Park, we graciously accepted the invitation.

Fred lives in a lovely home along the road we had traveled often. When we arrived, we were introduced to his wife, Rebecca, and five other couples, including the pastor and his wife from the church we had been to. There were also some immediate family including a few young’uns. The island in the kitchen was covered with food. We visited a bit and then our hosts advised it was time to play some games. One card table was set up for two couples to pay Pinochle, the large table was for dominoes [Shari and I and our hostess and others played there], and John was at the kitchen table with our host and another interesting gentleman playing “Oh Hell”. There was lots of teasing and laughing and visiting. The television was on and at the stroke of midnight, we toasted each other: “HAPPY NEW YEAR” with a glass of wine!! Another confirmation that strangers are just friends we haven’t met yet…

We spent a wonderful day at Shangri La Botanical Gardens. Although not in season, we could see the potential for a very beautiful colorful garden. We also purchased a ticket for a boat ride, which turned out to be a very informative one hour swamp tour. This attraction, even out of season, was well worth the total price of $8.00 for seniors. We will be certain to go back before we leave Texas in March, hoping to catch some spring buds and flowers.

On the way home from the gardens, we stopped at Vidor Flea Market for supper. It is a very small privately owned restaurant with excellent food and service. Our waitress, Maggie, had the time to stop and chat with us, and was interested in our work with MDS. As we were leaving, she informed us that our meals were taken care of! The hospitality and generosity of the people of Texas never fails to astound us.

On Shari’s last day, we took her to Galveston to see how much more of Hurricane Ike devastation had been rebuilt since we were there last. They are making great strides with reconstruction. We did learn some interesting details while we were there. Maggie had informed us, and it was confirmed by a local resident, that although the nation still believes there were very few casualties, over 3,000 people had been killed in the storm in Galveston. The resident advised that due to the touristy nature of Galveston, this large loss of life had been “kept under wraps”. He also advised that just this week, they had discovered the remains of one more casualty to add to the list.

Moody Gardens Aquarium in Galveston was very similar to the one we had been to in Tennessee, and for $13.00 for seniors, we spent all afternoon enjoying the absolutely fabulous marine life displayed. This venue put San Antonio Sea World totally to shame!

At the penguin enclosure, it appeared our little black and white Jughead puppy that disappeared in April last year, may be reincarnated as a penguin… We laughed as one particular penguin swam as fast as it could in the water, round and around, up and down, in and out of the water, for about 5 minutes, just having a gay old time, as our little puppy used to “fly” around our back yard!

Life will get back to “normal” as Shari goes back home and we get back to work. We will be happy to be back to work instead of eating out and touring just about every day.