Second week of February at Cheek

Looks like I'm getting lazy here. I am attaching my latest newspaper article for our blog as well. Am having trouble finding the pictures so will attach them when I can find them...

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel on Mr. John’s house. John and I have been working on this house finishing the baseboards and window trim. There are so many finishing details to do yet. Thankfully we have one couple who has experience at laying floors, and they have completed all the flooring that needed to be done.

The King house was a major disaster when our crew arrived. I did not see it until most of the clean-up had been done, and apparently only pictures can do justice as to how bad it was! Our men have been cutting out the bottom of the gyproc so that the house can be re-wired. Re-wiring not been in the work order, but when they checked out the electrical, they found a very sad state of aluminum wiring. SETIO “found” sufficient funds to provide the material to wire the house. Our Office Manager, Mary Ann, took on the task of painting KILZ on the top half of the walls. New kitchen cabinets were also not in the plan for the King house. However, when our ladies saw what a huge difference there was with the drastic improvements in the rest of the house, it was unanimously decided we had to go back to the organization to beg for funds for new cabinets. These old cabinets simply would not do. We had saved SETIO a substantial amount of money by re-boarding only the bottom half of the walls and salvaging 95% of the ceilings. In the end result, they did agree that they would provide new cabinets. The homeowners, Miss Mable, Miss Mary and Mable’s adult son, Chris, will certainly feel they are living in the lap of luxury to have practically a whole new house (we hope). Thankfully, the general construction of the house is very sound and it is practical to make all these improvements. We can only hope that Chris will take the initiative to have some pride in their newly renovated home and ensure that it is maintained.

We had been so looking forward to seeing our new friends from Quebec, Andreˊ and Suzette, with whom we worked last year in Marble Falls, Texas. They are working at an MDS site at New Iberia, about 5 hours away from us. Several of our couples were also interested in getting together with other friends who are stationed there. As a result, it was arranged that their group and ours would meet half way, at Lake Charles, Louisiana, for a meal and visiting. As of the first of February, there is also an MDS R.V. group at Johnson Bayou, and when they learned of this, they said, “We want to come too”. So, all said and done, we were 33 people, and called it the “Second Annual MDS RV Reunion”. The first Annual MDS RV Reunion was held at Newton, Texas, in February last year and it came about in precisely the same way – totally unplanned. We would have preferred to spend a lot more time visiting with our French friends, but greatly enjoyed our brief visit with everyone. We were very surprised to see Bruce and Martha Isaak from Medstead, Sk. were in New Iberia for February. We have to come all the way to Texas to visit with them!

Ironically, that same weekend, our good friends, Don Buller, the designer and head of the Senior R.V. Program and his wife, Marilyn, along with our friends, Walt and Pat Willems, all from California, were in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, attending the Annual All-Unit MDS Meeting. By e-mail to them, I was lamenting first of all that we could not be there to welcome them to Saskatchewan (neither couple had ever been there before) and that they didn’t get to experience some REAL Saskatchewan weather! After all, -18 degrees is hardly what we call frigid…

The group at Johnson Bayou is headed by a first-time R.V. Project Director who was a worker with us on two previous occasions. They have three couples working with them, none of whom have been MDS volunteers before. We are told they are very hard workers and their job is to do the finishing on a new house which has been built by the regular MDS crew stationed at Cameron, LA.

Our group attended Church at Johnson Bayou last week, while their group enjoyed the Cowboy Church at Orange! It’s a good thing we were not all there together, as the church service is held in the Pastor’s double wide trailer livingroom since Hurricane Ike took out their lovely big church, and there would not have been enough seating room! We learned that morning that 92 year old Mr. Archie, the old original Louisiana cowboy, whose home we had renovated on our second tour of duty, had passed away two months ago. We regret we were not able to attend his funeral, but know he is “up there” riding into the sunset on a fine Louisiana Appaloosa.