Taking care of business (March 21)

Well to-day was a day of taking care of a bunch small things. We started the day by preparing letters for the Kelly’s -(Linda by hand and me on the computer so I could include some of the pictures we took while painting). We then called them to confirm they had gotten home from California last evening and arranged to visit t in the afternoon to welcome them home.

I had been using the church bus for transportation but this morning it needed to go in for servicing because John Dobbs is driving a group to Tulsa for a workshop leaving to-morrow morning at 5. So I drove it over and John picked me up. He then graciously gave us the use of his van for the rest of the day.

David (Kilbern) suggested that we get some type of welcome home gift for the Kelly’s on behalf of the church & Operation Love your neighbor. Linda had the idea of getting plants and materials to fill 2 planters she had seen at the house. So we headed out to Lowes to get that –we ended up getting a nice hanging basket with petunias and some other plants. While doing that we dropped by Charlotte’s house (the one we tore out) and took “after” pictures - we also had found the house we visited the first Friday we were here that hadn’t been cleaned out yet. It has now been “mucked out” and then had the walls torn out – so we took some after pictures there as well

We had lunch “in” (made our own and ate in the BBB). Over lunch we did some looking to find a campground in San Antonio. Linda was faster with AAA Campground book than I was on the INTERNET and found a KOA. However, the INTERNET still camein handy – I was able to see how far (5 miles) it would be to the hotel where Chris & Tammye & kids are staying and I was also able to get some pictures of the site to give us some comfort that it was a reasonable spot. It was good to get that done since we will be there in less than a week and sometimes it is hard to find convenient campgrounds that aren’t fully booked.

Around 1:30 we headed over to visit the Kelly’s. It was good meeting them. They are very nice people and they needed time to tell their story – they were alone in the house and were getting quite alarmed when the water was up to their knees – but then it peaked and went back down. Linda is searching for a word to describe the sense of confidence they showed by staying in their house without taking the precaution of moving photo albums and other memorabilia up to higher locations so they lost a lot of pictures and other things that might have been saved with a few hours of preparation.

The carpet people were installing the carpet to-day so we hope to take a crew there tomorrow to move in furniture and get the revamped part of the house ready to live in.

Kathy (on left) who is one of the volunteers who works in the kitchen is a friend of Marlene (Mrs. Kelly) and she dropped by while we were there. It gave us a chance to get to know her better and to find out about here struggle with and victory (for now) over cancer. Before we left we shared a time of prayer.

After we left the Kelly’s we went out to WALMART to pickup some coffee for the kitchen (6 big cans) and picked up a few things we needed. On the way back we stopped at the Dollar General for a bit. We had driven past it every time we went to the Kelly’s and Linda wanted to see what they had. Lots of neat stuff –similar to “A buck or two” back home.

We spent some time before supper organizing and cleaning up in the auditorium. A bunch of new (used) clothes had come in and hadn't been sorted and hung up --Linda worked on that. One of the groups that came in this week had brought a bunch of stuff with them and it was all piled in boxes along the side of the auditorium interfering with access and blocking some of the seating. I was sorting through that and moving it to various other storage locations around the building. There is such a volume of stuff passing through here it is hard to keep it organized and to keep any semblance of order in the building.

John Dobbs spoke this evening with a discussion on baptism – reasons why people shouldn’t do it and reasons why they should – well done –there was a couple who was planning to be baptized to-night- she was coming from out of town and he had gone to pick her up and their car broke down so John preached the sermon he had prepared anyhow.

After service, we said good-bye to John (Dobbs) and a couple of the other folks who are going with him to Tulsa. They have become family in the time we have been here. We pray for safe travels and God’s blessing on them as they return to the work here..

I also got to exercise some of my limited technical skills tonight – Sandy – lady from California in the other motor home that is here – I mentioned them before -- anyhow she has been trying to get her laptop to connect with the INTERNET by the wireless connection. It took me a while but eventually I was able to sort it out – she was thrilled to get her email and I was glad I got it going or else I wouldn’t have been able to sleep to-night if I had an unsolved problem haunting me.

We had an email from Richard & Dorothy Mcnaughton to-night with news about their lives. Richard and Dorothy are friends of ours and members of our church family back home. Dorothy is visually impaired having battled with glaucoma for a number of years. She had surgery a year or so ago that had made a big improvement – unfortunately a recent checkup found things getting worse again and she is now scheduled for surgery on March 30. Please be praying for her and for successful surgery.

Good night and God Bless
Charlie & Linda