SOTH BEND IN.

We arrived in South Bend IN. Friday Afternoon. Pastor Nancy & a congregation member (Willis), met us at the church. We made a few trips to hardware stores & started our work projects.

The ladies scrubed down steps, stained & painted. Bill installed new bathroom faucets & helped with Elec. Duane scraped & patched a wall & glued some treads down & I tackled running new elec for a dryer. This morning we ran for a part for the kitchen faucted & repaired that too.We finished all that we could in the time we had here.

We are having communion in a moment with Pastor Nancy and then on the road agin....this time TO HOME.

Today we finished all the jobs that we were assigned for the week plus a few more. Burnell & Janet did a great job cleaning up & putting all the tools in order for the next crew.

We also finished part of the siding job the college team was working on. The nice yellow house is one of the houses we worked on this week. The other 2 houses are complete except for flooring, counter tops, & the bathroom sink & toilet installed...guess they wait until all the flooring goes in first. The house across the street that Ruth spent the most time in just got the carpet installed today. That was exciting to see things coming to completion. The other house pictured is behind our houses and you can see the difference in where they are at in the rebuilding process.

We will try to give you an update on what we are doing from here out, but we have decided to head to South Bend IN tomorrow morning to get a jump on the bad weather that is to hit here on Saturday. We may not have Internet access until we get home so stay tuned.

St. Patty's Day In Iowa.

As you can see our team is decked out for St. Patrick's Day. Look at those little green Bow Ties Duane & Bill are sporting. Can you believe they kept them on all day while they worked. The ladies had Green & Gold beaded necklaces. We even had our van decorated with Leprechaun garland and Ruth had a Shamrock tattoo on her hand. Pictured with us is our new friend Don. He has been here for about 1-1/2 yrs & he lived in a church basement and now in the parsonage of a near by church. He is a retired Dairy Farmer & he volunteers all his time to help rebuild flood houses.

We never got finished touching up all the painting today, but we hung a few doors & installed some door knobs and cabinet hardware. 2 handrails got put up and we finished all the window sills...YEAH!

Tonight we ate dinner with Asbury's youth. Every Wed. they share a meal together. This week it was Goulash. There were about 30 kids there. The older ones were in the parking lot playing games when we left and the younger ones were watching an Easter movie. Everyone seems so grateful to have our team here. We have met a lot of really nice folks this week.

2 more days to go, so check back tomorrow to see what we're doing.

Tuesday - Day 2

Well today Janet got a break from being on her knees painting all day. She still painted & stained all day, just not on her knees. The lucky one to get that job today was Ruth. Bless her soul she never complained, guess she needed the prayer time. Burnell tried out the nail gun to see why Pastor was having so much fun driving nails all day. Looks like she had fun too.

Today we had dueling caulk guns. There were 4 of us caulking to try to finish all the moulding & trim. We even gave one of the college girls (Allison) a try at it. She had been carrying lumber most of the morning so caulking was a welcomed break for her.

We took our crock pot to the job today filled with a scrumptious Pork roast, potatoes, carrots & cabbage and left it slow cook, then took it back to the church & had dinner. It filled the house with a wonderful aroma for those who worked there. For dessert we all had pretty Shamrock cookies that "our" friend Kathy from Illinois got for us.

Tomorrow we hope to finish up all the painting, trim & caulk then move on to installing cabinet knobs, cleaning up debris outside and maybe laying out & digging for a concrete walkway to be poured. Stay tuned for more pics Wed.

MONDAY - 1st WORK DAY !

What a "Beautiful" day.

The temp was in the high 50's and was perfect for painting.

Burnell & Ruth painted doors in a house across the street, while Janet painted moulding at another house.

Pastor Bill, Duane & I (chris) installed wire shelving in closets, trimmed out door frames & got things ready for cutting a few boards to make windowsills.
NOTHING is square in these houses. It takes several cuts ...all custom, to make things fit half decent. But there is nothing that a lot of caulk can't fix....haha.

Duane was having way too much fun with the nail gun once he learned how to use it. And Ruth was the "caulk queen" at the end of the day.
Janet came up to me before supper & said, "I want you to know that I Do Pray". It took me a few minutes to catch the drift. She spent the entire day "on her knees" painting. I promised to give her a break tomorrow, but someone HAS to do it. Hmmm, who is going to be the lucky one.

There is a team of 20 college students from Baltimore working with the same organization
"Block By Block" this week. Several were installing siding on the garage out back at the house we were working at. They were laughing & goofing off more than they were working. We had fun watching them try to knock down a small building next door with sledge hammers. The building was still standing when they left for the day.

Stay tuned for more pics tomorrow.

We Arrived !

We left Hellam Saturday morning without 2 of our team members. Marlyn had a fever & had not been feeling well for the last few days & this morning as we prepared to leave we got a call from Nancy that they thought it best that they not come due to Marlyn's illness. They both were very disappointed that they were going to miss the trip. We did call today & talk to Marlyn. He is still not up to par, but feeling better.

After a really long drive Saturday we finally made it to Illinois to stay the night with Kathy & Bill who are friends of Burnell. They graciously open their home & their hearts to us. We all stayed up & talked till after midnight. They sent us off before noon & down the road we went again arriving at our hotel in Cedar Rapids around 5:00pm. A trip to the grocery store & then to our host church to make our dinner & pack our lunches for tomorrow's 1st work day.

Check back for pictures tomorrow.

We Head Out Next Saturday The 13th

Our team of 8 will be departing on Saturday the 13th. There are a lot of little details to iron out, but we are ready for the challenge. Looks like we will be staying in Illinois on our way to Iowa this time. Friends of Burnell graciously opened their home to us for the night. Then on Sunday we will drive about 4 hrs to our "Hotel". Really....this time we are staying in a hotel. It was a unanimous vote so that we could all get good nights sleep for the work we will be doing through out the week. Sure beats the floor or a cot which was offered to us originally.
Keep the team (Pastor Bill & Janet McNeal, Marlyn & Nancy Stough, Duane & Ruth Raber, Burnell Kehr & Me - chris kessler) in Prayer & check our blog for updates & photos during our week of work in Cedar Rapids. Check out the following site to see News about the flood that devastated Cedar Rapids Iowa. Be sure to watch some of the video on this site....it is also on youtube. http://cedarrapidsfloodstory.com/