Another Busy Day

It was another busy day, only this time mostly on the computer. I had gotten an email yesterday from Good Sam offering to refinance our RV.  Their 3.99 percent interest sure sounds a lot better to me then the 9.5 percent we are presently paying. Their major criteria on their website seemed to be Credit Scores of over 700; a loan that's been in place for more than a year; and a few other minor things.

There was a phone number on the website, but after being on hold for almost 20 minutes, the lady I talked to said that the application must be filled out on-line. So I spent the next hour or so gathering up the necessary materials and filling out the form. Then I got an email back that said they would be in touch with me in a couple of days...


Next I received an email from the Mennonite Church office asking about which nights I would need a hotel room in Kansas City for the Executive Board meeting in April. Since I hadn't yet made my flight reservations, I needed to do that before I could respond. And while I was at it, I needed to make flight reservations back to Phoenix from Portland, Oregon for the Mennonite Church Biennial Assembly in July.

I was feeling pretty good about getting all my flights organized until I talked with my Son-in-law Todd. I hadn't double-checked the dates and made reservations for our flight back to Portland a day late... Of course, by the time I had figured it out, the travel agency in Kansas was closed! I left Debi an email, hopefully since it was less than 24 hours, she'll be able to change the reservations so that we can come back to Oregon on Saturday instead of Sunday.

We badly needed breakfast stuff - eggs, milk, bread and orange juice. We went over to Red Robin for guacamole hamburgers then on to Safeway to stock up.

A Quiet Sunday

I actually went to bed early last night, so it was easy getting up, having breakfast, showering and getting ready for church this morning. It was a interesting service as most of the people who had gone to Columbus, Ohio for the biennial convention of Mennonite Church USA last July shared their experiences and stories. Cleon had the "official" video of the convention which was shown on the big screen. It was quite fun to see some of the "other" parts of the convention -- the children and the youth conventions-- that we as adults didn't get to participate in.

Since school has started both in Moses Lake and Ritzville, many families that have been at the lake or on vacation are back in the area. It's nice to see the church fuller after the summer lull. We have decided that there is so much going on in the area leading up to the Mennonite Country Auction (October 3) that we may as well stay parked here at the ranch until then. Unless, of course, we finally get a date scheduled for my back surgery -- in that case we will move closer to Spokane!

This afternoon I put together the bead bracelet I have had laid out for several days using the hand blown beads that Bill gave me. I put the three strands together without finishing one end just so that I could take a better look at the design. I'm still not quite happy with the layout. I took out the beads that had lighter blues in them and I like that better, but I may still trade out a couple more. I guess I'll have to leave it out to study and think about it some more!

We spent part of the afternoon dealing with our epidemic of fruit flies! They are really being obnoxious! I had bought fresh peaches, figs, cantaloupe's (Can anybody explain why there is a "u" in lope? -- I didn't believe it when spell check told me to put one in -- I had to look at the net bag...!), and berries at Costco and every time I take something out of the refrigerator they are right there. I think bagging up all of the garbage with the peelings, etc. certainly helped, but we didn't get them all...

San Diego and a Nap!

This morning we dropped our cooks of the last two weeks, Hap and Deb, off at the airport for their flight home to Pennsylvania, then went on to church with two of the other longtermers from Oregon. The top picture is of the building where the Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren hold joint services. The Friends group meets at the same time on the other side of the complex. The picture below of the round building is the one they are building as a Peace Center. Last week they took us on a tour of the inside of this building which is made out of rice straw bales. I didn't get inside this week to take a picture of the bales.

After church we came back to camp for a much needed nap! When I woke up I wrote some postcards to the grandkids and friends, but didn't get much more accomplished. Our new group of short term volunteers arrived by two shuttles buses about 5:30. We let them get settled, then had orientation at 7. This is the first group we've had that has females! That should be a nice change.

Here are some more pictures from yesterday's expedition:

This is the farming with the border fence. They were setting sprinkler pipe in the ditches between the raised beds. I'd sure like to know what they have planted there...

These are some of the whimsical "boulder creatures" at one of the stops we made. The succulent below was blooming nearby.

Orientation Continues

We are gradually getting things figured out as we try to pump the minds of the current Project Directors for every tidbit of information we can think of to ask about. This morning we met the local Mennonite Church coordinator at the bank to add our signatures to the bank cards so that we can write checks. We had met Mel before when we were here in December delivering the Hitchhiker RV and the pickup. Mel took us to the airport for our flight back to SeaTac. It was good to see him again. We took him to lunch at Denny's after we got all of the papers signed.

In the afternoon, we met up with Kerry, the current PD, and went out to two of the current house sites with him.

These pictures are of House #3 as the fellows are unloading bales of shingles from the back of the pickup and putting them up on the roof. They plan to start shingling it tomorrow. When Forry and I first saw the house last Monday, the inside walls were up and they had just hauled the roof joists up ready to install the next day. It's amazing what has been accomplished in these few days. The sheeting is up on the roof, the windows are in, the house has had the reflective siding put on and been wrapped with vapor barrier.

We then went House #2 which is going to be solar heated. It, too, has doors and windows in and the sprinkler system installed. We didn't go to House #1 today, but the crew reported at supper that they had finished sanding the wall board and put the first coat of paint sealer on.

We did go to check out the site for House #4. It's WAY back in a canyon up a road that turns from asphalt to gravel to dirt. It's going to be an interesting spot to get cement trucks and supplies into.

We had lasagna for supper at the project site tonight. I was impressed with the high spirits and morale of the mostly Canadian crews who have put in a very busy week.

One thing we noticed today was the increased presence of Border Patrol vehicles along the various roads we traveled. Kerry mentioned that he had observed the same thing. We wondered if it had anything to do with all of the arrests of members of the Sonoran Drug Cartel they were talking about on the news yesterday.