End of the February Project already?

It's hard to believe but it is already the end of the project.  We have had time to see a lot of things here and complete a lot of tasks as well.

Over the weekend we spent some time in Crowley, La.  When Henry Ford was making the Model T he also set up a number of distributors who were also reassembly plants.  This was one of them.  He found that if he took the wheels and fenders off of the cars he could stand them on end in a boxcar and get a lot more of them in there.  Then they were sent to over 100 distributors like this one, reassembled and sold.

Also in Crowley there is a 50's hamburger joint called Frosto's.  It was originally a Zesto's (like the one in Watertown) but they closed and sold the business to someone else and that owner didn't want to pay the franchise fee so they named it Frosto's and reopened.

With all of the crawfish farming that goes on there are a lot of egrets, greater and lesser, who like to take advantage of the easy lunch.

Another thing we learned at the Ford Museum was that rice was brought here by the African slaves and later became a staple crop for Louisiana.

Remember the crawfish traps? Here is one of the boats they use to harvest them.  Since the bogs are only 3 to 6 inches deep, the boats often ride on the bottom.  Many of these boats are equipped with wheels to climb over the levies and instead of a prop they have a hydraulic pump in them used to drive the wheel like a paddle wheeler and push the boats along. 

On Valentines day the youth at the church we are attending served a special meal for couples.

This is the loft above the gym.

Work?  Oh yes, that is why we are here!  While installing a water softener on the loft, not the one behind me, we noticed the heater behind me wasn't vented out of the building.  I cut a hole in the stack from the furnace and vented the hot water heater through the same stack. 

On Wednesday evening a group named Real Encounter came to the town of Mamou to demonstrate their skills on bikes and motorcycles and then to present a clear gospel message to the youth attending the event.  This guy could make his bike climb and jump nearly anything.

This is a motorcycle jump over 9 people.  Notice they are all watching him intently.

This poor old bush hog is nearly shot but we put it back together one more time.

Of course there are always the potties that need to be clean and fresh for the next group this weekend. 

Our RV site is right in the middle of the camp and is very nice.

Friday night we made a trip to a local restaurant called GI's.  The food was good and it was spicy.  They have a Cajun band play on weekends.  By the way, Cajun is a corruption of Acadian.

French settlers from the French region of Acadia traveled to Nova Scotia then were expelled by the British and moved to Louisiana (which became the Louisiana Purchase) and settled with the local tribes.

There were several different tribes which moved through here but only two were native to the swamps.

More great information we gleaned from the Jean Lafitte Acadian Cultural Center in Eunice.

Moving on

After leaving YWAM in Texas we had the opportunity to attend a Volunteer Celebration at a church in Dothan, Al., a project we worked over a year ago.  This is their 25th anniversary and have requested those who helped them build their church building to come and celebrate with them.

When we got to Dothan we found out where the robins go in the winter.

Here we are, home sweet home in the same spot as we were when we were here before.

It was a great service.  The Pastor and his wife (back left) and the Pastor who acted as the general contractor for them (back row right) were hosts to Sowers (us), RVICS (next to us) and MMAPers on the right.  God has each in the body as He chooses.

On the trip from Texas to Alabama and baack we crossed over the Atchafalaya Basin, an area which is mostly swamp.

There are really people who live there and if you watch Swamp People on TV you may see some of them.

A lot of the area was quite lovely for a swamp---

---and it contains real swamp creatures.

We are back at the Acadian Baptist Center ready to work.  This is one of the ponds on the camp.

Meet the Sower family working here this month.  Doug and Amy Heilman have joined us for the February project.

There are a lot of leaves everywhere and Doug attacks them with the leaf blower.

There seems to be a red light glowing on top of the sewage lift station.  Not good.  So we start pulling pumps and find out that one is locked up and the other is full of "stuff".  After clearing the "stuff" we were able to get the one pump going again to empty the station.

Amy loves to paint so she jumped at the chance to paint the dividers in the boys locker room.

There are a couple of old quansit buildings which are rusting and coming off of their foundation piers.  After a couple hundred feet of steel bar stock and two days of welding I believe they are stable enough for the next Cat 2 hurricane.

The rooms in the hotel need to be cleaned and made up for the next set of guests and who does a better job than Billie.  Answer--NOONE.

You will have a few more slides to go through while trying to guess what this is.

On the weekend we visited the private island belonging to the McIlhenny family.  They were the inventor and manufacturer of, you guessed it, Tabasco.

This is a model of the island where they live and produce the Tabasco and mine the salt they use.

Some of the island has been turned into a very large garden with flowers and trees and critters.

Who is this beautiful couple?

Did I say they had critters?

Are they somewhere down this road?

YES THEY ARE!  

On land and sea they are watching you.  We saw 4 or five while we were driving through.

And we saw some lovely sights as well.  The flower is pretty too.

Even in February there are flowers blooming.

The island also has a bird sanctuary especially for the egrets.

More blooming trees.

Back at the house, we have again attracted the fiches.

The major summer crop here is rice.  Yes, rice.  But in the winter these rice fields turn into a place to harvest crayfish.  These pots are baited and checked regularly for the little mud bugs which have moved into the rice paddies.  Oh yes, the photo you have been wondering about.  It is a crayfish mound in the yard at the camp.  They burrow down a couple of feet and live there.

It has been raining here for the last several days, 2 3/4" in fact, and with a grand elevation variation of 5 feet across the campus we have a little water standing.  Sunny tomorrow.