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.