September and October at Ecclesia College

We spent a very pleasant two months at Ecclesia College in Springdale, Arkansas. We worked a month then traveled to Lindale, Texas to attend the SOWER board meeting then back to Springdale for another month.

The college is a "work college" in that the students are assigned hours of work to do around the campus in lieu of tuition.

The campground is a secluded space west of the campus.  The facility actually started out as a YWAM, Youth With A Mission, and later transitioned to a college campus.

When we got there we felt we needed to remove a layer of tree resin and dust, mostly from South Dakota, from the motor home including the roof.

Mornings were beautiful as the fog set up a number of great photo ops.  Here is one of the men's dorms which later we spent a lot of time in doing repairs.

The first several jobs were wiring.  This house was a girl's staff house---

---then there was an outlet in the kitchen which needed to be rerouted---

---and a new line had to be run for the pop dispenser.

A leak had been reported in a room in one of the women's dorms and it had ruined the ceiling and the floor in the room. 

After cutting out the damaged floor and replacing it---

---we attached the ceiling repair.

There was quite a lot of damaged sheet rock which had to be replaced---

---and of course the old ceiling had an odd texture on it which was best matched with a texture roller.

One weekend we went to downtown Springdale to see an historic house---

---and visit the gift shop of course.

After the end of the September project we made a trip to Lindale, Texas to attend a SOWER board meeting.  At a noon break we all ate under a roofed RV site---

---and enjoyed the meal and the fellowship.

We were staying at Mercy Ships, another SOWER project just a few miles from the office.  On our way back to our room we came across this small fellow and decided to document it for you.

Back in Springdale the cafeteria was under new management and one of their goals was to spruce up the place.  Obviously the pop dispenser rack is not the kind of thing one would like to look at while you are eating so we were asked to clean it up a little.

Here is our solution!!

The kitchen staff also did not have a good place to store their mops and brooms.  Currently they were in a very tiny closet behind the ladies restroom.  The smell in the restroom was a bit disgusting and again we were asked if we could provide a place which would be better.  This picture is of a door to a store room which was no longer used.

It provided a perfect place to build a closed which would be outside and still available.  Note that it is off the ground.  When it rains this sidewalk is under a three inch stream of water which drains from the parking lot.

Another weekend we also visited Crystal Bridge in Bentonville.  It is an art gallery founded and funded by the Walton family.

Between the gift shop and the gallery there is a twenty five foot tall spider which is a great piece of art all by itself.

There is a stream which flows down the valley in which the gallery is built and with the recent rains the water was quite high.

We also spotted a ground hog digging around in one of the gardens at the site.

We spent a lovely afternoon visiting the grounds---

---including going through one of their newest exhibits, a Frank Lloyd Wright house which had been on the east coast but was dismantled a move to Bentonville a year ago.

  Back at work.  Remember the picture of the house in the fog.  This is one of the rooms in it---

---and this is the kind of thing we found when we started tearing down the ceiling.  There were all kinds of things which had been put into the ceiling for insulation we guessed.

We tore all of the old damaged paneling off of the walls and ceiling---

---hung sheet rock---

---and finished it.  Some difference, huh.

On our way back to the RV site one evening we found a tree laying across the road away from camp.

A couple of days later, after a significant storm, the road going the other way was closed by this large oak tree.

Of course there was plenty of office work to keep Billie busy---

---but when she wasn't doing office work she was home making sanitary pads for ladies in third world countries.  We have so much!  We didn't stop to think that things like this are not available for a large portion of the world.

One last job.  The maintenance manager had contracted a welder to weld a new beam for the entry way to the office.  He was not available for several weeks so we were asked to do the job.

A little torch work to make the beams the right size---

---and a welder to make it permanent and there we have a structure to hold up one end of the new overhang.

We had a great group of people which we met with on Sunday morning for Sunday School.  They decided to have a barbecue one evening and this is a picture of the back yard of the couple who hosted the affair.  How neat is this endless pool?