LPC3 Sowers - Day 3

As we got up on Wednesday morning, Carl commented that we only have 9 more mornings to get up early for the project (4 days a week, 2 more weeks after our last day, Thursday, this week).

Each morning we join together for devotions...

On Wednesday morning, Gennaro shared with our group how he came to know our Lord.

At the end of devotions, it is a Sower tradition to all join hands and sing the first verse of "Give Me Thy Best" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyXPFlPlWI4, also known as "Our Best").

Becky and I went back to our "Crazy Quilt Tiling Project. We were working on the table top on Wednesday. One of the areas we needed to do was around the hole where the leg of the table attaches to the table top...

We made creative use of some decorative pieces of tile!

We were pretty impressed with the results!

For a comparison, this is the hole at the other end of the table...

Close up of the hole at the other end. Not as pretty as our new one (in our opinions, anyway!).

Gwen and Carolyn are preparing the shuffleboard court for re-painting.

(They had actually finished the taping off of the court and indulged me by re-creating their taping-off method.)

They had had to mark off all the lines and numbers -- it took multiple pieces of tape to work through the curves of the numbers.

I saw this box on the back of our Sower Group Leader Bill's pickup truck...

... "High Explosives - Dangerous" -- I'm thinking that the label may not represent what is actually in the box... but it is often that Carl will say that the solution to a problem we are having around the RV is "explosives" -- I guess Bill carries that solution with him as he travels around! More study is needed!

Meanwhile, Becky continued work taking out broken tiles on the table top.

Friends Carolyn and Gwen discuss with Becky what tiles they think will look best to go into the holes where we've removed tiles.

Carolyn and Gwen got a golf cart ride back to the shuffleboard court with Group Leader Barb.

We finished gluing all the tiles on the table by end of our day on Wednesday -- it is now ready for us to do some additional clean up before grouting on another day.

Meanwhile, Carl's team working near the tennis courts was preparing to install some tall poles that will be used to hold shade cloth over the recently-installed bleachers.

Group Leader Bill was helping with pulling sand out from deep within the hole. Since the ground is all sand, it has to be soaked with water to keep it from caving in while they work in the area.

Dave preparing for the concrete and water to be put into the hole...

... while John was putting the eye-bolts in to the top of the next post to be placed.

Group Leader Bill was really throwing himself into the job, using his long arms to scoop out sand from the bottom of the hole...

... while John and Dave were supervising! (and hydrating! It is hot in the sun!)

Dave is stirring the water and concrete down in the hole.

We're seeing progress on all of our tasks... it is good to see things coming along!

LPC3 Sowers - day 2

On the second day (Tuesday) of our project, we continued with our tasks from Monday...

Carl was working with Dave (and John, not pictured) putting together the piping for the irrigation system.

As Dave was maneuvering around the trenches, he took a misstep and fell... he turned to Carl for a hand-up, but instead, Carl stopped to take his picture!

Meanwhile, back at the tile-covered benches and table, Becky and I learned how to use the wet-saw to cut tile.

Dave's wife, Linda, was painting the cottage on campus.

Dave and Carl continued to work on the irrigation piping.

Overnight, group leader Bill had done some of the cuts for tiles for the pieces we had chiseled out on Monday... but he decided it was smarter to teach us how to use the wet-saw so we could cut the pieces ourselves!

We finished putting the tiles on for the two benches - bench 1...

... and bench 2.

We moved our tile fragments over to the table top. There are not as many tiles to replace on the table top; we will start that task on day 3!

There are 7 Sower couples on the project this month, in addition to two couples who are "Sowers on Assignment" - here for several months. Sowers are non-denominational, and may serve at many different ministries throughout the US and Canada. 

Besides the Sowers who are here, there are also a number of "ROAMers" (RVs on a Mission - an RV group with the Nazarene church). This campground is a ministry of the Nazarene church.

Lake Placid Camp and Conference Center SOWER project - Day 1

We will be at the SOWER project at the Lake Placid Camp and Conference Center for three weeks, so you'll be seeing pictures of projects that we are working on and new friends with whom we are working!

After devotions on Monday morning, we got deployed to the various tasks on which we were asked to work...

... one of our nextdoor neighbors in the campground, Becky, and I got assigned to work on some tiled benches... the X's mark tiles that need to be replaced (bench 1)...

(bench #2) -- so our initial task was to chisel those tiles out.

Becky was given an additional assignment to paint some tables... Alyce was looking at the tables too as they determined how to prepare them for painting.

Alyce and Group Leader Barb in the golf cart making sure everyone had everything they needed.

Meanwhile, Carl was assigned to work on digging a trench next to the tennis courts in preparation for installation of the sprinkler system for outside the courts.

Dave and John were Carl's co-laborers on this project.

Meanwhile, back at the tile benches - we were having success getting some of the tiles cleanly removed!

SOA (Sower on Assignment) Janet on her tasks with the housekeeping team...

... and Janet's husband, Glenn, power washing some bleachers.

Becky's husband, Nate, came into our area to get a piece of equipment needed where he was assigned.

Becky worked on painting the tables...

... in between working on chiseling out tiles (she had moved on to the table top).

Group Leader Bill helping with moving some heavy items.

Dave and John working on the irrigation pipes to go into the trench.

Carl working on the trench on the other side of the tennis courts.

We got through our first day without too many additional sore muscles or joints!

Visiting Lake Placid

On Saturday morning, we had a meeting with the other SOWER couples who are here at Lake Placid for the month of February. We heard during the meeting that there were a couple of things going on in the town of Lake Placid on Saturday, so we drove into town to check it out.

We first stopped at the Farmer's Market -- it is held every Saturday...

There were a few stalls with fresh fruits and vegetables, and then other vendors selling other types of things.

One of Lake Placid's nicknames is "Town of Murals". I think I read that there are 47 murals painted on various buildings around town.

The first weekend we were in Lake Placid happened to be the time of the Lake Placid Country Fair, their 57th anniversary!

There were stalls set up all around Devane Park, or "the Circle" in town.

This was an interesting shop - selling banks using old postal box doors...

... they were neat looking...

... unique!

Just at the corner before we got to Devane Park was the American Clown Museum & School. We saw quite a few folks dressed up as clowns in the Country Fair.

There was a Chick-fil-A food truck at the fair too - we haven't ever seen one of those before!

Another mural in town - the train painted in the mural looks like it is coming out onto the tracks built out from the wall!

Information on the mural

The train depot

Prior to coming here, when we would tell folks that we were heading south in Florida to Lake Placid, they would give us quizzical looks and say, "Isn't that in New York?"

It turns out that Melvil (or Melville) Dewey (of the Dewey Decimal system of library classification) came down to Florida from Lake Placid, New York, and purchased a few thousand (3000?) acres of land in central Florida, where Lake Stearns was located. He petitioned to have the name of the lake changed to Lake Placid, and then also requested that the name of the town be changed to Lake Placid. He had founded the Lake Placid Club in New York, and they now had a southern location as well.

From what I read in Wikipedia, Dewey was also a proponent of spelling reform. 

From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvil_Dewey):

As a young adult he advocated spelling reform; he changed his name from the usual "Melville" to "Melvil", without redundant letters, and for a time changed his surname to "Dui."

....

His theories of spelling reform (to which end he founded the Spelling Reform Association in 1886) found some local success at Lake Placid: there is an "Adirondak Loj" in the area, and dinner menus of the club used his reformed spelling. A September 1927 menu is headed "Simpler spelin" and features dishes like hadok, poted beef with noodls, parsli or masht potato, butr, steamd rys, letis, and ys cream. It also advises guests that "All shud see the butiful after-glo on mountains to the east just before sunset. Fyn vu from Golfhous porch."

From other things in the article, it sounds as if he was quite a character and maybe not the nicest person to know.

Lake Placid Camp and Conference Center

On Friday, we drove a bit south in Florida to Lake Placid Camp and Conference Center -- the location of the SOWER project where we will be volunteering for the month of February.

Entry to the project location

Gracie in her spot with RVs of other SOWERs on either side.

The sky was so pretty!

On our walk around the campus, we came across this humorous sign outside a restroom down by the beach.

The SOWER (Servants on Wheels Ever Ready) Ministry (https://sowerministry.org/) is a Christian couples RV work ministry. 

From their website:

The SOWER (Servants On Wheels Ever Ready) Ministry is a non-profit, non-denominational Christian couples RV work ministry that provides volunteer help to selected non-profit Christian ministries. These ministries include camps, conference centers, orphanages, schools, missionary retreat centers and training facilities, homes for abused children and recovery homes for adults. Ministries provide RV hookups, work supervision, specialty tools and materials as needed. SOWERS supply hand tools, labor and their own meals. SOWERS are allowed to stay at projects for one week following a three-week work commitment, giving them an opportunity to see the local sights or just rest and relax. There are approximately 170 ministries SOWERS has partnered with to provide work and encouragement. Our home office, located in northeast Texas, is where the SOWER ministries are coordinated.

We don't yet know exactly what we will be working on while here at Lake Placid. Our work will starts on Monday. We work the project for 3 weeks and then have the 4th week free to stay at the project if we want a place to stay to continue seeing the area. The work week is Monday-Thursday and we have Friday, Saturday and Sunday off. Men work 6 hours each work day, and women work 3 hours.

Carl and Sue had worked a 5 projects in 2016-2017. Dwayne and I looked into joining the SOWER ministry, but felt that it might require more physically than Dwayne would be able to handle. After Carl and I married, we got me joined up into the program, but this is the first project we have signed up to work. We'll see how it goes! We're anticipating lots of Turmeric and Ibuprofen being required as muscles unused to physical labor get exercised!

More to-do's that get put on our list

It seems that a number of things have been vying for our attention...

I posted about the battery in the Jeep dying. That caused the need to replace the battery go to the top of the to-do list - https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2023/02/to-dos-that-get-put-onto-our-list.html

Checking the new battery to make sure it has a good charge under load.

I had mentioned that we read that a faulty relay could be the cause of the intermittent starter-continuation problem that we've seen -- we looked up which relay is for the starter and have its number. We're thinking that we want to have a replacement on hand just in case. We've looked online and have not found them available from other sources, so we stopped at a Jeep dealership - they sell the relay, but had none in stock... oh well!

Carl has had a to-do on the list for a while to check the tow vehicle wiring - we seem to have a problem when the lights are turned on for Gracie that the turn signals do not blink on the Jeep. We don't usually have the lights turned on in Gracie, so it hasn't been a top priority, but Carl took at look at it while we were at the Escapees park because we were in a pullthru site and could test it while parked (hard to do when we're in a back-in site).

We thought it was a short in the connector for the electric at the front of the Jeep (picture above) - but Carl replaced that and it did not seem to help.

In the process, he noticed that one of the marker lights on the side of Gracie was not working, in fact, it was half full of water. It seems the seal at the top of the light was not sealing, but the one at the bottom was sealing well!

The socket was really corroded.

Carl got that cleaned up, and, amazingly, the turn signals on the Jeep seemed to work correctly even when the lights were turned on in Gracie. But... they did not seem to continue to work... so that task is still on the to-do list.

On Thursday evening, the toilet in Gracie stopped flushing. We figured that a spring had broken, but we didn't want to pull into it at night. However, it quickly went to the top of the to-do list!

On Friday morning, before we left the Escapees campground, Carl pulled the toilet off its base to try to determine what the problem might be. He jiggled a couple of things, and, it started working again... We cleaned a lot of the parts - a lot of it is either impossible to get to, or very difficult, when the toilet is in place.

One of the things we found during the cleaning was the model information for the toilet well hidden behind the unit. The tag was curled up, so Carl held it open while I took a picture. Now we should have easier access to get information about parts if we need them!

Some items get put onto our to-do list and may languish there for weeks before we get around to them. Other items push right to the top of the list! 

I remember several months ago, I was reading entries on a Facebook group for Newmar Dutch Star owners (Gracie is a Newmar Dutch Star), and one of the posters asked how we could stand it - that she and her husband had owned their Dutch Star only a few months, but that the RV had been in the shop for most of that time and they still had not gone on their first trip in it. She was concerned that everything would *never* be working. I responded to her that you learn to live with some things not working, you need to decide what things are non-negotiables - what things *must* be working or you can't travel. I wrote that, for me, the only things that are non-negotiables are the engine and the toilet - everything else can be done without, at least for a little while! Well, within this last year, we had a problem with the engine (or, a component of the engine: https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2022/05/well.html, https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2022/05/our-tale-from-thursday.html, https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2022/05/gracie-is-fixed.html), and now the toilet... Thankfully the engine was able to be fixed within a few days, and the toilet was able to be fixed in just a couple of messy hours (and we were at a campground where we could use their restroom overnight!). But... these two items are still on the top of my list of things that need to be working!!!