The week in review

Things are busy as usual in Lakeshore, but praise God for the people who are still coming to volunteer in the Lakeshore community. This week was also the Family Bible Conference which went very well. There was not a huge turn out, but the folks that did come heard some great truth preached by Pastor Dave Stephenson of Grace Bible Church in Atlanta, GA. The children also learned truth during the morning VBS and enjoyed a movie in the evenings, on Wednesday night the children sang the songs they had learned during VBS and taught the adults the words and motions to one song.

We have had teams from all over (Washington State, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Oklahoma) working out in the community and on the property. This week they have been working on demolishing a couple of houses, cleaning up yards, painting, framing up houses, setting pylons for houses, doing electrical work, plumbing, flooring, stocking shelves in the distribution center, sorting boxes in the warehouse, and other things that I am sure have slipped my mind.

One resident in the community and church member, Ms. Reddford, has been fun to get to know. She is such a blessing to the community, the church, and to me. Ms. Reddford is I think in her 70’s and has Parkinson’s, but she’s sharp and quick witted and a lot of fun to joke around with. After the storm Ms. Reddford had the opportunity to leave the area, but choose to stay just to be close to her church. She then bought a trailer that had been flooded. The church looked at it and wasn’t sure if they were going to be able to fix it. They decided that they couldn’t, but they told her they could build her a house. It is a cute little house. In the past couple of weeks I have seen the house come from just the shell of the house to putting up drywall and now painting. Soon we will be painting the outside. Ms. Reddford asked Pastor Don and me one day what color she should paint the outside of her house. We told her pink (I think it’d be cute), she told us no. So we have joked around with her about painting her house pink, then on of the teams this week put pink polka dots on one of the closet walls in her house. She couldn’t stop talking about the paint job, she got a kick out of it. Lord willing, the last few things will get taken care of inside her house soon and she’ll be able to move in.


Another thing taking place this week in the beginning of the building of Ms. Lynn’s house. A couple weeks ago we had teams out at the property cleaning it off and making it suitable to build a house. Then dirt was brought in and now there’s subflooring on the pylons. Ms. Lynn is a church member and has been very faithful to work in the distribution center from early on.

Last week I was blessed by a visit from Teresa Brunner, a friend from my church back in Wisconsin. It was great to see her and see the excitement that beamed from her as she saw some progress, since our trip here in March.