Finally Situated...

I think I'm fixin to commence bloggin agin...er, sometimes I forget I am a YANKEE! This picture is of the group we are working with for February and March. From the left are Shirley and Ralphie (yup, his IS Ralphie) from NY. They are our fearless leaders and a hoot. Next to them is Milo and Loretta (IA), at the right side of the picture is Betty and Walter (PA), Harriet and David (PA) and Hazel and Howard (MS). The day we arrived the women were waiting for me and all hugged me and had a very warm welcome.

It is a different situation for me, the lone wolf. Everything here is stressed that no man is an island, we work, have devotions, go to Bible study and church, socialize and play TOGETHER! I admit to being a tad smothered but it is getting better as I accept the wisdom of community.

Our days go something like this; 8 am devotions, prayer and a song for the day, then we get our jobs for the day. The women work from 8:30 til 11:30 then we go home to make lunch for our men. The guys come home from 12-1 for lunch. They go back to work and the ladies go for a walk. We all start out together but we always end up coming in with two separate groups. I told the fast ones (Loretta and Harriet) that it would probably take me a month of walking before I could keep up with them, but I may have been too optimistic. They are close to half a mile ahead of the rest of us! But Loretta is a biker. She and her husband have been on RAGBRAI (bike across Iowa) 9 times. Ewww, I am really out of shape! Anyway, the guys are done at 3 so the ladies do laundry, clean and get dinner ready til the guys come home then we have POP on the PATIO, where we take our beverage of choice outside, sit together and wind down from our day. Tuesday evenings are socials, either playing games or potlucks or roasting hot dogs, Wednesday evening is Bible study. We currently are working at a site that has a congregation so we join them for their midweek service but on other sites we just have Bible study together. The guys only work until noon on Thursdays and then we have free time until the next Monday morning.

There is a thrift shop here that the ladies have been working sorting through donations and getting them ready to sell. They had a bunch of books that needed sorted and I got to do that...go figure! There is so much here to do. It can be overwhelming.

The Evangelical Bible Mission was started over 50 years ago and has over 600 missionaries all over the world. There is also a church on the property as well as home health care, food pantry, and apartments. But it appears that most of the donations go for the missions because there is so much here that needs to be repaired, updated, or just plain demolished.

Ken and I are happy in our work. We both have lessons to learn in following. The constraints are hard for me but I understand they are necessary to the organization. It is really hard to be an indian when you are wired to be a chief but God is faithful and He will teach me this lesson soon I am sure! If anyone wants our snail mail address it is; Evangelical Bible Mission, 5200 SE 145th St., Summerfield, FL 34492, attn: RVICS - Ruge

I will close with a funny...all the men here are very particular about their RV's and are cleaning and waxing and just wiping off dust all the time. Yesterday one guy came over to show us a really good cleaner to get black streaks off the coach then today another man told Ken that if we didn't have a long scrub brush to clean our coach he would certainly loan us the one he has! Ken said to me that he thinks they want us to clean and wax our coach. I told him that I noticed that it was the MEN who took care of that job!

The picture of Shelli and the kids are from Super Bowl Sunday. So there WERE Bear fans cheering in Indianapolis but to no avail. Well, there's always next year! (It feels so much better saying that after the Super Bowl than it has in past years when we said it after the third game!)

Bye for now.