Texas 2 update 10                                                                                                                                   11/30/19

I hope you had a nice and happy Thanksgiving.  I’m starting this on Thanksgiving Day and will finish it later.  I’ve started my Christmas letter too, but don’t have a printer here so don’t know how I will print it and send it.

The big news at this time is the refinery explosion in Port Neches/Port Arthur which is about 30 miles away.  It woke me shortly after midnight on Wednesday thinking it was probably a small earthquake.   Then there was another during the day and we still didn’t know what it was.  I was invited to a Thanksgiving dinner that night and it was the topic of much conversation.  People were ordered to evacuate their homes 4 miles around it and many had damage such as blown in doors and windows.  I’ve been through that area and there are many refineries in the area.  Luckily, only 4 people were slightly injured.

I’m about to finish on the house I mentioned in my last update.  We’ve installed kitchen cabinets and a microwave and I’m about to finish putting on trim around the ladle’s artistic touches that she has all over the house.  The lady was in tears when I left because she was happy and thankful.  I expect to move on to the next project on Friday.

I’m now finishing this on Saturday and have moved my saws and tools to the next project.  It is a large one and will take at least until Christmas to finish.  Photo 1421 was taken from the entrance gate.  You can barely see the double-wide trailer that we will be working in in the center.  1423 is from further up the drive and you can see that there is water on both sides.  The lake was a former sand pit where all of the sand was dug out until large pumps could no longer keep up with the inflow of ground water.  It is privately owned and the owners talk about practically nothing but fishing.  They have church groups, friends, and relatives come to fish there.  The house sits on a kind of peninsula out into the lake.  Photo 1419 is all I could get as the front of the house.  There is a large covered open space in front that is used for all of the fishing gear and related equipment.  The house was filled with 5 feet of water during Harvey.  Photo 1414 was taken from the back door of the house.  This project will be a challenge for me because the non-standard wall thickness requires that I build the door frames from scratch and use standard house trim instead of the trailer trim that is usual for trailers.  We will put down new floors and install new cabinets in the whole thing too.

Steve, the young man that I have worked with a lot, will be working with me again provided he gets out of the hospital again.  He keeps having bouts with his “water-on-the-brain” condition and can’t work because of it at times.

I was invited to 3 different Thanksgiving meals and left-overs were sent “home” with me a couple of times.  Both co-workers and clients and church friends have been very good to me.  Iconnect even provided a check for $400 to cover my air travel for one week back to Illinois and Wisconsin for Christmas.  God is good!

Christians Together!

• 

• 

• 

•