Sunday At the Ranch

The rains are done here, but they ushered in much cooler temperatures.  It was a day where it actually felt good to stand in the sun. Not so intense and it warmed the body enough to ward off the chill of the wind.

We joined our church via streaming at 8am.  Good to be able to participate, even if it’s only one way and on a tiny screen.

At 10:30 we joined the boys in the lunch room for their Sunday service.  Marty has been going over doctrine and today the topic was marriage and family.  He stressed that a proper view of marriage and family are foundational to society and living outside of God’s plan for marriage is one of the major contributors to decline of a culture.  During the question time it was the youngest, 10-year-old Max, who asked the most questions.  And he asked some good ones.  In spite of being off-the-wall most of the time, he is thinking about things.

Once this was done, the boys set up for dinner.  Sunday dinner is served family-style, with place settings out for everyone and food brought out to the tables.  Most other meals we have here are served cafeteria-style.

It can be challenging to get the boys to talk, unless you are talking about cars or hunting or video games.   Some of the older ones talk about trucks and what they want in a truck; big dually diesel trucks costing upwards of $80,000.  Deb put in a remark to the effect of “What if you drive some cheap, basic thing and save/invest the rest?”  They all looked at her like she had two heads.  Financial acumen is something we all need to grow into.

We saw Max by the plastic pile this afternoon, busting up the larger pieces of plastic so they would fit better in the dumpster.  In the trailer-loads of unusable stuff that comes from the thrift store, the plastic stuff is separated out and piled here to be taken care of by the boys, usually as a Con.  The rest goes either to the metal recycle or the burn pile.

Little Max was busting up plastic with a large mallet, and taking his time to do so.  When I walked past after he had finished and gone, I noticed strings of old Christmas lights where every bulb was smashed, and several VCR tapes where all the tape had been pulled out and jumbled up into one large pile before being thrown in the dumpster.  May as well play with the stuff as you are disposing of it.

I took some time to fly my drone for a while.  It’s not often I have such wide open spaces to practice flying.  I took picture of the road leading to the ranch.  It doesn’t look so steep from the air but, on the ground and driving a large vehicle, it’s much steeper than it looks.  The area around here is all part of the Mark Twain National Forest, so it is just trees for as far as the eye can see.  It is some beautiful country out here.

Tomorrow begins our last week of work.  It sounds like Deb will be cleaning more housing units and I will continue working in the wood shop.  Another couple drove in over the weekend in a large motorhome, and they will be volunteering for a while, and a church group will be here for a few days.  A lot of work is done by volunteers and I imagine it can be a challenge keeping all these groups gainfully employed.