Cool and cloudy this morning, 39 degrees when we got up. The clouds meant that the day didn’t warm up as fast as other days, so we were working out in the cold for a good part of the morning. We took our first break a bit early to warm up hour hands. All of us were clutching mugs of coffee or hot chocolate at break time.
Back to the walkway this morning, more digging to get to the correct level, then we put forms in and put in a base layer of sand.
That one sentence describes the entire day of work for three of us. The others went to caulk some more showers and then to insulate pipes against the coming cold. We’re supposed to have a cold snap over the weekend accompanied by (at some accounts) an inch of ice and even some snow. This camp has quite a bit of exposed plumbing so there is a mad scramble to insulate said plumbing before this weekend.
I wonder if the big groups coming in this weekend realize that it is going to be near record lows.
Several of the women painted, as usual, and many of them joined the other women in the laundry room after their hands got cold. There were mountains of laundry again after this weekend so the staff appreciated the women pitching in with the laundry.
After work I spent some time disassembling the toilet and replacing all the seals. Not the most fun job, but it did seem to fix the leak that we had been seeing. I also set up a new Starlink antenna. There is WiFi here but it is rather abysmal, particularly on weekends when lots of people are here. The cellular data service also grinds to a halt on evenings and weekends.
This past weekend we noticed a rather large group of Chinese men eating together in the dining hall. With our rather strong family connection to the Chinese we recognized the language being spoken and the characters on their shirts. The English on their shirts said Marvel Men and we learned later that this is a manhood model defined by an organization called Trailhead Fellowship. We were encouraged to see the presence of so many Chinese Christians and were given an opportunity to connect with them this evening.
We were on our usual walk to take out the trash after dinner, a trek of nearly a half mile. The dumpsters are near the main gate and we saw a guy standing out there, poking at his phone. Striking up a conversation with him we learned he was in the same group as the Chinese although he was American, and speaking fluent Mandarin himself. He was waiting for an Uber that never came. His group of three Chinese pastors and himself wanted to go out to dinner but their ride never materialized so they resigned themselves to noodle bowls for dinner.
He introduced us to the other three guys. One of them wants to do ministry from an RV, going to various places to minister to pastors who are burned out, to encourage them, give them respite, and the like. “Pastors usually have no one to confide in, to open up to,” he told us, and he wants to be that person. He was especially excited to see our RV and we walked over there and talked about the RV life for a while.
Brent, our initial contact, was also from Ann Arbor, Michigan. His daughters went to Hope College so we had some conversation about this also.
It was dark when we finally parted ways. Deb had the great idea of digging around in the freezer for one of our pulled pork packages and a package of brisket. It may not be much but it’s hopefully a nice little addition to the noodle bowls they were planning to have and perhaps an encouragement to our new Chinese friends. What a blessing to meet up with these guys and to hear a little bit of their stories.
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