When the Ladies are Away, the Men Will---Work!

At least that is what happened last week while the ladies were at the ladies' retreat.

 Jonathan, Hannah, and Danny traveled up to South Dakota with Crystal and me, as far as Norris, where there is a missionary home being fixed up for a new missionary family coming under Society of Indian Missions.

 There was lots of work to do. First thing, Jonathan and Danny started troubleshooting why the kitchen drain wasn't working. After hours of work, cutting into the pipe several places in the basement and crawl space, and purchasing and using a drain-cleaning inflatable plumbing "bladder," the problem was discovered to be about a gallon of black "grease" which they cleaned out of the pipes. 

 

Yay! Now the drain was working.

Meanwhile, Danny crawled into the crawlspace...

and came out with a few cobwebs wound around the broom. 

 This is the small house the missionary family of six will be living in. Keith Lavery told us this house is the nicest one in Norris. 

It had been broken into, so some windows were boarded up; light fixtures had been broken, which Jonathan replaced.

Here is the back yard, full of bird songs in the morning. We could hear cows mooing at night from the farm nearby. Jonathan and Keith put all new wiring in for a basement room. They pulled out some old wiring and put in new for upstairs receptacles, added another circuit for a future bathroom in the basement, put GFI receptacles in the kitchen, hung three light fixtures in the kitchen, and corrected some existing drain lines that were improperly sloped in the crawl space.

Randy Albertson and his boys, along with Joseph Light and a couple other young men, came and helped paint nearly the whole house, inside and out, including the porch and deck rails. Even Jonathan Albertson helped.

Danny and Quil painting the foundation blocks.

The boys also helped tear down some of this old, falling down shed, and burned the wood in a fire.

       Cassie and Hannah, both eleven, helped like troopers, washing the kitchen window, cleaning out the bugs, painting in the basement, and setting out the meals.

When Crystal and I arrived back to Norris late Saturday evening, the extra men had cleared out after two days of hard work, and the house was in need of a major cleaning!

 

Well, Jonathan had let me know not to worry about it, but Cassie wasn't about to leave that house such a mess. She and Hannah found two mops and a bucket, and they started to mop!

 

Then they discovered quite a few paint drips on the floor, and were scrubbing those up.  

Well, seeing those young girls so busy, so cheerful, and so helpful, I just had to get down on the floor and help. So here we all are, getting the floor cleaned up somewhat and scrubbing up the paint drips.

I was just amazed at that hard-working, cheerful little Cassie. What a blessing she is, raised by servant-hearted parents! She and Hannah and I were singing as we worked late that Saturday evening.

                                      

Sunday morning breakfast--curled up on the arm chair!

Pushing the stubborn slide-out back in after using this camper three nights.

Then we drove it back to the main mission house and office in Mission, SD, on our way home.