Here is the main inner city mission house we stayed in while we were in Detroit. When the missionaries left, they had to board up some of the biggest windows, because if you don't, the windows are liable to be broken into.
The window behind this board was already broken. We cleaned up the glass.
We were so thankful for all the bunks and beds and mattresses that first night as we crashed, exhausted, into bed after making up what we could. We were on our own the whole time there, as we worked on the second house for the Shermans.
The Troyers had to leave because of her health, which seemed to be related to stress.
I could fully understand. It would be very difficult to live in a city where crime is so prevalent and you can't go out alone very safely.
Hannah and Danny were so happy to harvest a few cherry tomatoes from these tire gardens.
This is what the street looked like down from that house. It was one of the nicer streets in that area of town. Carrie is jumping rope for a minute.
This is a house two doors down from our mission house. Sam is checking out the sign on the front door
that reads that the house is condemned, etc. There are many of these homes. The city is filled with them, as Detroit had gone bankrupt and things are a horrible mess.
For example, a few blocks away....
and another, just examples of what you see almost everywhere you look.
That first afternoon I went with Jonathan to take a look at the house the guys were working on. The front windows of it were boarded up, too. The men and boys took some of the boards down on the side windows in order to let air in to dry out the dry wall mud and paint later on, but these front boards had to stay up.
I could hardly bear the sight of the dust and dirt and the mess left after all the gutting of lath and plaster,
which were replaced with dry wall.
My brother Gabriel's boss had come over and done some plumbing a few weeks ago, someone else had rewired the house, and other volunteers had dry walled, but the dry wall wasn't finished.
Some still needed to be hung, such as in this bathroom closet, and none of the drywall had been taped or mudded.
Our crew of mostly teenagers and not really skilled laborers had a huge job cut out for us.
I am so impressed with all those boy cousins and the friend they brought along, Paul Hugh.
They just got right to the dirty work, and pitched in with a will.
There was no running water at all the first day, till the city water man came the next day and installed a water meter.
Still, they only had an outdoor spigot. Here the boys are getting water from our motor home water tank to use for mixing mud.
Were we ever thankful we'd taken our motor home and not just our van, as we'd considered, in order to save gas.
We also had to use our motor home generator to charge batteries for the cordless drills, because the house didn't have electricity either!
They did ask for a cord from a kind neighbor, and that helped later on.
Busy as bees.
David Morley mudding screw holes and edges. Even Timmy and Danny helped a lot with such tasks.
Meanwhile that afternoon, Jonathan and I had to go try to find an RV dump and buy a few groceries to add to the larder we'd purchased at a discount store in PA.
On our way, we passed these interesting spots on the Canada border.
We would have liked to cross over to Canada just to say we'd been there.
A typical dumpy corner, with a beggar sitting there.
Hundreds of these semi trailer containers in this area.
In the middle of the squalor, I saw a few pretty barrels of flowers.
I could write a whole story about how long it took to get into the city water and sewer plant where there was supposed to be an RV dump, and the merry-go-round the guy took us through to find this spot, and then
get proper authorization to use it.
We thought we must be back in Ukraine again, or some third world country.
Jonathan suggested that I should caption this photo, "When Things Are Going to Pot."
Yes, that is where we had to put our pipe to dump the RV holding tank. Jonathan couldn't believe his eyes.
But that was typical of Detroit. You might as well be in a third world country.
On a cheerier note, back at the mission house, the girls had helped me so much that morning with getting our things settled in, the house cleaned up (the Troyers had left rather suddenly and hadn't been able to get everything or clean the house)
and make the first lunch for the crew of 16.
It was so fun for the girl cousins to work together to make a lovely meal and make things in the house look cozy.
Amaris Morley had sent along home canned strawberry sauce for making drinks.
The girls were so good at finding little things here and there to decorate the bar with to make the house look lived in and cozy. Carrie and Hannah picked wildflowers from the yard.
The second evening we were there was Candace's 20th birthday.
She is such a beautiful young lady, with a beautiful spirit and sweet attitude. No one is more helpful and hard working. Jonathan and I managed to get her a bouquet and a chocolate bar.
We had no wrapping paper along, so we used white napkins and wildflowers instead of a bow.
It worked!
More photos in another post. I kind of crashed this afternoon, so sat down in the office awhile and uploaded photos while doing office work.
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