It is a wonderful thing to realize that the Lord has a plan
for your life. There are times when the
Lord leads you into a seemingly innocuous activity for learning. My first NOMADS project was in St.
Petersburg, FL. Looking back at it, that
project was chocked full of learning opportunities. I can only hope that the learning stuck.
On the Tuesday before I was scheduled to head south for St.
Petersburg the area around my cabin outside Hedgesville, West Virginia, got
about ten inches of snow. I love
snow. It is beautiful. My cabin in nestled in amongst the
woods. I have no grass to mow and unless
I have a hankering, I need to shovel no snow.
The wildlife, aside from my self-indulged rare instances of partying, is
abundant. Wild deer and turkey routinely
visit me, ranging from fawns and chicks to noble bucks and strutting
roosters. The ubiquitous squirrels are
tolerated as a means of enjoyment. They
try devious means to unload my bird feeders.
I retaliate by stringing trout line between trees and hoisting the
feeder just inches beyond the range of the squirrel’s leap. I watch from my back window as the squirrels
glare at me from the safe distance of a large oak, and I at them with thoughts
of raising a 12-guage shotgun and obliterating half the bark on that tree. I swear the squirrels are winning. They have apparently come conspiring with the
raccoons that are better adept at unhooking lofty feeders and scattering birdseed
for every sort of critter. I know the
Lord made man higher on the food chain from squirrels but I do not recall
seeing any reference in the Bible where I have to feed them.
I cleared the snow away from my trailer and packed for my
first adventure. I was ready to hit the
road by Thursday evening. The weather
forecast for Friday, January 25, 2011, called for snow flurries. I woke that morning in anticipation of a
leisurely drive down clean, albeit cold, roads and highways. Well, the snow flurries were a bit
heavy. By early morning, the flurries
had covered the roads and shown no intent of slacking up. It was a beautiful snowfall but I needed to drive. Further, I needed to pull my trailer for the
first time in snow. Beyond all that, the
road out of my place was a downhill slope with a T intersection at the bottom
of it.
Not to be daunted by such trivial matters, I locked my cabin
door, mounted my trusty truck, and slammed her into 4-wheel drive. She groaned under the strain, diesel engine
roaring loudly, and slowly pulled herself and the trailer onto snow-covered
pavement from the muddy parking spot beside my house. Happy to be doing what she was made to do,
she pulled the trailer with a steady grip on the cold and wet pavement. With great pride, she rambled vociferously
with enthusiasm and determination down the sloping pavement. Her brakes, though unaccustomed to such an overwhelming
load, guided the massive bulk down the hill and through the turns as she
gleefully navigated the curvy road and on toward the highway. Never has there been such a prouder moment in
the life of a Dodge truck.
Perhaps not as confident as my trusty truck, I wiped the
sweat from my brow, took a deep breath, maybe two, threw my gloves aside to rub
my sweaty hands on my pants leg, and embarked on my first NOMADS adventure.
As I turned onto the Interstate, I left the falling snow
behind. The farther south I traveled, I
saw less and less snow on the ground. By
the time I crossed the North Carolina border, I knew I was headed to warmer
weather. This is not to say that I
dislike winter. In fact, I love
winter. I love the snow, skiing,
watching the fire in my woodstove as it warms my cabin, and venturing out as I
desire into the snow-covered landscape.
During the summer I tend to stay indoors enjoying conditioned air and
less humidity. I would rather avoid the
heat of summer. So, why am I heading
south during the winter? Well, the
NOMADS projects are in the south during winter, confirming one of the many
interpretations of the NOMADS acronym: Northern Old Methodists Avoiding Deep Snow.
I arrived at the St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, St.
Petersburg, Florida, on the afternoon of Saturday, January 26. Not knowing what I was to face in Florida, I
used my dependable navigator to guide me to the project site. Sure enough, I found the church where I was
assigned. OK, around back, the
directions read. This was a new one on
me – I drove around the back of the church to see five trailers/RVs parked in
the middle of the church parking lot. As
I maneuvered into my space, I realized that all six trailers, including mine,
received water from one ½-inch hose.
Each of us had electrical hook-up but that was it. I later learned that on every Friday morning
all of us would use a small macerator hooked to the trailer’s sewer outlet. All of this was enlightening. I knew I could survive.
Our team numbered eleven in all. I was the only single member and the
youngest. I did not know what lay ahead
of me and at this point in my walk-of-faith; I was not sure how much my faith
would play a role in leading me through this project. The team leader met me as I pulled into the
parking lot and directed me where to park.
As I set up my trailer, having learned more than a few things in Marion,
NC, during my first outing, other members of our team soon joined me. I found them very kind and friendly. Good deal!
The NOMADS project
for the next three weeks included home repairs in the local community, arranged
through the church. Presumably, because I
had no specific skills in construction or the building trade, my team leader
assigned me to unskilled labor. This was
not all bad because I reminded myself that I was there to serve the Lord and
would do whatever was asked of me. My
expectations, however, plagued me with disappointment. I had emptied out my shed back home and
looked forward to using the tools I brought.
I hoped to either use them or at least learn how to use them. Another glitch for me was the team leader
wanted to drive his vehicle to each project.
Being my first project, I went along and did not insist on driving my
own truck.
One of the other guys recognized my plight and invited me to
join him on some home repairs. Unfortunate
for me, the team leader had his own way of assigning work. As the third week of our project flew by, we
completed our team evaluations and wrapped up our work assignments. My
friend was given a small project of fixing a ceiling fan in a woman’s home. He told the team leader, almost in passing,
that I would help him. Inside, I was
elated, but kept it to myself. He and I
drove to the home and found the broken fan.
He quickly disassembled the fan.
With surgical precision, he immediately identified the errant mechanism,
and removed it with ease. Turning to his
novice helper, who had learned about the inner workings of a fan by
occasionally viewing the turning blades while lying in bed on a hot, sleepless
night, he said simply, “It’s all yours.”
‘Huh?’ My desire to
learn about the tools in my truck was far from my mind. My desire to be one of ‘them’ who understood
all about things like electric, plumbing, tile, framing, and roofs, wore blue
jeans with a heavy leather belt burdened with pouches of all kinds of neat
tools of which I knew absolutely nothing about, and walked with an air of
confidence that would overcome any construction project from building the Eiffel
Tower to fixing a ceiling fan, brought beads of sweat to my brow. My mind went numb immediately, scrambled by imaginations
of how was I to reassemble the multitude of small shiny pieces of STUFF back
into the resemblance of a workable ceiling fan.
To make matters worse, here was this small elderly woman watching through
gold-trimmed spectacles from the doorway of her small bedroom with a look of
admiration and trust at these two great repairers of ceiling fans towering over
her, dissecting her beautiful fan into a million small pieces of shiny metal,
plastic, titanium, or whatever they were made of, as if they were sent directly
from God into her midst to perform one of His many miracles in her small world
of living out each day of her life with the peaceful breeze filtering down on
her as she slept cozily beneath the lovely bedspread that was now covered with
the guts of her beloved ceiling fan. My
hope was that she did not focus too intently on the sweat of my brow, the
wringing of my hands as they trembled with fear of the moment, my stammering speech
if only I could voice a small peep of response to my friend’s remark.
The Lord is present in this world of ours, no doubt. Further, a fellow NOMAD, well, this one, of
course, would not leave his partner hanging.
Perhaps sensing my sudden plight, waiting for the tsunami of my blood
pressure to subside following the great quake to my nervous system, he stood by
waiting patiently and understandingly as I fumbled with pliers and a
screwdriver waiting for divine guidance to guide my hands. The Lord blessed me with recollections from
childhood at my moment of certain death by nervousness overload. I remembered the scattered pieces of
cardboard that once assembled correctly would make themselves into a small,
simple puzzle depicting a clown and balloons.
Leave it to the Lord to simplify things that are certainly otherwise massive,
complex undertakings. I saw before me a
simple puzzle that, once reassembled correctly, would make an operational
ceiling fan.
Blinking away the flood of sweat, tears of self-imposed frustration,
or more likely my attempt to clear my vision enough to see the many small shiny
metal pieces without my reading glasses, I set myself to reassemble the
fan. Again, the Lord blessed me with
sufficient recall of my friend’s disassembly as to put the thing back together
with only a couple minor delays in reassembly while mentally cursing the
engineer who designed such a mass, or mess, of complex machinery in the first
place.
The smile on the lovely face of the elderly woman as she
watched the blades once again circle around and push air down upon her as it
rotated silently in the small bedroom was more gratifying than any words of
thanks she could offer. Her gratitude
was apparent but it fell secondary to my satisfaction of accomplishment in
overcoming this previous seemingly insurmountable task and doing something that
I had dreamed of doing before joining this project.
My first NOMADS project was good, productive, satisfying,
and enlightening. I learned that NOMADS
serve the Lord by helping others. I
learned the truth of what I heard from one NOMAD that when you come into a
NOMADS camp, you have found immediate friends.
When I scheduled my NOMADS projects for the first few months
of 2011, I planned to serve three projects, each with a three-week break
between them. This, I learned quickly,
was not smart for it caused me to drag my trailer back to West Virginia before
heading to my next project. I was not
organized enough at that time to store my trailer in the south during the cold
months or work back-to-back projects with minimal travel between them. So, I headed home for a three-week break.
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| St. Petersburg, FL - nice place to spend winter |
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| Host of my first NOMADS project |
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| I never imagined 'camping' in a church parking lot |
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| Make do with what you got |
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| Working on a kitchen remodeling project |
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| Building a ramp |
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| The 'Ramp' |
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| I did a lot of painting in FL |
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| My first NOMADS team - good folks! |
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| Sunset over the Gulf of Mexico |
