Forest City, IA - September 2011

Following my NOMADS project at the Pine Creek Camp in Indiana, I headed over to Forest City, Iowa, for the 2011 NOMADS Annual Meeting.  It was an easy drive, fairly level roads, and more cornfields than what I saw in Indiana.  This Annual Meeting was much different from the 2010 Meeting in Marion, North Carolina.  (You have to read my earlier posts about that adventure.)

On Friday, September 16, 2001, I arrived in relaxed fashion, except perhaps for a bit of anxiety about having only electrical hook-ups.  I had not used my trailer where I had no water supply, outside of my freshwater tank.  So, as I drove into Forest City, I followed the directions given me beforehand and stopped by a local public campground to fill up on fresh water.  I found the NOMADS meeting place with no problem and headed across the campground to a spot near the bathhouse.  The place appeared as a mowed pasture littered with electrical boxes.  It was easy finding a level spot and I was good to go.

I checked out the bathhouse and found it very clean and accommodating.  It had about five or so cinder block shower stalls with hot water.  What more could you ask for?  I figured I would save on my fresh water tank and use the bathhouse for showers.

I had previously agreed to help with parking.  On Saturday morning, I headed to the entrance to the campground.  There, I found some NOMADS who seemed to be volunteering for parking also.  I ended up spending most of the day, except for my lunch break, greeting incoming NOMADS in all kinds and sizes of rigs.  Most were friendly folks but once in a great while I came across someone who was either tired of driving or just too occupied with their own world to be friendly.  It was a noble and worthwhile job although I found the overall effort to be a bit disorganized.  No worries.  The job got done.

On that weekend before the meeting got underway, there was an antique tractor show on a plot of land next to the campground.  I walked through the demonstrations of steam-powered tractors and displays of old tractors, some operable and some not.  I looked for a Farmall B-model tractor similar to the one my grandfather once had (and I drove to rake hay back in my high school days).  I found a couple that resembled the B-model but not exactly.  The plowing demonstrations using steam-powered tractors were fascinating.  The largest plow I saw pulled under steam was a 16-bottom plow.  I also saw a young guy operating his own scaled-down steam-powered tractor.  He really looked the part, complete with smudged cheeks and suet-covered overalls.

The meeting started on Tuesday so the previous Monday was available for tours and such.  I signed up for a ‘farm tour’.  Early on Monday -- early for me, that is – I boarded a big tour bus and headed out with the group of old-timers who probably once were farmers themselves.  For some reason, I do not think of myself as an old-timer but perhaps many younger folk would call me that.  In any event, we headed out of town toward what the tour guy called a ‘wind farm’.  I thought that term was a bit funny – more stupid than humorous – and soon learned that what I would see is a bunch of high-tech windmills.  The morning was very foggy.  The bus traveled along straight paves roads, turning now and then, until we arrived at what looked like a refurbished barn.  The barn was by itself near the road.  The only thing around it was one of the old windmills from years ago.  It was still very foggy and when I looked around, the old windmill was the only thing to see.  So, this is a wind farm, I thought.

The group headed up to the second floor of the barn, which more resembled an office building, and listened to one of the engineers tell us about the high-tech windmills that he assured us were out there.  It was an interesting talk, even without the windmills to see.

Next, we headed to a place that makes ethanol.  It looked like an industrial plant in the middle of cornfields, which it was.  As with the wind farm, a couple of engineers explained the process of removing carbohydrates from corn and making what amounts to moonshine – 200 proof, at that – and mixing it with cheap gasoline.  The other product from corn is protein, which is returned to local corn-growing farms as feed for animals.  I learned that sixty percent of the corn in the local area was grown for ethanol.  I did not know if that was a lot or not, but it sounded good.

Then, we headed to a ‘show-room’ farm for lunch.  Some insurance guy from town owned the place but he and no one else lived there.  A local caterer fed us a meal of a BBQ sandwich, chips, and a little salad.  I would have figured they would offer something good to drink like water but all they had was some instant sweetened drink.  The food was adequate though.  The interesting part was they fed us in what appeared to be a glorified tool shed.

The final farm on the tour was a winery.  I did not expect to see a winery in Iowa but I reckon they are everywhere.  I figured the winery would bring in juice from California but I was surprised to learn that they grew some grapes of their own.  The winery offered several types of wine named after local people and places.  It was unique and all and perhaps a little interesting.  Not being a wine kind-of-sewer (connoisseur), I looked around and headed back to the bus.

The best part of the NOMADS meeting for me was the silent and live auctions.  As last year, several tables were lined with all kinds of nice things, some more interesting than others.  I bid on a few things and ended up getting a couple that frankly I do not know why I bid on them in the first place.  Still, I like auctions.

As the meeting ended, I headed south to Oklahoma.  My next NOMADS project was at the Boy’s Ranch in Gore, Oklahoma.

Iowa cornfields stretch for miles

Campers of all sizes and shapes attend the Annual Meeting

Snug accommodations but adequate

Nice accommodations

Model H Farmall

Steam-powered tractor pulling 16-bottom plow

Each man on plow operated two handles

Iowa winery

Pine Village, IN - September 2011

Through my work with the NOMADS, the Lord allows me to meet the most interesting and friendly people in the world.  I ventured to a summer camp in Indiana and met some(more) wonderful people.  It is SO nice meeting and making new friends.  This is significant to me because for too many years I had few friends outside my workplace.  It seemed that once I made a friend through church or my neighborhood, he would end up seeing my wife while I was away.  That was no good.  Consequently, having my own friends, and good solid people at that, is a nice thing.  The Lord was changing that!

I had never spent any time in Indiana, just passed through it on my way east and west across the country.  The NOMADS project was at the Pine Creek Camp, a Methodist summer camp located outside Pine Village, Indiana.  It occupied many acres of wooded area.  Wandering along the many trails one would discover rustic cabins hidden away among the trees, a ropes course, horse stables and arena (and horses), outdoor worship area, retreat building and lodging, cafeteria, pool, and a hill with three bands of heavy plastic for the old ‘slippy slide’.  Deer and turkey routinely wandered through as if they owned the place, and they probably did.  A river – Pine Creek – bordered the camp on one side.  This project occurred in the early part of September (from August 29 through September 15, 2011).

The camp had a new director, a young guy right out of college who had been a counselor or something there for several years.  He and another delightful man ran the place.  Our team of volunteers helped close the camp and prepare for the winter ahead.  Our team included two couples from Florida (I guess folks from Florida head north in the summer to avoid the heat and humidity) and one from Ohio.  As I said already, all of them were wonderful folks.

The day I arrived was beautiful – mild temperature, blue sky – the waning days of summer.  I pulled my trailer into the camp and followed signs to the RV parking area.  What was different about this was the road – or trail – led me deep into the wooded camp by way of a narrow gravel path, across a small bridge that made me wonder if it would support my truck and trailer, and around a rustic area of a shelter, bathroom, and several campsites.  Cool, I thought.  I love the woods.

No one was around so I picked one of the empty spots and backed in my trailer.  Some minutes later, I met some of my neighbors and even later than that, the last member of our team pulled in.  I had heard it before that when a person pulls into a NOMADS camp, he (or she) will find instant friends.  That is very true.  I felt at home, although I tend to shy away from meeting new people.

The routine was very similar to the traditional NOMADS schedule.  We met at 8:00am for devotions at the Cafeteria building.  We worked sporadically, taking morning and afternoon breaks, and lunch break.  Nothing out of the ordinary and the breaks gave us good time to talk, get to know each other, and enjoy each other’s company.  We ended each day around 4:00pm.  Some of us would head into town to explore or whatever else came to mind.  It was very peaceful around the camp.

During our first weekend, Labor Day weekend, I drove through miles of cornfields to see an Amish area near the northern border of Indiana.  Along the way, I was amazed to see hundreds of high-tech windmills scattered among the fields of corn.  I heard they helped supply electricity for Chicago.  I also heard that farmers would associate with the power companies to rent area for the windmills, thus supplementing their farming income.  Good thinking, I imagined.  The only area taken up by the windmills was the small area for the base.  From a distance, the windmill does not look very big but up close, it is monstrous.  As I ventured farther north I settled into a local restaurant for dinner.  I was surprised to see a section carved out of the parking lot for Amish carriages.  I realized that I should not photograph the Amish people but I got a photo of a carriage parked near the restaurant.  A tremendous downpour of heavy rain came just as I entered the place.  I felt sorry for the horse but glad I was not driving through the deluge.  After dinner, I drove along side roads and highways to see many carriages moving rather swiftly, perhaps to avoid another downpour.

Our three weeks included a variety of tasks.  We cleaned and winterized cabins, tore down old hay wagons, installed windows, took down some of the ropes course, installed screens, load metal for recycling, and build a shelter on the side of the tool barn.  I especially enjoyed helping our ‘technical guy’ on the shelter.  The camp had no money to spend on materials so we scrounged wood from the old hay wagons and scraps from whatever woodpile we could find.  We had enough to frame the shelter.  Tin for the roof came from an old horse barn scheduled for demolition.  It was unfortunate that we had to evict some wasps from the old horse barn, but ‘you got to do what you got to do’.  The tin was longer than needed so we ‘cut and pasted’ into a new roof.  The shelter-building project enforced my building skills.  I had fun working on that project and learned a lot in the process.  I especially enjoyed working with our ‘construction engineer’.  He is a super guy!

During our stay at Pine Creek Camp, our team had two wonderful meals with the Camp Director.  The first was at his home where this young man cooked up a bodacious meal of homegrown vegetables.  He was quite hospitable, making everyone feel very much at ease.  For our second ‘team’ meal, we ventured into town to the local Country Club.  I do not mean to say that NOMADS eat all the time, but it may seem that way.  Anyway, we enjoyed good, quality time together filled with delicious food, pleasant conversation, and best of all – lots of laughter.

The Pine Creek Camp has a lot of potential for short and long-term work.  The head of maintenance and the camp director are both wonderful guys.  I would very much like to return to the Camp, whether as a member of a NOMADS team or independent volunteer.  I am not sure how hot the summers are or how cold the winters are, but spring and fall should be just right.

View outside the rear window of my trailer

RV campground at the Pine Creek Camp

Indiana's corn fields and high-tech windmills

Windmills and corn fields are 'multi-tasking' the land

Amish carriage parking area at local restaurant

Mill Creek, WV - August 2011

During the week between August 8 and 12, 2011, I led a mission team from my home church to Mill Creek, West Virginia.  This mission was a good example of serving the Lord through mission work in areas of God’s land outside the local community.  The mission supported a ministry called Tyrand Cooperative Ministries.  Its facility was located about a mile out of Mill Creek where lumber mills and coalmines are the primary source of employment.  Tyrand Ministries has been in operation for fifty years serving the needs of the elderly, handicapped, and other economically disadvantaged residents.  Mission teams come from several surrounding states, such as Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida.  The Tyrand staff was very excited to have a team from West Virginia.

I found Tyrand Ministries in what once was a farmhouse, barn, and an outbuilding or two.  The barn where mission teams once slept serves as a storage area for lumber and other building materials.  Today, a larger building provides sleeping areas for men and women, several bathrooms with showers, a large kitchen with eating area, and a large sitting area for daily devotions and relaxation.  The people of Mill Creek and their stories made this mission trip special.

The abundance of daily joys included sweet tidbits of food prepared by a couple of women on our team.  We began each morning with a devotional period.  Afterward, a volunteer project manager directed us to several homes within a short, and sometimes not so short, drive from Tyrand.  After the day’s work, we would settle down to a bodacious meal and evening devotions, which tended, more often than not, to expand into hours of good discussion.

The people of Mill Creek were as colorful as the landscape.  We had the pleasure of serving a decorated 89-year old veteran of World War II.  While we fixed a roof of one of his outbuildings, he delighted us with stories of battles (and his Purple Heart with three clusters) and of his high school sweetheart.  He spoke with joy in his heart of a young girl who went to college and became a teacher, writing letters during the years he served in the military, and waiting for his return to become his wife.  He told of his ten-day honeymoon driving to several sites in Virginia in his new 1931 Sportster.  Though she died in 1985, his wife came alive through his keen and charming memories.

We served another delightful, and rather amusing, man who suffered from diabetes.  This man knew he would soon lose both his feet; still he talked and joked about life as if nothing else mattered.  We worked on an enclosed porch where he wanted to install a wood stove before cold weather arrived, which would not be long in the mountains of West Virginia.  The man’s antics and humorous patter entertained us greatly.  After the seemingly short time we were there, the Tyrand volunteer offered a powerful prayer while kneeling before the man and placing hands on his legs.  Afterward the man shuffled into his trailer void of his usual exuberant humor.  We barely heard his final words to us as we departed, telling us to take care.  The appreciation from that man was beyond any words.  Similarly, our respect and admiration for his outlook on life, in spite of his condition, was admirable.

The next community project took us higher in the mountains, nearer to coalmines where large trucks bullied their way along narrow roads.  We served a woman who had recently lost her husband.  Still, her zest for life was remarkable.  She joyfully served us homemade bread and green beans to supplement our lunch.  Members of her family would stop by and talk.  Some of us found connections to her family, something that did not seem so unusual in the hills of West Virginia.

Overall, it was wonderful serving the Lord through our efforts in Mill Creek.  Our reward lay in the stories of the people we served and in the mountains of West Virginia.  On one evening we ventured to a small village tucked away high in those mountains.  I do not recall the name of the village but it was so quaint and picturesque.  I believe it was of Swiss origin.  I recall a few Swiss folk ventured from New York in search of a secluded area reminiscent of their homeland.  They founded a small village and went about establishing a good home in which to raise their families by retaining a bit of Swiss culture.  We tasted some of that culture by touring a local museum and enjoying a meal featuring foods made from recipes passed down through many years.

The Mill Creek area is a favorite of mine.  The beauty is evident in the hills and the people who live among them.  Like many of the nice places where the Lord has led me, I hope to return to Mill Creek.

Baldwin, LA - June 2011

After my third NOMADS project in Missouri, I decided to take the summer off, from NOMADS projects, that is.  My ‘second family’ in Ruston, LA, invited me to join them on a mission to Baldwin, Louisiana.  The mission was to help at the Sager Brown disaster relief facility.  The facility is the Methodist Church’s central distribution point for disaster relief supplies and is under the auspices of the United Methodist Committee on Relief, or UMCOR.

I had just acquired a newer trailer and was anxious to try it out.  So, on June 18, 2001, I was again on my way south to the coast of Louisiana – Cajun country.

I very much enjoyed seeing the folks from the Antioch United Methodist Church.  They were familiar faces.  I was looking for a great week with them.  Their decision to include me in their mission meant a lot to me.  I appreciated this opportunity.  At least one couple in the group had been coming to Sager Brown for the past fifteen years.  That was great encouragement for me in pursuing my passion of serving the Lord by helping others.

In late spring, the middle section of our country experienced temperatures much higher than usual and much earlier in the year.  Southern Louisiana was no exception.  I worked in a warehouse during the week.  As most warehouses, it was not air-conditioned.  Fans moved the hot air around.  Cold drinks were plentiful and appreciated.  My task was to pack health kits for shipment.  Methodist churches across the country contribute contents of health kits, including such items as toothbrushes, toothpaste, nail clippers, small towels, washcloths, and similar personal things.  The kits end up at the Sager Brown facility where volunteers unpack them, screen for any in appropriate items (such as cash), and repack the kit.  My job was to collect the finished kits from other volunteers and pack 24 kits to a box.  The boxes were sealed and stacked on a pallet.  Later in the week, I heard someone estimate that we packed well over 3000 kits.

UMCOR distributes the kits within the United States and to areas throughout the world.  I recall during a recent mission trip to Haiti seeing boxes from UMCOR.  It was nice to see more of the process of helping others.  I was packing health kits that would end up with a child, a mother, or father somewhere in a remote area of the world.  Cool.

The UMCOR staff was very nice.  They were a mix of paid staff and long-term volunteers.  I liked the idea of working at the disaster relief facility and asked how to become a long-term volunteer.  I need to take a course offered through the United Methodist Church but after checking the dates and places, I was already committed to NOMADS projects.  Perhaps another time, I told myself.

The 1-week mission trip was much shorter than the 3-week NOMADS projects and it went by quickly.  Aside from the work and meals I shared with my friends from Ruston, I enjoyed a wonderful tour of the bayou by boat.  One of the guys from Ruston brought his boat and offered a ride with others along the waters in the area surrounding Sager Brown.  I saw miles of river lined with fine homes and some not so fine.  One particular sight was what looked like a drilling barge on its side in the middle of the river.  Our pilot said his depth finder read the depth at 40 feet.  The barge towered at least another 40 feet in the air.  It apparently turned over during one of the recent hurricanes and was now a gigantic monument of rusting metal.

Another highlight was two occasions where our group enjoyed dinner at a local casino.  I am not one to play the machines but the food was great.  I felt right at home with my wonderful friends from Antioch United Methodist Church.  We laughed and talked as if I had known them my entire life.

I look forward to finding a reason to venture back to Louisiana.  I found great friends and fine food in that area of our world.  I pray the Lord will lead me back down that way soon.

Entrance to UMCOR's Sager Brown facility

One of the buildings on the small campus

Pathway leading from the main campus to the warehouse

View of the campus along the bayou

UMCOR's disaster relief distribution center

Packaging operation and storage area

Boxes of health kits ready for shipment

Volunteers assembling health kits

Packing table